New missionary or investigator?

•Emergency transfer!‏ 9/26/2012

Kamusta, kada kinsa!  (Hello, to each!)
So the craziest thing happened - emergency transfer!  There was a
missionary in Negros that had super bad asthma and needed to be nearer
to places with good doctors and stuff so they swapped him with my
companion.  So we only had about 3 or 4 days to prepare.  Basta, Ang
akong tatay, si Elder Lim, sa Negros na, ug karon akong bag-ong kauban
mao si Elder Villegas.  He comes about to my shoulder, and he's a
Philippino from Mendanao (it's so hard to spell the names of these
Philippine places!)  His last area, where Elder Lim is now, is
Dumaguete (duuma-get-ee).   (....I wonder how the water is over there
with it being so far from Cebu) I guess they have a city somewhere
near them in his area, I don't think that area is too bukid, just a
lot of hills that were hard for my new companion when he was over
there.  It's weird to not have Elder Lim around anymore, but it's
super cool to have new insights and ideas from a new companion.
The weather's kinda windy today, but that just makes it perfect :)
I've been having to lead the area, it's not that easy but my new
companion / follow-up trainer is doing what he can to help me.
At least I remember where most of them live!  There's one investigator
that we have yet to visit at her house, we've only taught her after
church (she's gone to church 5 times now, and with the activities,
she's a lot more active than some of the active members!).  We
suggested the sixth for her baptismal date, but she said that was too
soon and picked October 27 (luckily I didn't have the mini calendar
for November).  So we have plenty of time to teach her all the lessons
and we'll see how she does with the reading assignments.

I'm sorry this email is short, but I had a bit of trouble with the
computer and now I'm almost done with my hour of internet.

Hope all is going well with everyone!
og misyonaryo sa Ginoo,  (missionary of the Lord,)
gugma si Elder Dallin Carlson

P.S. my mission president told me that we missionaries can receive emails from anyone on our missionary email account as long as we don't reply. I can't post the address here, so in order to get that you can email my mom at hellofriendcc@hotmail.com.

•Kaulanon!‏ 9/19/2012

Kamusta!!
Kamusta diha? It's good here - just super hot and ready to rain!  both
Monday and Tuesday we had Service projects!  All of us forgot to use
sunscreen because it's been cloudy so far, so all 6 of us missionaries
that did both got sun burnt -  3 of them are Filipino, too!  We joked
about them being Indians since their skin is reddish brown now.  The
first csp was digging into a hillside next to someone's house in the
Talamban ward - we formed a sort of fire line (pedxing, I think)  to
pass the dirt up and to the side to dump the buckets of dirt.  Then at
the second one, we widened a trail - there were plants starting to
crowd it.  You almost never see weed whackers anywhere here, so we used
machetes (mga sundang).
I'll see about giving a synopsis of our teaching - we've had a couple
of dinners at member's houses and gave a message afterwards.  Other
than that, we're preparing Brother Galano for the melchizedek
priesthood (he's a returning member), and Sister Jandog (returning
member) for the temple.  We're trying to show to the Solon family (2-3
members) how important it is to go to church, and how important it is
for the (eternal salvation of) children  to be baptized by the
returned proper priesthood authority of God.  With all our lessons,
we're trying to use The Book of Mormon because it holds (along with
The Bible) the fullness of the Gospel, and it's one of the main things
that sets our religion apart from every other church.  The other
reason we focus on The Book of Mormon is that it is the way to know
the church is true and that we have a living prophet on the Earth
today - in order to find out if our church is true or not true, a
person would need to follow the promise of the ancient prophet Moroni
when he wrote Moroni 10:3-5 and "remember how merciful the Lord hath
been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down
until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in
your hearts.  And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort
you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ,
if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere
heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest
the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.  And by the
power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."

Hope all's going well with everyone!
Gugma si, Elder Dallin Carlson

Cebu, Philippines

 Rainy day at the Cebu Philippines Temple

 Community Service Project

Eating with members after choir practice