Wade in Tacloban: Maupay nga Pasko! (Merry Christmas)

Hello my family,

I forgot to mention until now but the Philippines starts Christmas celebrations in September so we have been singing Christmas hymns and we got our apartment decorated up this week which was a pretty good time.

This week has been amazing! Probably the best week of the mission so far. So first off we had our zone conference in Tacloban with Elder Haynie, who is a member of the Philippines Area Presidency. He chose 5 missionaries that he wanted to interview before the conference and of course I got selected haha. It was really cool though to get interviewed, he just asked about how I was adjusting, if I liked my companion and the mission president. He then gave me some cool counsel from his mission experience and showed me some stats about the Philippines missions and a challenge to look for scriptures that talked about the isles of the sea. While I was waiting for the interview I got to talk to my mission president and one of our AP's Elder Serafin who is one of my favorite missionaries in the mission. They both gave me some great advice about the mission.

Anyways, the zone conference went until about 3 pm and he talked a lot about the importance of finding and establishing the church around chapels in the mission. We have heard a lot about that lately of getting the work going right around our chapel so we focused on that a lot this week. I also got to meet and talk with some other missionaries from the zones around us which was super fun.

My next cool experience of the week was I went on exchanges with the zone leaders in Mayorga. I spent the whole day with Elder Gunn who is in month 21 of his mission. He is super awesome and he has like all the same interests as me so it was really cool to find someone who into the same movies and stuff like that. We had a good day of finding and teaching. We then went back to Burauen and couldn't go to our area because a huge rainstorm came through. That's just how it is in the Philippines I guess haha.

The best part of the week was that we set a goal to get 10 new investigators this week which was a big goal because we only had 4 the first two weeks combined. Too make matters worse we only got 2 days to find because of all the other things going on. Anyways we ended getting 23 new investigators this week because we worked super hard and got some great help from the members so miracles do happen.

The language is still super hard but I have started to lead some lessons which is pretty amazing considering I don't really understand what is going on most of the time but it is coming along.

To answer some questions, we do use the Anibong Chapel as our base camp and it is just a chapel with about 6 rooms on the sides for other classes. I will get a picture next week. I only get to read emails as I email every Monday. That is super awesome for Logan and Alyssa, heck yes tell them they need to name him Wade, if it's a boy. I have been feeling great, no sicknesses just sore legs from biking. The work is going well, we are getting it going good, because my companion had some tough companions which made it hard to work so we are getting it going.

I don't think I need anything right now but I will see how long it takes to get this package. I will work on getting more pictures of me.

Oh send me your favorite conference talks next week because we get conference a week late so I want to know which talks to look forward too.

Love you,

Elder Holmstead