Earthquake in Cebu - Field Week 2

 GRATITUDES

I'm thankful for all my family, immediate and extended. I am thankful for my friends. I am thankful for all those that think of me, message me, and message my mom. I am so thankful for my life, for the country, home, and gospel I was born into.

I finished president Nelson's talks the day that he passed away. I have a list of 15 out of the 114 that really stuck out to me. If you want the list, reach out to me or my mom, and I can give it to you. Also, we were in the middle of ward conference when he died. And the minute that we sustained him, I had a feeling that he died, and then he actually did. Super weird.

EARTHQUAKE

I was telling Elder Gamot that being from Arizona, I have never experienced any natural disasters. The next day, I was laying in bed, listening to a conference talk and I got a notification that said, "earthquake nearby." Seconds later we get hit by a 6.9 magnitude earthquake. Luckily our area was pretty ok. Our apartment has some cracks in it now. Sadly though, other areas were not so lucky. I know of 69 people that have died, and I'm sure there are many more. Houses, businesses, and churches were destroyed. It is the saddest thing to see. I have thought a lot about what if I was in that area, but am so grateful that I was not.

FUN TIMES

One night we had dinner at a member's house (it was the chicken feet pictured in my photo album). They made the food, set it on the table, and then went into their rooms, leaving us the remote with Netflix open. Safe to say we watched an entire movie while eating dinner. If you get upset by that, just ignore it. The highlight of my week was facetiming my cousin Zack. He gave me the joy I needed, and I haven't laughed harder since being on the mission.

THIS WEEK

This week was ROUGH. I have never wanted to go home more. I am being so serious when I say that a couple of times I didn't swat the mosquitos away, hoping they would bite me, make me sick, and send me home, because then it wouldn't have been my choice to go home. BUT, I had some thoughts that helped me through it. One of them was the idea of seeing Elder Henry on Monday. Seeing him is a breath of fresh air.  A white person who is at the same point in his mission as me. And mine and his conversations are always enjoyable. Another was the realization that I only struggle in the day time. Walking in the heat all day, and not being able to help in the teaching is so boring, and it feels as if I am doing it for no reason. I feel like I’m just torturing myself. But at night, my energy comes alive and I joke with the other elders, and everything is ok. The third thing that helped me was one morning while I was showering, I was thinking about the story of Peter in Gethsemane. I thought to myself that if Jesus Christ asked me to do something, I would put all my effort into it. There's no way I would have fallen asleep. The next thought that popped into my head was, "the Lord asked you to serve a mission." My mindset immediately changed, and I started going throughout my days with ambition. That morning I said to Elder Gamot, "today's going to be a good day. We are going to find 5 new people to teach." We ended up finding 8 that day, which felt amazing.

STUDY

Being that my comp is semi trunky, I have quite a bit of study time. It has been the best thing ever. I have decided to study things that I never have before, or dive deeper into topics that I know about, but not a lot about. Such as, the Pearl of Great Price, the Abrahamic Covenant, and other random sections on the gospel library app. And obviously more conference talks. Speaking of conference, It was really cool to see Elder Jackson speak in the Saturday evening session because I just shook his hand 2 weeks ago in the MTC. 

Elder Spencer Lewis