Week 47 - No Addresses, Spelunking, More Service Opportunities

First off that is awesome to hear that Brandon Scott received his mission call! He'll love it as the mission is a blast!! The missionaries here are awesome!! I am the only American in the district with 3 Indonesians (including Elder B who I trained in Solo) and 2 missionaries from Australia!!! We are doing some great work here in Manado and it is a beautiful city with so much in store!! The work here is a little different here as it has been in my other areas!! We have a lot more service opportunities here. This past week we went to one of our investigator's houses and helped him paint! It does take a little longer to get around here so we don't get as many lessons but still have the opportunity to talk to tons of people!!

One of the craziest things here is there is NO ADDRESSES!!! Basically, you hop on the transportation that takes you to the mountain of your destination (It's just mountains and the beach here) you hop off and basically start hiking in the mountains and there is just a ton of houses with no street name and no house number. You just have to remember the houses of the members and the investigators!! It makes for a huge adventure and craziness but the people are soo nice!! A lot of them have the mentality that we are all one family if you live in Manado so it is really nice! We do have a branch with a small 3-story building to meet in and there is about 50 people that attend! The number of part-member families here is out of the roof because in  typical house, 8 people will live there and maybe only 3 will get baptized but the whole family has great relations with the missionaries! It's just a cultural thing that is different!

The food dishes here are made up of rice and fish!! With that, I am already starting to lose weight but there is KFC and McD's 2 minute walk from the house right on the coast! :)

Elder S (from Medan and my companion) and I were able to give 6 baptismal commitments this last week. No one came to church but that was a miracle in itself!! 

I don't have a lot of time left but things are going GREAT!!! As a mission we are seeing things just sky rocket here and the mission is always better when you are having a great time! I can easily say that I'm having a BLAST!!!

The Church is true!!

Elder Hayes

Spelunking

Service Project