Investigators and new mailing address

Elder Remer is serving in Panglao, a small island

This week has been a pretty hard week, not spiritually, but because we might lose our only family investigating right now. we have been teaching there 3 children about the gospel, and they are super far in the missionary lessons, we have a baptism scheduled for the 14th of February, but they are part of a dajong(explained later) We have a 50% chance of baptizing them. The dajong is the people who own your house and insurance, if you are of the same religion as them, you get a needed discount, if not, you won't be able to afford a house or insurance. Not everyone here is part of a dajong, but turns out this family is part of one, it just depends if we are lucky and they are part of a relaxed dajong, or if they are part of a hard-core-catholic one. Hopefully it turns out well, I had some pictures this week, but forgot my camera cord, so hopefully next week,

Have a great week,
Elder Remer


(note from Cindy) The mission office sent us an email this week updating the mailing address. Send all correspondence & packages to the following address:

Elder Ryan D Remer

Cebu East Mission Office

LDS Church Compound, National Highway

Bajac, Liloan

Cebu 6002 Philippines

For packages: (Contact Ph# 032-424-1012)

The Philippines Cebu East mission also receives pouch mail. Here's the address for that:

Elder Ryan D Remer

Philippines Cebu East Mission

POB 30150

Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150

Getting Christmas letters and teaching primary

Thanks for your email, I really like the rock climbing story (the two guys in Yosemite free climbing Dawn Wall), its cool to read the story and think "yeah, I guess that's cool" then put the scale on there.. the thoughts change to "what on earth!!" I would be happy just completing a 5.12 by the end of my life after trying over and over again, the fact that they climbed sections of that, on the first time every time, it blows my mind. and as for the 5.14d... that's like climbing a brick wall, its so crazy hard. That is super cool for me, thanks.

Oh, guess what yesterday I got a ton of Christmas Letters from the primary. It was fun to read all the notes from the primary and they were useful to test the English of some of the people here. Also I got a Christmas postcard of Paul, Aubrey, Ava, Mabel, and Max. Its so much fun to get Christmas mail at the end of January.

I thought I would send you a picture of some of the things I did last week, because my comp was super sick... again, but he did get better enough towards the end for us to do some work.

1) Solved a 5x5 rubix cube, and then again, and again, until I could solve it with any pattern, spiral, and ctr

2) Built a nindot card tower

3) dominos with cards

4) teach a super smart 9 year old (photo above)

We have 4 Elders in Panglao, our areas are pretty big, but we focus close to the church because we only have a group right now of 20 people and an amazing group leader. The other Elders are kabalay with us (living in the same house) and my language is improving very fast with the house of me and 3 other Filipino.

At church this Sunday I had a fun time teaching the primary 10ish year olds. We acted out the story of Nephi, from the 1st chapter until Nephi gets the plates of brass. We had a lot of fun moments, like when I, lehi, picked up my family, and brought them to the wilderness, because the word for carry, and to bring, is the same word in Visayan. We had a lot of fun, and all the primary went to there parents and excitedly told them about Nephi and Lehi, and the plates of brass. It was super Fun.

New area and sick this week

My new area is very different, it is not the hilly jungle but a flat area with lots of houses.  The area is new with only a group, we do have 4 Investigators with a Baptismal date, that are kids/teenagers. I had a lot of fun in Jagna, and I am sad to leave it behind, but also I want to make this area the best it can be.  We are in Panglao by the way, with my companion Elder De guzman,

We had fun on Wednesday going to people having parties because me and one of the sisters were leaving, we also went to the highest point in Jagna, it was super fun, 

I am pretty tired, haven't been sleeping well with the cold I got, I have been pretty sick for the last few days with a fever, but we are getting back to work today, Hopefully we will be able to bring a lot of people to Christ.

Elder Remer

Transfer to small island of Panglao

Today is transfer day and I am transferring to Panglao, a small island off the coast of Bohol, Its both exciting and sad, but I hope I can learn to love the people there as much as I love the people here.   Unfortunately this week Brother R... is out of town, which is sad because today is my last day here, Today I don't have a lot of time to email because I need to pack to leave at 5 and we have a visit with someone at noon, so today will be a pretty wild and fast day, Thanks so much for helping me go on a mission.
I have included some pictures, one of me and Elder Lewis, taught him how to solve a rubix cube, a picture of a new shortcut/path we found, and me and the youth, I taught them because their teacher didn't come to church.

Happy New Year

The New Years here was amazing. Our plan for new years eve was to go to the city and watch a movie, and spend the night at the zone leaders house. But the mission president sent out a message that he wants no sleepovers at the zone leaders houses, so for us on Bohol, it was a huge change, because going to the city would make it so we had no work on New Years Eve, we would need to leave early in the morning in order to get to the city, and get a bus back, so instead the plan was that the missionaries would just watch a movie with their house mates- for me and Elder Aquino that would be just us, I was a little disappointed about it, because I wanted to hang out with the American Missionaries and have a break from Visayan.

Well, me and Elder Lewis wanted the same thing, so we got our distract leader to go on splits with Elder Aqunio, so that I could sleep at the American Missionaries house nearby, and spend the night with them, it was super fun, we watched KungFu Panda 2 and bought fireworks for the members to shoot off, it was super sweet.

This week we got 27 lessons! a new record for us in Jagna, We don't have any baptisms coming up unfortunately, but we are teaching a lot of great people, that maybe in the next transfer or two might get baptized, its hard to get them to come to church, and now we also need to get them to join a community service project that the members are part of as well, we received a list of the new baptismal requirements unique to our area, because they want new members that are willing to sacrifice there time to go to church, instead of people just baptizing someone to have them become less active the next transfer.

Today me and Elder Aquino are going to Tagbilaran, the city, for fun because I will most likely be transferring the 15th of January, because Elders normally stay in an area for 2 to 3 transfers. Is that Normal? I'm not sure. I thought I would list a few of the 50 words that I learned this week.
ugay-ugay is a backrub
torutot - is the annoying horns during new years
pabuto -is to play with fireworks
sigot- is a hic-up

Oh and I wanted to explain the languages here

Visayan is the Bible language here - old but understandable by all the people

Cebuano is the English word for Visayan

Sugboanon is the dialect of Cebu

Porohanon is the dialect of Camotes 

and Boholanon is the dialect of Bohol

Filipino is the language of a bit of all the dialects in the Philippines

and Taglog is the language of the Business People

Phew, That's all of them

I currently speak Boholanon and Visayan(Can be spelled Bisayan as well)

Until next week,

Elder Remer

power of testimony and awesome flip-flops

I thought I would tell you about Brother R..., he is a very strong Catholic and likes to use scriptures in the Bible to prove that he is right, but he is slowly opening up to us, and starting to read the Book of Mormon. Right now he is reading 2 Nephi chapter 2 about the fall of Adam and the Atonement.

We had a hard time getting him to start reading the Book of Mormon because we wanted to introduce Joseph Smith first and he refused to believe that there was an apostasy because of Matthew 16:18 where He believes that Christ built his church on Peter and that the gates of hell will never prevail against it, that there was never an apostasy, so that we don't need a restoration. I found out this week that when facing doctrinal questions, you testify of the truth, because right now he sees the scriptures so differently then we do, any scripture about apostasy in the bible we use, he just says that that is about a few of the people not all of them, and I can't prove to him otherwise, I can however bear testimony of the truth I know, and that is beginning to change his answers, instead of there is no way that happened, its changing to that might have happened, its super cool to see the power of testimony

I get about 3-4 lessons every day, but some days I get 1 lesson, and some days I get 7 lessons, it depends on how much walking we do, and if there are parties for Christmas or new years.

I thought I would send you a picture of the furthest away home of members that are less active, we are trying to reactivate them but walking 12 kilometers (I think 6 miles?) is not the funnest idea, and then to walk back as well. 

The animals that I have seen are Tikis - small lizards that come out at night and like to climb near lights inside the houses here, and tukos which are a different kind of lizard that I am a little scared of. There are also spiders that are super big that the kids try to catch so they can have spider fights, but I haven't seen a spider fight yet.

These are my awesome shoes/ flip flops when I am walking around the inside of our house, because we always wear shoes in the house.

Also the scripture to Jacob 6:12 for trying to read bisayan fun

Elder Remer

awesome week, too many soft drinks and lucky flower

Guess what this week has been a record week of 24 lessons this week, It was an awesome week. I am learning tons of Boholonon from Elder Aquino who is 18 months in his mission. He lets me lead the lessons, and because of that I am learning even faster than before, its like I'm on a rocket and the thrusters kicked in.

This week has been interesting to say the least, we had the idea to go house to house near the simbahan, we wanted to find people to teach about the gospel that would easily be able to visit our church building with us, for a tour, or just to see it. However we found out the neighborhood of our Church Building is filled with other church buildings and as part of the rules, we are not allowed to go house to house/ teaching if the people are close to another church, it has been a struggle to find houses away from the other churches in Tejro, but we have gotten a few new investigators, so it was worth it in the end

We had a day this week, Thursday, where every visit we were offered a soft drinks, I am so done with them, I tried to refuse, but there's a point where it is rude here to refuse to take what someone offers, I need to make a strategy so that that doesn't happen again.

We also have one of my new favorite investigators, he is fairly wealthy and very smart. His name is Brother R..., and he can quote off Bible scriptures like any other, but since he is open, he is letting us, a 18 year old and a 21 year old teach him, and He really likes the lessons we teach him. He said he really likes how our we say our purpose is not to convert people but to give them the message that they can have the information so that they can ask God if it is true through prayers, because he too believes that prayers can be answered.

This week I found a 5 petal flower, lucky here, because normally the flowers only have 4 petals, its pretty much the same as a 3 leaf clover compared to a 4 leaf clover, so I took a picture of it, kay I am a lucky missionary this week.

We also have been teaching one lesson to our members, or less active members, about improving ourselves, that we should try to improve ourselves and become more Christlike, I have also taken this lesson to heart and this week have set some goals for better language study every day, and to help my mornings be more productive, to write what I am going to do in the morning the night before, like "Work out- 4 sets of Push-ups" and "Do the dishes" and things like that, so that I can wake up and start doing things to check them off my list.

Picture of all the Christmas lights here (or an attempted picture)

Love,
Elder Remer