Typhoon Mangkhut 9/13/2018

Dear Parents, Families, and Priesthood Leaders of our missionaries,

 

As you may be aware, Typhoon Mangkhut (local name Ompong) is heading towards the Philippines, and Northern Luzon is the focus area where landfall is expected to occur. The outer bands of the typhoon are expect to cross the Quezon City North Mission late Friday night or Saturday. Your missionary has been alerted to prepare for this typhoon. Their preparations will include preparing for possible flooding in some areas, checking their 72 hour kits, having emergency cash, drinking water, non-perishable food, and charging their cell phones. Every apartment has an evacuation plan, which is usually to move to the nearby chapel. Because typhoons always come from east to west, and because we are on the west coast of Luzon, we do not experience the kind of coastal storm surges that can hit the east coast. Nevertheless, severe flooding from overflowing streams and rivers does occur in some areas. We choose apartments that are not known to flood as identified by the local members. The missionaries will stay close to their apartments for the next few days, and stay indoors depending on conditions in their area. You can email me at:

sfhughes@ldschurch.org if you have questions about your missionary.

 

We would ask you to pray for the all those who are in the direct path of this typhoon.

 

Sincerely,

 

Best regards,

President Hughes

Philippines Quezon City North Mission

Baptism of Marienete and Ashely 9/11/2018

This week we really focused most of our attention on Marienete and Ashley who were baptized on Saturday!!! This will be a great addition to the young women in Deparo ward and it was good to see Marienete finally get baptized after almost 6 months of teaching and trying to get her to come to church. It started an hour late but it went good and was very successful. Afterward the ward had a farewell for one of the missionaries in the ward that are leaving soon. We had zone interviews this week and it went very good. Transfers are next week and I know that I am leaving Deparo....I have been here for 6 months and it has been my most fruitful area so far, I love this ward and the members in it, I feel like I have lived here my whole life haha. I am excited to find out where I am needed next and to see how the rest of my mission will go. 

Also i got a whack haircut this week haha. The barbers here dont ask what you want they just kinda do their own thing and sometimes it looks ridiculous. None of them went to school or anything they are self trained, its more fun in the Philippines :) Love you! have a great week!!!

 Pictures of the baptism 

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Elder Hunter Munk 

9/3/2018 It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Well everybody it is now September meaning....its pretty much Christmas time already!!! They are already playing Christmas music in the stores and they already have Christmas trees and everything! Gotta love the "ber" months.

This week was pretty normal, we taught and found nothing too weird or crazy happened. We did have 2 FHE's this week at recent converts house and Elder De La Cruz made some really good pork and tuna lumpia.  Ang sarap! I also went on exchanges with Elder De La Cruz and had a really good time, he is funny and keeps me laughing. We had a great lesson 1 with one of the potential investigators in their area. Ashley and Marienete passed their baptism interviews so on the 8th we have 2 baptisms!! I have not had one in a while, its gonna be good. Ill send pictures. The mission is great, I love it. I love this country and the Gilas! Jordan Clarkson is dominating and gilas is doing good in the Asian games... we almost beat China. Anyways thanks for the emails and the love and support!!!! 

Mahal ko kayo! Ingat lagi! 

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Elder Hunter Munk 

MTC exchanges 8/27/2018

Hello everyone! Love you and miss you!

This week was pretty good we had MTC exchanges and Zone conference this week so we spent a lot of time learning and helping the new missionaries. On Wednesday I had the opportunity to go back to Don Antonio (my 1st area) and do exchanges for about 4 hours with the new Provo MTC missionaries...it was their 1st full day in the Philippines. They walked in and we noticed how extremely white their shirts were hahaha. I was paired with Elder Thomas from Highland, Utah he will be serving in Baguio Mission and he was a stud. It was really cool to see how much i have grown, It feels like just the other day I was doing MTC exchanges and I knew so little and was so limited to what i could do and say. I have definitely grown here on my mission. It was also good to be able to work again in my first area. Thursday we had zone conference. We got chastised by President Hughes, but it was with love and we know he is really trying to help us. Then he gave a great workshop about the parables in Matthew 25. It was great, he is a really great speaker so when it ended we were all pretty sad. Great zone conference. Friday we had a really good lesson with a family we found from a referral, they could not come to church this week but next week they will...hopefully. Sunday we had a great gospel principles class. It was actually way too deep for most of the investigators there but I loved it, about the gathering of Israel it was like a seminary lesson it was awesome. That was pretty much it. We have 2 baptisms coming up on the 8th and hopefully another one on the 15th. I love it out here, its more fun in the Philippines. LOVE YOU ALL

Pictures

1. Me and Elder Thomas

2. BASA BOY

3. My favorite chicken Sharamdara

4. Smoked fish is dang good 

--

Elder Hunter Munk 

Binyag ni Jazz 8/20/2018

Hello everyone! This week was great, we taught lots of new people and we were lucky to see some new investigators come to church!!! We also had a couple miracles happen this week.

Even though we have spent countless hours finding members and mapping the ward, there still seems to be part member families that we dont know about haha. One of them came to church this week and has two kids (10 &11) that have not been baptized so we set up an appointment with them and so this week we will work it all out. Marrientte Joves, the cousin of Jazz, came to church for the second time on a row and has a baptism date of September 8. She is super excited to be baptized and we have seen her and her family change as we come over and teach her. We taught Ashley, the lesson was very interesting. Ashley is a 12 year old girl who really loves Americans, her mom doesn't allow her to speak Tagalog at the house and so she always speaks English to everyone. She does not have too many close friends at the church because she only speaks English to them haha. Anyways we taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we just used it as language practice for Elder Mahinay, he taught a great lesson in English and I found out that i suck at teaching in English haha, yeah it is much easier to teach in Tagalog, i never thought i would say that but its true. She has a baptism date for the 8th of September as well. 

The best part of the week was that JAZZ FINALLY GOT BAPTIZED!! I have been pushing it and waiting for this for almost 6 months! I was so happy it finally happend! I am blessed to still be here to witness the baptism and it was a very powerful spiritual experience. The next step for the Joves family is the temple hopefully they can continue to do what they need to in order to enter the temple!

Twas a great week! Love you all, remember to read the Book of Mormon everyday! 

That one time my comp almost died 8/13/2018

Hello everyone! thank you so much for all your birthday wishes! I had a great birthday, my second and final birthday on my mission was a great and memorable one! 

This week was crazy.... I have found that here in the Philippines you will have a weird crazy week pretty often and I had not had one in a while so this week made up for that haha. 

So Tuesday was pday, because of transfers and it was a pretty normal pday. I bought a sweet Filipino basketball jersey and we ate at Bon Chon which I really love, great day. Wednesday came around...it was a whack day. First of we went to an appointment we had with a family, the Toting Family. they talked to us at church and sister asked us to come over and teach all 12 of her kids who were all not yet members but all wanted to be. I was excited to go teach 12 new people but when we got there only 4 of them were home. After trying hard to get them to sit still we decided to just teach them outside by their doorway. All the kids said the mom was gone and so we just started teaching them. About halfway through the lesson a closet door slammed shut in the house, i was kinda freaked out because i though the house was empty. Elder mahinay asked the kid to go check who was in the closet. The kids looked and said no one was in there, we continued but the door slammed again. this time me and mahinay looked at each other like there was a ghost or something in the house we didn't know what to do. We finally finished the lesson and we hear a sneeze coming from the closet. We new that someone was in there but the kids would not tell us who it was....it was weird so we walked down the street and then we decided to go back to try and catch who was in the closet, we came back and looked in the house to see sister Toting hiding in the closet hahahaha. She was drunk and did not want us to see her drunk so she somehow squeezed herself in the closet while we taught her kids. Weird.

Later that day we got home and Elder Mahinay took a drink of water, He started choking but got over it and said his chest really hurt. I asked if he was ok and he said he was. He walked out into the study room and then sat down for a while, i was not looking at him but i heard a sound like something had fallen on the floor, i see elder mahinay laying on the floor totally unconscious his head had hit one of the dumbbells and his water was spilled all over the floor. I did not know if he was joking with me or not (he always messes with me). After about 5 seconds of him not moving I bent down to make sure he wasn't dead. he didn't move. another 5 seconds passed and his head shot up and he took a deep breathe and had no idea what he was doing on the floor, he had no idea what happened. He had a big bump on his forehead and he was wet from the water. He was pretty scared, and he said that he thought he was dead.....I was pretty scared too and I am lucky that somehow he came to. We talked and laughed about it for a while, so until now he is sore and his head has a bum on it. Be careful how you drink water.

Another crazy and also sad thing this week was that we went to a birthday of the Joves dad, when we got there we found that brother and sister Joves were drunk. I was pretty upset and mad about that. Their kids bap date was set for next Saturday and so we might have to talk about that before that goes through. They still sent us home with food and the food was frog adobo...but it tastes just like chicken, not bad. On our way home as we were waiting for a jeepney I OYM'd someone and taught him a full lesson 1 while on the jeep, it was pretty cool and I timed it perfectly so after i testified of the message we hopped out of the jeep, I felt like i was in a movie or something hahaha. It is raining again like crazy and its flooding pretty bad in some spots in our area. We were not allowed to leave our house on saturday because of the rain, everything is wet even our clothes and bed sheets so it kinda sucks. Sunday we were only allowed to leave for stake conference and it was flooding pretty bad, gratefully it didnt rain during the conference at all, once we got back in our house it started up again. Today as well it hasnt stopped, its a good thing that our house is on a hill, so our house is good but some of the zone members houses have flooded so they had to move to another place. 

Sorry this is so long, this week felt really long. I love the time i am having here, I know the gospel of Christ is real and true. Jesus Christ lives, he is our savior and redeemer. Have a great week!     

--

Elder Hunter Munk 

Ang Pagpatak ng baat oras ay ikaw.....8/6/2018

Hello everyone! this week was transfers and I am staying in Deparo with Elder Mahinay! I am still a district leader. This is my longest area so far and my longest companion and i love it because its a good area and a great comp haha. We were able to find some good new investigators this week and the members helped us a lot! We had 8 at church this week and hoping for more next week. I dont have any crazy stories, pretty normal week. Time is flyin I cant believe I am almost 20 years old...its weird in my head I am still 18 and most other people I look 16 still hahaha. Anyways I am lovin it out here thanks for the support and love! Have a great week squad!  

Pictures: 

Jazz with his chicken Sharamdara

The Joves family

Some fish soup that Elder Quilloy made haha

NOVA ZONE

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Elder Hunter Munk