"Mabait Ba Siya" "Is He Nice?" (YIKES)

kamusta family! well first off i want to wish a very happy birthday to the best mama bear in the whole entire world! happy birthday mom! i hope you have the day that you deserve! your the greatest and i can't even explain how much i love you! mahal kita mama bear! Well this week was a good one! and a very fast one! it was crazy! but a lot of cool things happened this week! first off i should probably warn you (speaking from personal experience) not to mess with a 1 ton bull in the middle of a field. not a smart idea hahaha. it's real scary! well so this is the story. we had a lunch appointment and to get to this house we always walk by like 4 carabou and this big bull cow. well we had 6 of us elders and we were walking home and decided to take some pictures with the carabous and the bull. haha some little filipino kids came over and were helping and laughing at us haha. so the elders said elder machen go get a picture with the bull. so of coarse i'm not going to say no. so i start walking up to it.(luckly it was roped up) and i was going kind of slow so i didn't startle it. it was like i was in a safari or something. i was one with the wild. so it was a stare down between me and this bull. he puffed a few times but i wasn't about to back out of challenge. i got a little closer and another elder came around the back a little to fast and i didn't see him coming. at the same time i looked at the little kid and asked him "mabait ba siya" which is is he nice? so right when i turned my head the bull found his opportunity and charged at me full steam! some one yelled and i was shocked as i saw this massive bull come after me! i felt like i was dodging a fret train! i jumped back and to the side, it was a pretty nice juke move if i do say so my self. stiff armed his horn with my right hand and got out unharmed! his head jerked back as his rope tightened up and he couldn't go no farther! oh man my heart jumped for a sec and then we all just started busting up laughing! good times here in the philippines! so that was a funny experience but of course we also had some neat spiritual ones. this one that really struck me was i was on exchanges with an elder from an other area and we were working in our area. it was kind of dark outside and we were walking through this field. for some reason i don't know why we both stopped and turned around and saw this lady and this girl walking kind of behind us and so we said. lets go talk to her. so we approached her and started talking to her. come to find out she is a member! a less active! oh man we both got so excited and she told us her daughter really wanted to get baptized and so we scheduled a time to return to teach her! i want to testify that the hand of the lord is in missionary work! he leads and guides us to the people that need and are ready to hear our message! it was such a testimony builder to me to know that that was truly inspired by the spirit and it lead us there. it was a great experience for the both of us and left me speachless as we walked away! this work is amazing family! words cannot describe my joy here and how much i love it! the philippines sure do keep you on your toes all the time but thats what makes it so great! i love you family and don't worry i'm fine here, kind of skinny, but im fine and surely protected by the lord! love you so much and hope you have a great week! Love Elder Machen