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!