Pasalamat Festival in La Carlota

05/01/11
Well, this last week was way interesting. Found it way hard to sleep most of the week. This week was Pasalamat Festival in La Carlota. It centers around the city plaza and had multiple parades during the week. Our house is way close to the plaza so we could hear everything, and it was loud! Wednesday night there was a stage set up right in front of our house and a live band preformed until nearly 2 am. It was a very rough night of sleep.

The festival made work just a bit more difficult. Everyday tons of people would go to La Carlota. So finding was down. Those we did talk to did not want to listen, at all. We found a lot of hard hearted people this week....

Our lessons that we did have were great though! We found this one family last week, and we taught them twice this week. They are way good. They are reading from the Book of Mormon and have way good questions. One of the sons will be returning to Manila on Tuesday and asked if it would be ok for him to take one of the BoMs we gave them. Naturally we said "of course!" They are a way great family. The father attended our second lesson with then.  We gave them a Book of Mormon. He had good questions too and was interested. This last time he wasn't there, but the rest told us about things that he said after we left and how it was way different than his reactions to missionaries from other churches. Can't really restate what he said; doesn't translate well, but it was good! They want to progress as a family. They said they will come to church next week. As for the one going to Manila, he said that there is a church close to his house there. We told him that if he sees the missionaries there to not be shy and flag them down.

That was the good experience of the week. Everything else was pretty normal. This week was area conference though! but we found out all the details last Monday, so it wasn't announced in church.... So we told every one we saw about it. And we actually had a good turn out! Pretty much everyone we told came! The people that we kinda expected the branch president to tell, didn't...

Area conference was way good. Elder Teh spoke, counselor in the area presidency, then Sister Julie B. Beck, Elder Cook, and President Packer all spoke via satellite from Church Headquarters. It was all really good.

Yeah, that's pretty much it for the week. It was good, looking forward to the coming week. Especially the phone call home! I'll call Monday morning here, so Sunday night there. Between 8 and 10 here. Not sure what that is back home...

Love you all!
Elder Phelps