YOUR BABY'S FIRST TYPHOON

 hi mama,

kumusta po nay,

YOUR BABYS FIRST TYPHOON!! good times here, crazy week, i hope i can cover it all. 

splits on splits on splits! had an amazing zone meeting plus the splits have called for some very serious and needed self improvement. hard but humbling. love spending time with so many amazing missionaries. my highlight was in Aritao. i taught a man named joseph who was born and raised in Illinois. complete perfect english like you and i and this experience kind of changed my mission for a number of reasons. it was fun to talk to him about the beauty and perks of this place and the benefits to live here. basically its so laid back and good living. hearing his experiences was cool. he lived beachside in a tent for about a month. but the lesson was so powerful. i was able to teach to my full language capacity. and the spirit was huge. explaining our purpose and relationship with heavenly father was powerful. he shared how he wants to change his life, prayed to know how, then received many answers. after bearing my earnest testimony of the power of the gospel, he simply agreed and said “yeah, i know this church is true as well.". he then offered a prayer that was so comforting. he asked heavenly father to watch over us carefully and to help us. he went on about us and eventually said "bless these young men and the work they do because they have no idea how much they truly help people". i teared up a bit. after talking about that experience later, i got chills repeatedly. 

then saturday, i was able to watch a baptism, then the baguio (hurricane) hit. we were told to go to the apartment before sundown, so we did. studied and stuff, then locked down the house. by the time we went to bed it was lightly raining. i woke at like 1:40 to close the windows and it was pretty wild outside but i went back to sleep fine. when i woke up, elder and i walked around to examine the damage. nothing too serious because the houses in our area are strong but it looked like that snow storm in september a couple years back. huge branches all over the place and the roads were covered with leaves. we went back home. personal studied. received confirmation of sacrament meeting then got on our bikes and told all our members that we were going to have church and to see how they were doing. nothin crazy there. our old shack church was missing some roof panels but no water got in. we stopped by to see an investigator and her house was pretty wreckt. she was missing half her house and the inside of her house was in pieces. super rough. helped our members clean up and then made it to church w/o electricity. spoke for my third time and then went home again.  then went to zone leader apartment because the next day we went to the "8th wonder of the world", Banaue Rice Terraces. when we got to the zone leaders apartment we got the inside scoop. like 200+ km/h winds. Aritao was hit bad. many people lost their homes and evacuated to the chapel for shelter. the damage i saw was pretty bad too and almost hard to believe. idk how i slept because everyone else couldnt because they said it was so loud. there is going to be a lot more service this week on top of the 4 hours we were able to squeeze in on sunday. pray for these people. no electricity for the next while.

Banaue was definately the coolest place ive ever been in my life. and i don’t say that lightly. we woke at 3 am. drove from bambang to solano. got Mcdonalds breakfast!!! first time in 4 months. equal hype. then drove to banaue for the next couple hours. the last  2 hours were literally uphill and the only straight part was crossing the bridge. insane views, wow. x10 of logans pass. made it to banaue an epic town on the side of the big mountains. then hiked down into the valley and back up. last half of the up was super muddy and sketchy rice terrace climbing. foot wide pathways and messy everything. insane fun and beauty. its crazy where people live. passed by and through many interesting shacks on the sides of these mountains and spent the whole day in astonishment. i cant even truly explain it so i wont bother. next level tho. super rain forest. drove back down. had pizza!!!!! then returned to bambang for a late and quick internet sesh. 

amazing week w some downs and lots opf ups. fun and powerful. really getting settled into these next 2 big years. cant wait. 

Elder Kearl

oh yeah another hurricanes coming!! shouldnt bother us down here. but the north end of the mission is really in trouble.