Week 21 I'm still alive!!

Well hello everyone! A couple weeks ago, I was walking back home with Elder Ruiz. We then received a call from our mission leaders that there was a category 5 super typhoon coming to the Philippines, and it was supposed to hit directly our mission. We were told to go home and prepare to evacuate to Laoag. It was pretty new and a little scary because I had never went through a typhoon before! We packed up our house and moved everything upstairs so that it wouldn't get ruined if it flooded- grabbed a suitcase and left early the next morning!

The super typhoon "Ompong" (Mangkhut) hit our mission pretty hard. In my area, Abulug, lot of houses and buildings were either destroyed or affected by the strong wind and water. I think the biggest thing is the electrical lines, they're a huge mess. The reason I haven't emailed in a while is there hasn't been electricity for a couple weeks. It's been fun!!

For me, I'm happy. I'm alive. I have a whole lot to be grateful for. It's been 3 weeks now since I've emailed home, and I've thought a lot about my family and friends back home. We woke up early this morning to travel to a city that has electricity in order to withdraw more money and email. I love you all very much. I appreciate all the emails and prayers and everything you do for me. I feel the love. Since we don't have a whole lot of time to email and the electricity here is really bad (we already had a brownout today for a couple hours) I wont get to email everyone back for awhile, but just know that I will try to respond to everything in the coming weeks and months!

We are supposed to get electricity in Abulug on October 4. I cannot wait!!! Ahh Im so happy and grateful that we will almost have electricity again. I'm learning to live on a lot less than I'm used to, and I'm learning that I can still be happy even with little! Even with no electricity!

I will spend more time in the coming weeks talking more in detail about my life, but I just want you all to know that I'm so happy and I'm safe. I am absolutely loving it here, despite the occasional typhoon :) In the scriptures we read how important it is to build our foundation on the rock of Jesus Christ. He invites all of us to build our foundation on Him. I know that as we do that, the storms of life will have no power over us. I know that is true because I've seen it and I'm experiencing it.

I love you all, you're in my prayers and my thoughts!

Ingat po kayo

Elder Childers