Cats and Rats and Laundry!

I'm glad you liked the photos! they were great huh? :) I actually have a present coming soon to you! I got all the pictures I’ve taken so far put on a cd and I’ll send it probably tomorrow. so if it makes it safe, you can have those saved and see all of them! the coconut day we did service at the lady's house, digging a trench around it so it didn’t get wet inside and to control the mud outside when it rained hard ;) super fun!! But super sweaty. its funny here, I can hardly get dressed in the morning without sweating. not because I am unfit! its just SO HOT! just MOVING makes the body want to sweat!! and, guess what/? its not even hot season yet !!! wow I’m excited for it! haha
For other service, we've been struggling finding things. we deep cleaned our house for our service day this last week. that was fun! its nice and shiny clean. for the most part. but I can really feel a difference now. it was... pretty messy in some areas. but now I feel like it is a better place for the spirit to reside! the other service, one time we went to a less active's house and tried to help them build a house. but, they didn’t have enough materials, so the guy pretty much threw up, very sloppily, 1 and a half out of 4 walls and called it good! other than that, I can’t recall our other ones. We've weeded a couple times. if you thought weeding was a chore at home...... think again! haha but its always a great feeling to serve the people. And they think its hilarious to see Americans working, especially weeding haha
for laundry, we have 2 buckets. We soak clothes in one w/ some soap for a couple hours or half a day. Then, scrub scrub scrub with our hands! just scrub the clothing against themselves all over, focusing on the sweatiest areas! then, ring out, put in a bucket of clean water. rinse and ring out, repeated 2 or 3 times, then hang up! Fairly time consuming, and not very entertaining, but, it must be done! can only wear a church shirt 2 days max here with all the sweat and rain combined with the dust sticking to you.

I have not yet received the birthday package! But hopefully soon. Elder Adams got a package that arrived a couple days ago and only took 13 days, when Elder Andrews was sent in mid September and got it the same day! guess it just depends. elder Andrews' was full of ants. haha. But a lot of it was salvageable. For my birthday we're going to make home made ice cream to celebrate, and probably go to dinner somewhere close by one of these nights. Exciting! And I’m very excited for the Christmas package :)

We had a great testimony meeting this month. Probably the most spiritual sacrament meetings I’ve had here. The YSA group had an activity the weekend previous, and apparently it was a huge success! There were multiple less-active single adults there, and they all shared very powerful testimonies and desires to become more active in the church again! We had a low turn out on investigators at church. BUT there were lots of less actives, which is pretty much just as good! The testimonies were so strong. It was so great to here these testimonies here, and feel, even though we're on the opposite side of the world, holding church in just a small church house with no piano and a small tape player for the microphone, that the testimonies and doctrines and members of the church are strong here as well and have great spiritual experiences. Priesthood class was great. It felt so full with just a couple of 21 yr old men there that normally weren't. We talked about baptism and confirmation and the priesthood, and they were so excited about knowing they could perform baptisms that they all got out paper and wrote down the proper way to do it and the prayer for it and how to confirm people as members! I felt the spirit so strong as I watched these men so excited to become active and ready to use their priesthood. Hopefully 2 of them will be able to be ordained as Elders soon, and have the desire to serve missions! Rey, the 77 yr old that just got baptized, should be ordained to a priest in the next couple of weeks! Our branch president, President Alajar, baptized him.

This week we tried something new with some of our lessons. We took around the 20-minute restoration video about Joseph smith and showed it to multiple families. What a great movie! I felt the spirit so strong each time we watched it. And I really felt like it helped investigators understand Joseph smith's story better. We also had a very powerful lesson with John about baptism and its importance, and committed him to pray about it because he's not quite sure if he wants to be baptized yet, but he said he'll prepare to be ready for November 27!

This weekend we had zone conference where the whole zone gathers and the mission president comes and teaches and then the APs teach as well. I love president pagaduan. Such a great man. He talked about understanding our purpose as missionaries, and then being unified as missionaries. Then the APs had a great lesson on the power of the Spirit and it's importance in conversion. Great great conference!

I shook a 111-year-old ladies hand! That was cool. I did a respectful handshake where you bend down slightly and touch their hand to your forehead, and she thanked me for it haha
there are rats and cats playing in our ceiling. One of them fell thru the ceiling in the middle of the night last night. haha. we need to set up our traps again!

Well that’s about all I got this week! I love you so much. thank you so much for the emails and the thoughts. I love hearing from you each week and about how the family is doing. more to come next week!
love
Elder Pettit
Sam

Sam's first baptism!

Sam had his first baptism on Saturday! He was very excited! He is loving his mission, his companions, and everything he is doing. He attached some nice photos which I finally figured out how to post on the sidebar. You can see that he is very sweaty in the one where he is drinking coconut juice==and there are photos of the baptism. I'm not sure who the gentleman is doing the baptizing, I think it is the Branch President. Sam says they are doing great, and I look forward to hearing more news each week.