Elder Steve Brousseau in Laoag, Philippines

Who heard the news? Probably all of you by now but I am super excited to be able to talk to my family every week. This week was a weird change but a welcome one to be able to call my family! The time difference is crazy though. Being 15 hours ahead is a little rough on my family but we'll figure out the best way to do it. Obviously, I had exchanges this week but I'll get to that in a minute. Congrats on your mission call Anna Low! New Zealand is going to get a great missionary! Rachel, I'm very glad your papers are in and I can't wait to hear where you are going! For those of you who have things I should be congratulating you about, Congrats! I would love to hear about all the great things going on! Also, shout out to my little sister for being a solo star! You're doing great! Be prepared for a lot of pictures this week. We spent a few days in San Nicolas this week because that is where the hospital/doctor's office is for Elder Tuiaki's ear infection. ...

It's also kind of hard to sum up this last week. So instead all just get into it.  I feel like not many notable things happened this week. We had FHE for one of our investigator's birthday(her mom is a member) and we talked to her brother who is a teacher at a catholic school and we had a good conversation about the gospel and we asked if we could meet with him again sometime to just talk about religion for a while and he seemed super excited about it because he has some questions that he thinks we can answer. That was pretty cool. On Sunday, Elder Tuiaki and I were the back ups if the speakers didn't show up(of course) but they ended up coming in time so that was a relief but I felt like I had a good talk figured out based on this weeks Come Follow Me chapters. Jesus really does know what you are going through and all you have to do to see that is act on His words "Follow me." Something from the booklet really stuck out to me. It was the question would you ...

The members feed us so much and I love it so much! We got fed almost everyday this week. I finally found out that Sis. Barbie and Bro. Gerald consider me a son so that was a huge bright spot in my week! Elder Kartchner worked some more magic in our bathroom when we had a leak so that was nice. So we got our funds for this next month this week and Elder Tuiaki had a bunch of trouble. The ATM we were using zeroed out his account without giving us any money so we tried another ATM and he still had zero but I was able to withdraw. Elder Dankers(one of our office elders) Was able to figure it out with the bank and everything so he was able to withdraw today so that was nice. We played good basketball with some non-members the other day and it was super fun! The sisters had another baptism this week and Elder Tuiaki baptized him. The Spirit was really strong in the meeting. Then, at church, I was asked to confirm him. One of the other men in the ward ended up doing it which was kind of a ...

Thanks for all the toilet paper but we got a bidet this last week so I'm good! What a way to start a email, am I right? Oh, thanks Mom for the pants. They help a lot this last week as I'm sure you can see by the pictures and the subject line. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's jump in shall we? Monday: We went to Laoag and did normal p-day stuff there. We tried McDonald's here in the Philippines and eh. It's pretty good. Way over priced so don't expect me to go there much. Tuesday: I taught district meeting. Want to know something fun? The senior couple came to our meeting. It was good though. I of course used videos to help get my point across. The Kartchners then came to inspect/fix our apartments. The completely changed our bathroom by making our toilet, shower, and sink all work in there and of course adding a bidet. Super awesome highlight of the day! Wednesday: Not much except me being super happy I don't have to shower with a buc...

Sorry for any confusion last week with me saying I didn't take many pictures. I didn't for the entire week until p-day where I took a lot of pictures. Shout out to all my friends getting mission calls even though I don't hear about them until weeks later when other missionaries email about it. I'm not bitter at all. Big congrats to Sam Alger for being called to the San Pablo mission in the best country to be called to. For those who can't guess where that is, Philippines. Duh. Keep me updated on cool things going on in life. Great to see Anna Low and Jonathan Avila in a Mormon Message! It's called "Compelling Witness" for those that want to check it out. Keep me posted! Monday: We went to the lighthouse and windmills as seen in the last week's email with the Bangui and Pagudpud sisters. It was a lot of fun.  Tuesday: We didn't do tons of interesting things today. Just ran into a member at 7/11. Wednesday: So a cool thing that happ...