thanks for the emails and letters

I really enjoyed General Conference. I liked Elder Hollands talk Are We Not All Beggars?. I liked how he said that "I have never been poor, I will never know how it feels" I remember that powerful statement. It is cool to see the people here giving up so much to come to church and to do their home teaching. They normally walk 5 miles to get to their home teaching assignment, and then another 5 miles back, just because of how far everyone lives from one another. I hope that I will be able to become as giving and caring as these people are.

One of the days this week I went on splits with my distract leader Elder Roskelley, It is super cool to see the strengths he has in missionary work compared to that of my trainer, he gave me advice about tracting and advice on learning the languages/dilects here.

I'm grateful when people send letters and emails, especially the pictures, I really like seeing Colorado again, its funny because my friends in Colorado dream of going on vacation to somewhere warm, topical, with different kinds of fruits and trees, next to the ocean, where the people here dream of going on vacation to the mountains where it is cold, to great rivers in a log cabin.

A Baptism!

This week I got to baptize a girl named Heart. She might be the most shy person I have ever met, I am so glad she got baptized.

I wanted to tell everyone about the baptism. The baptism was planned on starting at 3, me and Elder Creswell got the the church at 11 to make sure that everything would be ready with plenty of time to spare.

At 11 we found the font was already filled with water, but the water was super dirty, so we drained it for the longest time, saw that it was completely dirty and decided to go to town so we could get cleaning supplies and also find a printer to print the baptismal program, who would be speaking, what hymns would be sung, and something for Heart to keep forever.

We went to town and got cleaning supplies, made and printed off the program, by now it was about 12, we decided we would eat lunch after everthing was ready for the Baptism, we came back to the church and started to really clean the font, we cleaned for 30 min, and then decided to start filling it, it was a slow tickle of water, an hour later it wasnt even a 1/4 of the way full, so we started to try and find ways to fill it faster, we found the right knob talking with a member on the phone, turned it, and the water came out faster, but also a lot of dirt came out, so by the time it was 3, we had returned the font to its original dirtiness, probably should have checked the water before we cleaned it, even with this dirty water the babtism turned out great.

Thanks for your time

Elder Remer

crazy holiday, sick companion

At the Remer house, we usually get an email from Elder Remer on Sunday night between 10 and 11 pm. Since the time in Cebu, Philippines is 14 hours ahead of us, it is close to lunch time on Monday for Elder Remer. This week, he emailed earlier, around 8 pm for us. We were gathered for family scripture study when I got his email, so I took this picture to email back to him so he could see us in the moment. Technology is great! His letter this week mainly answers my questions, so I'll include the questions...


Thanks Mom for the long letter, I'll admit when there is a lot of mail sometimes I don't get through it all, but on weeks like this one It is truely a blessing. Thanks so Much!

Has there been a holiday since you got there, or any holidays upcoming? For Holidays we have had one, and I am glad it has just been one. It was the biggest party I have ever seen in my life. These people, who didn't have food, somehow managed to put out 10 or 15 speakers and play music. The entire city was like this, in my house on the edge of the city, I could here the music as I woke up in the morning. I would describe it if everyone in Castle Rock played the same radio station on  huge speakers outside and took the day off just to party. It was crazy.

As for other Holidays the next one is Christmas, so people are putting up Christmas lights now, it seems very strange, because its not cold, and still months away until Christmas, but I guess not for the Philippines.

Did you have any good experiences teaching or helping people this week? Unfortunately because of the rain and my companion being sick we have only got to teach 5 lessons this week. I am so grateful that I am in an area that people open up the the gospel. I can't imagine going an entire week working and getting no lessons. I was so bored this week sitting around while waiting for Elder Creswell to get better.

Any requests for your Christmas package? Are there any snacks or treats that you miss? Any requests for my Christmas Package... I would like, maybe a board game for P-day, some jaw breakers, if that would be okay. And I might need a new camera, something broke inside of it, and I haven't been able to turn it on, but I feel like that is a huge request, I am sure that next time I am in the city I might be able to buy one, I want to try to make sure that I get one that charges on an outlet or something because electricity is so much less expensive than batteries. If you could send church magazines that would be the best thing ever!!

Thanks so So much Mom,
Elder Remer

what makes me laugh?

I have found lots of things that have made me laugh in the Philippines. Here in Jagna it's mostly the signs, for example this one pointing away from the ocean.

Thank you so much for praying for me everyday, I can see the difference it makes, as for most people they say the hardest part for them was the first 2 transfers, while I am feeling pretty good, maybe my trials of my mission will come later, but just in case I am reading this book they gave all the new missionaries called Adjusting to Missionary Life, it has a bunch of techniques about relieving stress, I am trying to pick a few and try them out every day to twice a week, so that when the stress does start to come I will be able to get rid of it before it becomes bad.

I am finding Personal Study to be amazing, I can't believe that I am running out of time studying the gospel every day. Before my mission I found it hard to study for 20 minutes and now I find it hard to stop studying after an hour of study. I am wondering if after a year that I will find it hard to study that hour every day, or if I will value it even more.

I love it when people ask questions at the end of their emails, I never know what to write. 

So what am I eating? I eat tons of rice, almost every...if not every... lunch and dinner is with rice. Here they never eat rice plain, they always have a sauce to put on it and some kind of meat, normally fish, chicken, or pig. The hard thing is that you need to put a piece of meat and rice on your spoon. I have found out it is super weird to eat rice without putting meat on your spoon, sort of as weird if someone were to bring a 2 liter of soda to a party and just drink it out of the 2 liter instead of pouring it in a cup. The problem is you need to try to balance out your meat-to-rice ratio so that you eat all the meat and rice, its so confusing. Then fruit here is normally the desert I have eating mangoes as well as a lot of different kinds of fruit like tambis, langsat, and rambutan.

Its super cool to be given this fruit and have no idea how to eat it, do I eat it like an apple? peal it like an orange? peal like a potato? break the shell against a rock or with my fingers? I love it so much.

Where do I go to send and read emails? There are places called Internethans- bolohonon(the dialect of Cebuano I am using) for "the place of using the Internet" its a small shop where there are computers that you get on and then pay for each hour that you are online, last week we had a zone meeting so we needed to leave, and one of the Missionaries hadn't gotten to email because his computer didn't work, so I gave it to him.

What kinds of pets or animals are here? We see lizards all the time here called tikis. There are animals that I haven't seen yet, but I am hoping to see sometime while I'm in the Philippines, like a hambubukad aka flying lizard/dragon, and a tarsier (a tiny monkey thing)

tarsier photo from wikipedia

These are some other pictures I took:

my wallet/coin purse

the dock

the main form of transport a Tryk, they are 3 wheeled taxis, pretty cool