Hey everyone :) i hope that you all have had a wonderful week and a wonderful Sunday this week! and that you all have a wonderful week this week as well i love you all and miss you all so much!

So this week has been pretty dang busy but super fun :) so for one i hope you all are loving the weather out in Utah and are enjoying spring :) cause the weather out here is just hot and hot! we actually experienced rain or at least i did for the first time.... which sucked cause we were in the bukid( mountain) teaching one of our investigators and it started to just rain super hard but it was super cool cause we got let into a house and we actually got 3 new investigators which was super freaking awesome and a blessing cause if it hadn't had rained we wouldn't have met them at all... but after that we got to walk out in the mud and in the mountains in the rain! not to mention it was dark so that didn't help at all but we got home and it looked like we had just jumped into a pool with all of our clothes on! the fact that half the houses here stay standing up is beyond me honestly... but it was fun! :) Second lets just keep it at that public bathrooms suck here... but also i tried something super interesting this week! Chicken Intestine. honestly not as bad as i thought it would have been even though most of you will read this and think what the freak are they feeding you out there... trust me i ask myself the same thing most of the time cause you don't really wanna ask what kind of meat you are eating honestly.... found that out the hard way haha but oh well... it does suck though cause i am just dreading the day that we get fed by an investigator and they give us fish cause i have tried a thing called a fish ball so far and it is not very good but dry fish here is super cheap and that is what most people get and eat when they don't have any quarto( money) but it sucks cause my area is the seafood capital of the whole freaking Philippines. Go figure right? the fact that i got sent here for my first area clearly i am being told something.... but until i get the message that i don't have a choice to eat fish i will probably avoid it as best as i can ;) haha typical me.... but this week has been good our investigators are progressing so much and i love it!!!! they are doing so amazing and we had one that wasn't reading so we couldn't do much till he read but he finally read!!!!!!! i can't explain how happy i was that he told us that! he is such an amazing guy and i love that he refers to us as his best friends! but i just let him know how much we love him and how much God loves him and that he and his family will be so blessed and just that we are willing to do anything for him and to help him and the Spirit was so strong there and with him and it was just the best feeling ever and he was just so happy to hear that and honestly when you see your investigator be so filled with joy that they cry and hug you and tell you thank you it is probably one of the best feelings you will ever feel because you just feel so amazing to be able to help them and help them hear the things they need to hear and you honestly just want to cry with them because of how happy you feel and i really just don't know how to express the feeling because it is one of those times where you can't put it into words.... but i love it and i love that we have became so close with our investigators! they are all so amazing! the only thing that sucks is that we don't have any member present lessons because the members refuse to come out with us.... and our bishop kind of sucks... and won't do anything about it and won't help us... but Basta!( whatever) we are still getting really good numbers and have been actually improving our zone goals from 7 months ago until now which is super amazing! so we got to see fire works which was pretty legit cause it has been forever since i have seen them! but we had a huge festival here called capiznafest cause technically my language isn't Ilonggo here even though it is the only difference is they switched like 4 words and made it a new language here... stupid i know but whatever Bahala. but it is so fun and it's even more fun when you have investigators out in the freaking middle of the mountain and you get done teaching about 4 lessons there and it is 8:30 and you guys don't have a ride back because all the trike drivers are in the city or won't pick you up and you get to stand out and walk in the mountain in the dark for 20 minutes getting eaten by mosquitoes and they are big here! my heck but that's the best part of missionary work cause honestly you know that you had a good successful day and you get a really good view of the stars while walking but i am so grateful cause we finally got picked up by someone and this tends to happen a bit but we actually got picked up by a guy that owns a trike that had picked us up the night before and gave us a ride back to the city thankfully! but i am so grateful for all the many miracles we have even the little ones like that cause it lets us know that God is watching over us and will help us in times of needs and i love it and i love knowing that our Father in Heaven loves us and I know that this Gospel is true and i love being able to learn more about it everyday and to share it with all these people and to have it in my life because it is so important and we were actually talking about this last night but i really liked it and it made me think of how true it is but " people do so many things to fill in the hole in their heart by doing things that are bad for them or they think make them happy such as alcohol, drugs, money and things like that yes they may "make people happy" for the time being and buying cool things are fun and make you happy but once you are done here on earth those things don't go with you and that hole in your heart is the shape of Jesus and the only thing that will fill that hole is the true Gospel, This Gospel and having Christ and God in our lives but those are the only things that will fill in that hole and make us truly happy because we will have the Gospel for eternity and you can fill in that hole by marrying someone who is worthy who cherishes the Gospel and will help you grow in the Gospel and will help you become a better person and makes you want to become a better person and they can help you fill that hole and especially if they are a worthy Melchizedek Priesthood holder and can take you to the Temple to be sealed for eternity and to have your family in this Gospel and sealed for eternity cause that is what will make you truly happy in life" but it is so true and so important that we strive to be the best we can be and once we find that person we want to take to the Temple to make sure that we can make and keep those promises to them because it is such an important thing to do and to have the Gospel and i am so grateful for it and for my family and all of the people i have in my life and i am so happy to know that i will get to spend eternity with my family and loved ones. Sa ngalan ni JesuCristo. Amen. Palangga Ko Kamo

Palangga,

Elder Merrill

This is part of what my week was like :) This is a less active family that we are teaching and actually are helping come back to church and they said they will watch conference when we get them a copy of it :) since they didnt have money to get to church but they are so amazing and i love them so freaking much!!! the mom is so freaking funny but i love them and this is at 5:30 this morning here at the top of a light house that our district went to do go do an activity where we all thought of something we wanted to receive an answer on and prayed all together and then opened randomly in the Book of Mormon and we all got an answer for our question which was super awesome!!!! and this is sometimes a bed for us but only if you are willing to get eaten alive by bugs! but this was homemade by the less active mom :) 

Kamusta Kamo!!!! So i have officially been in the Mission for 2 months now and have spent a week in the actual mission field and i love it so much here!!! The first two days i got here i spent in Iloilo City because my trainer actually got called to be District Leader! so i leave in the same house as my DL and ZL isn't that something ;) haha but those first two days were so amazing even though i wasn't in my area yet i got to go out and visit some less actives and members in the area and to teach my first Investigator which was really amazing and we actually helped the Missionaries in that zone get a baptism date set with her! so we will see how that goes! So a little bit about my trainer and first area, my trainer his name is Elder Cobabe and he is the DL now and our area is called Roxas City it is a 4 hour bus ride from Iloilo City and is near the top of Panay which is our island. So me and my companion have about 7 like small areas in our area and it's just the two of us that cover it all, so we have some people that live in the city of Roxas and a lot that live out in the Bukid(mountain) Which is pretty awesome because we just get to go hiking almost everyday to go teach these people :) I absolutely love it and the people they are just the best and helping them out feels so amazing and i love that my companion is always wanting to help someone out with like pumping water into the tub so they can do laundry or help take things back to their house's which by the way the houses are so so tiny majority of the time and it's so sad to see but i love seeing them smile all the time because it is one of the best feelings to have when you can help put a smile on their faces or they are always smiling even when they don't have teeth they have such a big grin and it just makes your day! :) so we are teaching quite a bit of people right now and just yesterday on our way to go visit a less active family we stopped and talked to some people and we actually were able to give away 2 B.o.M's to two families that were there and made a dinner appointment with one and to come back and talk a little bit more about the Gospel with them :) and my companion being as amazing as he is looked over at me and set you got this and handed my Lesson 1 which is the Restoration and pointed with his lips to the people and i didn't want to give a brief summary of it cause i was nervous and am still very shy.... but i was able to explain it to them and summed up the whole lesson in 3 minutes for them in Ilonggo which totally surprised me cause i didn't think i could do it or think they'd understand me but i did really good and was able to go for it and we ended up giving that to them and so we are hoping they will read it cause they all seemed super interested and wanted to learn, Also cool thing that happened that has never happened here is a guy referred himself to Mormon.org and turns out he is in our area and went to Church last Sunday and wants to go again and so we are gonna start teaching him this week so i am super excited about that! also we wen't and taught this less active family and they have a son who isn't Baptized yet but when we went and visited them he told us that his sister and him are ready to get baptized this month and that they have been following everything and so i might get my first two Baptisms this month :) but we also have an investigator family that all want to be baptized and know the church is true but they won't go to church.... so we are hoping that they will come and realize how important it is and we have one of the family members still not sure about baptism even though she believes in the church and the B.o.M so we went and taught her about it and how to be in tune with the Spirit so she can know when she gets her answer about baptism cause she has prayed about it but is looking for a really really big sign that she should but hasn't gone to church yet to help try and find her answer but anyways I am so freaking happy to be here and to help out all these people and to help bring the Gospel to them and to help bring happiness to their lives and help and watch them grow and to become even more amazing people! so a little bit about the Philippines is it is hotter than hot here so i'm super thankful for my Mission President letting me to wear short sleeves out here! but these people eat some weird things haha i've already tried duck here and i know i haven't really eaten a whole lot of weird things yet but at the same time i have... but a lot of it is really good! like coconut water, not good at all in the states but here it is so Namit(delicious) but oh my gosh the fruit here is so amazing cause it is just fresh all the time and they will always pick it off a tree and give it to you on the spot so it always tastes amazing but almost everything here is fresh... meaning also the pork and chicken you eat here... and they will feed you all of it and i mean ALL OF IT! My companion and i had a dinner appointment and the family made some chicken curry and fried chicken which was really good but my companion ended up getting some curry and i had a little of it too but he got the worst of it... he ended up eating a chicken head with the beak and everything in it.. which he almost puked but i also ended up trying a little bit of chicken feet... Wasn't expecting that at all... :/ i am starting to get used to the sleeping habits here and the showering habit here because you have a tub with a plastic pot thing and you fill the tub up with water in the bathroom and you use the plastic pot to pour the water on you and that is how you shower and you do the same thing to flush here. So it's really fun to get used to haha :) but it's so freaking worth it!!! even dealing with all the freaking spiders in the house. I can't begin to tell you guys how bad it is out here. but it's all worth it in the end at the day after a good long hard days of working! I can't wait to share more with you all and let you know how everything is going and how our Investigators are doing next week Palangga Ko Kamo!!!!! Halong Kamo!!!! :):):):)

Palangga,

Elder Spencer McKay Merrill