Hello Family and Friends! 

I am so glad to hear that everyone had a great Easter, I am still really bummed I missed out on Elder Ballard! How awesome! 

This week, as you might see in the title, was Holy Week. Everyone decided to get super Catholic, cause 60 percent of the people here are. So for like 4 days most everything is closed and people take it off as a holiday, but sadly, they only use it as that, a holiday. So thinking that everyone would be at home with their families, I thought this week would go great, but in reality, it wasn't like that at all. Everyone was gone! The streets were empty, I thought I was in a ghost town or it got evacuated. It was weird. Then on Easter you would expect everyone to go to church, but not so. So thus the title, Holy week, not so Holy, but holiday lang.

Despite the challenges faced of the Holy week, we were able to get some lessons in. My favorite by far was meeting a lady named Perla, who is 56 but seriously looks 55. haha just kidding she looks really young though. And she said she has great grand children, but I don't think that it is possible, am I right? But she is what we call an 'eternal investigator' and the reason why, she has a problem smoking. It was actually kind of cool because I was thinking just on monday of the same week, that I have not had any problems with people smoking, even though EVERYONE smokes here. And then I met her. I was really excite to help her, I am really excited to help her I mean. I have so much energy, especially because she wants to stop in order to be baptized. I really respect her too, because she understands that she needs to stop, so she can truly repent before she makes the covenant of baptism. So I will update you on how that goes! We have so many plans to help her! Exciting! 

The next thing I wanted to share was from church the other day, from the High Council member. He shared Mosiah 2 about keeping commandments, and while he was sharing I was reading it on my own and think it might be one of the most prophetic chapters in The Book of Mormon. It is amazing. But interesting. It says that if we keep the commandments the Lord will bless us. It is really straightforward, but as he shared that, I was reading, and king Benjamin points out that we as humans are really nothing. And in the first place, he created us, and gave us our lives, so we are indebted to Him, which really struck me. Sometimes, I think anyway, we may keep commandments to receive blessings. But we are indebted to Him. So shouldn't we want to pay him back, and show Him we love him by obeying His will, rather than obeying, expecting results. As I pondered that I think that when we start to obey out of a sincere love, ("if you love me keep my commandments") we won't expect blessings. We will obey because that is what he asks. But because he is so loving, he gives us blessings too. How great He really is.

Overall we had a great week, and Elder Padua and I will be staying together another transfer, but we are also going to be adding one elder, Elder LanSiu, Samoan from Australia. He was in my zone before and is super awesome. And they said one of us will mostlikely get transferred midway through. So it should be a fun transfer! 

One other thing I wanted to share, I now know why on the instant baked goods there is a time limit. Ex: We went to the mall and I bought Betty Crocker Cookie mix since the choc chips alone were twice as expensive. We had the opportunity to bake them last night, and first off, DELICIOUS. But the funny thing was as I was checking them the nanay was telling me not to worry, it hadn't been 11 minutes (that's what the box said). I assured her it was time but she wouldn't haha. They turned out good, but it was so funny how she pulled them out, RIGHT at 11 minutes haha. So those times are for Filipinos haha. 

I hope everyone has a great week!