June 4, 2013

This week has been super rainy! It is close to Rainy season and I might be facing some floods!! oh well!! Life of a Philippines Missionary I guess. Anyways This is my last week in my area. I have officially received my transfer announcements and am heading off to my new area tomorrow. I am really excited. I am going to Mapayapa or something like that. So that will be sweet. New area and new companion I am freaking excited! Anyways we taught a lot of people this last week. Probably more than I have ever taught in my whole mission ever. I am glad I am leaving my first area with a good week. Anyways I have told so many stories in this area I just don't really know what to say anymore. It is kind of getting hard to have a good experience to share. I have just become kind of numb to them here I guess. I am really hopeful though in this area. My person I OYM is making good progress and is probably going to be baptized. I am so happy! I can't wait to see a picture! I actually had a cool opportunity to teach a Muslim guy. He is like the coolest guy I have ever taught, #1 he spoke English so I was like.. YEAH!! that is easy! haha #2 he is so open minded I could speak way freely. Anyways cool things that happened as I taught him the first lesson. When I told him about living prophets he had the best reaction ever. He was stunned and said, "Are you serious? I got to look this guy up! I wonder what this guy has to say? How can I like look him up or something?" I was stunned... usually most people tell us... oh that's cool i guess. We should all be amazed that we have a living prophet on this Earth. Than because he is a Muslim he asked us about Christ and why he is important. My companion and I bore our testimony of why Christ and his life was important to us and how it effects us all. It was a spiritual moment in the lesson. It is weird to me that he doesn't understand Christ, but I was happy to tell him why it should matter. Than after we told him about the Book of Mormon and reading and praying, he was completely with us. He said, I think people follow blindly, when they should be asking and finding out for themselves. He left us with a question and told us not to answer. He said, he thinks it is great we feel so strongly in what we do and he can see our faith and how awesome we think this is. He asked us, "Why do I feel exactly the same about my book my beliefs, almost exactly the way it seems you do?" This question was hard for me. I thought about it a long time. This is what I can say though. I believe all religions or beliefs all have a part of an eternal truth. We can always feel really good about those simple truths that lead us to greater understanding. During the Great Apostacy, we lost the fullness for a while, thus leading to so many religions. The way I see it is that he is happy with the few simple truths he already knows. I also know though that those few will not lead him to Eternal Happiness. I am have been here proclaiming the not just a Gospel, but the Full Restored Gospel that Jesus Christ taught. We can be happy with simple truths here and there, but I know that to receive Eternal Happiness we must have the whole thing. I know that this Church is true, and I wish, Allen, this guy I taught who was really open to hear will one day find out for himself that this is true. He is flying back to Holland for vacation for 3 months so I will probably never see him. But I was glad to have that opportunity, he told me discussing our beliefs openly like this is like Therapy. It really was like Therapy and it was a great experience.

Anyways besides that, funny story, We teach this new investigator who is a born again Christian. Haha it was way funny we showed up to her house while she was gambling, right when she saw us, she threw her hands up and yelled at her gambling buddies, SHAME ON YOU FOR TEMPTING ME!! She looked at us with these guilty eyes!! We told her we would come back so we went taught some other people and came back. She was STILL GAMBLING! haha she felt sooo guilty for some reason, which I don't know why. But when we got back she just yelled at her friends again, I TOLD YOU NOT NOT TO TEMPT ME! OK EVERYONE LEAVE!! haha ... it was a bad lesson after she was so unfocused and in the middle kept apoligizing for her sins and stuff... but it gave me a good laugh! She ended up coming To church this Sunday which was awesome!