Week 46

Hello Eveyone!

So this week was pretty awesome. Tranfer day went just how it should have and both Elder and I are staying right here for the next six weeks. The strangest thing occured to me this transfer day.... after this transfer I will hit my 1 year mark. Phew. It has been a good 11 months now that I haven't seen Augusta Georgia. That is such a weird thing to think about. Especially considering the fact that my freshman year of college I struggled to get through the one month that I forced myself to stay in Athens. And that was with calling my mom or dad whenever I wanted. Now it has been 11 months of emailing and 9 months of being on the other side of the world. Needless to say it has been a very long time since I have been home and I am very excited for that day when I do go home and see how much everything and everyone has changed.

This week was a very special week on my mission and I don't think I will ever really forget it. I had my birthday celebrations and then we also had ward conference this Sunday. For one of my birthday parties we had chop suey at the house I live in. We just had a fun little Family Home Evening with alot of food. The Chop Suey they made was absolutely fantastic. Then on Wednesday night I went up in to the mountains for my main party. One of my primary girls had her birthday that day so I asked if we could just combine parties. SO we had cake we had BBQ chicken. We had Afritadas and Adobo. We had bukho juice. Man... I could hardly walk home that night.

The work this week also went super well. We have two people that will be baptized this month. One is one of my primary girls that is just so excited to get baptized... I don't know if I have told you all about Eriel Bool, but she is awesome. She is the one that asked me to baptize her one Sunday. None of her immediate family is a member, but all of her extended family is. Her parents are very supportive and have actually said they might get baptized someday.... but Eriel will be first they said. She is the best little investigator you could dream of. She really knows her stuff. We were teaching her yesterday and when she said her prayer it was just so cute. It went something like this "Nagapasalamat ako nga nakakadto naman ang mga Elder sa akon balay at nakashare sila sa akon man. Salamat na mabunyagan ako sa August thirteen kag.... basta EXCITED ako. Sa ngalan ni JesuCristo Amen." or "I am thankful that the Elders were able to come to my house again and were able to share a message with me. I am thankful for my baptism on August thirteen and ... well Im just so excited. In the name of Jesus Christ amen." We also are working hard with a family. The dad is inactive and the Mom wants to become a member. They went to church as a family this last week and they seemed to really enjoy it. Sister has a baptismal date for August 27. She has a really strong testimony of the message and seems very committed to baptism.

The ward conference here was a blast. They really know how to put on their conferences here if you ask me. We had a humongous attendance and were packeds like sardines in the church, but it was a ton of fun. We had some visitors from Manila as well. I made best friends with the lady that ran the family history training but spent the rest of Sunday helping me with primary. She took a ton of pictures and said she would look me up on facebook and tag me in them. So keep your eyes out for those. But seriously, she reminded me so much of my Mom. She loved to tell stories and just to laugh. She was very thankful that I knew how to speak Tagalog as she couldn't speak very much Ilonggo at all. She was good at understanding it, but understanding and speaking are very far apart. She said her house in Luzon was open for me to use if I ever come back to the Philippines. She told me abut all the good food and all the good scenery too. We exchanged information and left on the see-you-in-a-couple-years note. She just seems like she would fit in with the Lowry-Crunk clan... haha. Anyways, after the conference there was this delicious buffet feast of fantastic food. I think I must've put on a good 20 pounds this week.

I love you all and hope all is well in the good ol USA. Thank you all so much for the birthday emails. They were all very appreciated. I am doing really well here in the Philippines. I fall in love with the country all over again every week. This area is seriously growing on me. It is way scary to think I have a 95% chance of leaving in September. It will be so tough to pack up and leave again. This primary has grown too much on me.

Halong kamo!

Elder Lowry