March 11, 2013

This week has been the usual we have been teaching our 5 investigators we have been focusing on! The ones I have been calling the Loyola group has been very disappointing for My companion and I. They were doing great! Making there way and preparing to be baptized this coming March 30! I was so happy for them but this Sunday, temptations and trials got the best of them. First off, The Loyola Couple they decided that they didn't have enough money, after we asked them on Saturday if they had some. They told us they did so we didn't ask any of the members to help them get to Church. They either lied or were to lazy to go to Church, so they just didn't show up. Also Bro. Teddy who is their friend decided he couldn't go because he didn't want to go by himself. It was just a disaster. The worst part of it was we went to visit them after Church, and we caught Bro. Teddy smoking!! It really just wrenches your heart. So we sat them down and we basically just had a long talk with them, basically they told us, we really messed up but, we know what we should have done. We left them with a spiritual thought to motivate them to keep trying. They know why it is important and they really want it. Really though, it is now up to them!! Anyways Bro. Teddy felt way guilty for smoking again. He said that was his first cigarette for 3 weeks. It kind of showed me that this is why we need to go to church, read our scriptures, and pray. It is harder to resist temptations when you don't do those things! Anyways we are progressing with our other 2 investigators. One of our investigators, Bro. Balosa, loves church so much and he has been going every sunday! He is hard to teach, because he doesn't understand a lot of things especially right after we teach it. So that is hard. But he is really progressing, he keeps all of his commitments which makes me way Happy. Also we have another Investigator, who is a son of a member. He just agrees with everything we say and keeps all his reading commitments. We ask him if he believes and he says yes!! Now all we have to do is get him to church. Besides that the search for new investigators is on! We tracted for the first time this week, because usually we have enough appointments, but for 2 hours we talked to 6 people, they all let us have a conversation with them. The hard part is everyone here is Catholic and not many people want to hear us,they just like it that we are foreigners and they like trying English on us haha! Anyways though it wasn't very successful but I am hoping we will find more people as we keep tracting those areas for new people. Anyways though I had an interesting experience this week with a Less Active families. The Philippines Quezon City Mission has a rescue effort for the lost sheeps, or meaning Less Actives. It is weird because we have one who got baptized and never came back. Not even confirmed! So we are trying to get this part member family together and strong!! We have left very strong messages and I feel like they have been super recpetive! I am hoping we will really progress with this family! But It is hard to see people, who have found the truth, and they can't endure to the end. I wish I knew a good way to help these people, but it seems like a problem in this mission that nobody really knows how to help them get back! I hope I will find my stride with the Less actives. Anyways this transfer has ended and I am half way done with training. One more transfer!! Well anyways this week has had it's ups and downs. I kind of don't know if something is spiritual or not. I just come out of lessons though feeling different some days and other days I am not. So maybe one day I will see the significance of things but right now I am just doing what I need to do. Working hard! I lovet this work, and I love this Church!! I know it is true, there is no way it is not! I have seen the people who don't even understand God and his love for us. They don't understand Jesus,and his role.  The Savior and Redeemer of this world, the man with no sins, who paid and suffered for ours so that we could be clean from them, through his example and direction created a perfect church, under the direction of God. I wish I could just show them that it makes sense! It really does. Anyways I hope I will be able to share that message and give people who are searching for these things what they want, the thing that everyone needs!

March 4, 2013

Alright so this week has been a little shorter, because of the P-day swapping! Anyways though it has been a really hot week. I think I have never been more sweaty in my life than here in the Philippines!! Like after I shower I have to sit in front of a fan to dry off and cool off! It just gets hot again though. Anyways though I guess it isn't even "HOT" yet because in April, that is when you will get so hot here that you can''t sleep at night! I am pretty afraid of dying here now haha just kidding! Anyways though It has been a good few days. Our investigators are progressing really well! We have 4 who have accepted to be baptized and we are just trying to get them to Church 4 times to meet that requirement. Haha we don't tell them that is a requirement though, we just tell them it has to be every Sunday and they have to commit to do that so they won't go less active. Anyways though it is hard because 3 of them who I talk about a lot are so poor! They seriously can't afford to pay for the bus. Also we aren't allowed to pay for them so now we just rely on prayer and faith. It is frustrating when they don't show up because you wanted them to SOO bad! Well anyways yesterday on Sunday .. ALL 3 of them showed up! It was like fireworks were going off!! We have worked with them for so long and now we are seeing the fruits of our labors! Everytime we teach them they just know that our message is true and they really want to be baptized. It is hard though, because they have a lot of obstacles to get over, but they are working for it and now at the end of this month we might see them reach their goal to be baptized! Anyways we also have another investigator, his name is Bro. Daniel Balosa! He is a sweet old man really!! When I first started teaching him, he just seemed like he was just an old guy who liked talking to us. Later one day I realized, he has been pretty much bearing his testimony to us after our lessons on how he knows this is the true Church, and how everything we say is true!! He is so Golden it is great to teach him!! His goal is also to be baptized on the 30! So as long as he can get to Church he is so ready!! I am just so excited to see someone get baptized!! It feels like it has been forever since I have been to a baptism! Anyways the work is really progressing here and it is awesome!! Anyways the people in that area are really poor and humble!! They accept the Gospel, in my opinion, because it gives them hope! It breaks me heart seeing how little these people have, and yet they are happy. Most of the poor people live near a river that could flood any day when there is rain, especially the rainy season. People here lose everything in floods and it is super hard to restart your life after you lose everything. We have a sister in our ward! She is one of the people who helped translate the Book of Mormon into Tagalog! Holy Moly!! She has nothing... it all washed away in a flood! She has one pair of clothing, and a bed. The ward helps her get food, but she is too old to work and her son has no job. It makes me wonder sometimes why someone so good is given so much trials! What she told me in my visit with her really hit me. She just said, life is hard and I am so sad. But I am humble and I know God loves me and will give me a way. Her faith is so strong! So I am grateful for that experience. Anyways this week has been way fun too. We have had a lot of Birthday parties here. Now in the Philippines, a birthday isn't just some party... It is like a big deal and people get offended if you don't drop by for birthdays if you are invited! Holy moly!! we ate so much food!! People just feed you on birthdays and a lot of people from all around come to celebrate! It is a fun time!! haha I love the Philippines!! Also a bad experience I had this week. We had this guy we taught and accepted our first lesson kind of like a golden investigator. This week we went to teach him and he was so different. He had a the spirit of contention about him and it was ... pretty bad. He kept asking us questions and when we tried to explain he said your Tagalog is very confusing and unclear! Also his questions only had one answer in his mind which was his answer, so no matter what we tried to explain to him, nope he said that is not clear the answer is THIS! and he would say his answer. I have never felt the spirit leave the area so fast, but he really just brought this bad feeling about. We probably won't see him for a while now haha! Anyways though fun fact for the readers. The Philippines is a place of trends. This season it is spinning tops! But the spinning tops here are ... like way legit!! It is like a sport here and who can do the most tricks with them! You wind these tops with a string and you do work!! it is cool to see! It is also super hard to get good at! I am practicing during my in between hours... i can barely even throw it! haha Well that is all for this week!!

February 25, 2013

Alright this week has been kind of the same. We have one area which we call Bonaba. That is our really poor neighborhood where people like barely have a roof over their heads. We teach a lot of new investigators there and it is great, they are really receptive. We have a group of investigators there named the Loyola group. One of them is named Bro. Teddy and he is like our Golden. I guess before I got here this guy hasn't been progressing much. So we just kept teaching him hoping he would make changes. Which finally he started doing! He really wants to be baptized now and he gave up drinking and has been abstaining now. So it is really good. So this week we taught this group the Law of Chasity. The other two are a couple and one is slowly stopping to smoke and th other is just waiting for her husband to stop smoking so they can be baptized together. Anyways the Law of Chasity went great. They clearly understood why it was a commandment and how it would live their lives. Now here in the Philippines, marriage is like considered a glorified title that you pay for. Also Divorce is illegal here so once you get married it is a long legal procedure and money consuming process to get a divorce. So people just don't get married they just live together and have families. Well Teddy used to be one of those people, until he got kicked out for fighting too much. So we told him he needed to try and get married because we aren't too sure if you can be baptized because you might be "separated" but you have kids together. So we are double checking on that, but he says he is sorry for being so contentious with his wife and he has been trying to fix it. She just won't talk to him. So hopefully he gets to be baptized as a single adult, but right now we are kind of stuck. It was funny though because he was asking 2 Young missionaries about how to handle talking to his wife and if we would go with him and try to talk it out with her.We kind of just became his Dr. Phil for his marriage. We told him we would hold off on us going and helping him and it would be better if he went and just talked to her. So that was a fun experience. Also in that are we have focused on the Book of Mormon with a lot of our investigators and Less active. It is working really well. In my 5 weeks I have been here, I haven't seen a family called the Devocal family at church for my stay here. We were asked to focus on helping them become active again so we have been visiting them. It has been a great blessing when we go over and read with them. Last Sunday we saw them all there. So obviously there is power in the Scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. Hopefully they keep going, but we have never invited them to go to church, we just visit and try to get them doing the little things, so they will start doing the bigger things. Also we have another area I call the high ground. It is a little higher and richer than the other area. That area is seriously a hard days work. We set up appointments and get punted at their doors all day. Nobody will listen to us it is frustrating. We walked for 8 hours straight one day going from appointments that weren't home or didn't have time for us all of a sudden, to street contacting, back to the home that didn't want us and than back to street contacting. It is so tiring and I wish they would just listen to us. But, we have to do something and hopefully we will figure that out! Anyways though the Philippines always has it's surprises and every corner has it's new challenge. Funny things that happened to me this week go as follows. So in the Philippines people want Americans to take them to America or marry them so they can be rich i guess. Well We look really rich in the Philippines, and I found out this week that a lot of girls will say you're cute. Haha ... that never happened to me in AMERICA!! So obviously you want something else. I finally understood one of them saying that to my companion and I haha. So that was fun. Also another fun thing I have been doing with the kids was that I tell them my Brother is Psy.. that guy who sings Gangnam style! They all think it is super funny. Oh also I got to go to the temple this week. The Manila Temple is small, but It is super beautiful especially compared to it's surroundings! So that's it! Anyways I hope this next week goes well ...until then!