Dear Mom, Dad, Ryan, and everyone who can use chopsticks
but chooses not to on a daily basis,
Life is so good right now.
Life
is great.
I am enjoying every moment
right now.
I’m in Teresa in Rizal
province and it’s so gorgeous out here!
There
are trees and all kinds or plant life out here.
Life is really swell, though we’ve been travelling like crazy for most
of this week.
On Wednesday, our transfer
day, it ended off well with me shaking hands with Elder Basalo and his last
words were, “You’re a good missionary.”
I wished him the best of luck and we parted
ways as I took a taxi to Antipolo.
From
there I met Elder Lim again who will be in the Zone and Elder Duenas for his last
transfer.
I met my new companion, Elder
Acera.
I actually had been on exchanges
with him in Pasig for a day and he is a great strong missionary.
We work quite well together.
His desire to serve God matches my energy and
enthusiasm for the work.
He was really
excited to see me as his companion because in the last couple of transfers,
he’s been having problems with his companion which has shown evidence in their
work.
They had many great investigators
that have fallen through because of the lack of unity.
The work of the whole zone seemed to have been
affected too because of lack of goals and coordination.
Now we have this transfer to bring them back
and let me tell you, I’ve been meeting new people like crazy!
It’s probably the opposite of Bagong Bantay
because there are so many fruits here that we just have to re-contact and teach
again.
There are many wonderful people
that I’ve met here that are so receptive to the Spirit and to revelation.
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| My new house, it's big! |
Like Sister Juli-ann Heve… she is getting baptized in a couple of weeks
and she hasn’t been visited in a while. She
said she noticed that something was missing in her life. When we went to teach her she said she had a
dream that I came to visit her and introduced myself by name to her as Elder
Froude. So she had apparently already
met me. We had a great lesson about
baptism and enduring to the end and she accepted to be baptized on July 20th. There was another man I had met only the other
day who is getting baptized this Saturday. Rodel Vinadas is a very humble man who has a
family of 7 but none of them know how to read or write. He was able to pass his baptismal interview
Sunday morning and will be baptized this Saturday. I don’t know why because I only just met him
but he requested that I should baptize him this Saturday. Sure thing! Haha! I
would love to have the privilege to baptize him! Many miracles like this have
been happening all week!
The Austria family is a very
special family to me in the 5 days I’ve been here. Brother Austria is a long time less active but
his wife is endowed and active. It’s
also a part member family and they are all great people that live on the top of
the mountain. He had been less active
for a long time because he was offended by some members of the church. He had high expectations but was disappointed
by the conduct of some of the members and hadn’t been to church in a year. Elder Acera and I went to visit them and by
some miracle he was there. Elder Acera
has been here for 6 months but only taught him twice. We were able to teach him and share a
spiritual message. From our message we learned
about his concern and Elder Acrea was able to explain to him how the church is
not a resting home for the perfect, but a place filled with imperfect people seeking
to become clean from their sins. The way
he explained it was perfect and Brother Austria was enlightened by the Spirit
of the Lord. He said, that “In all of my
time as a member I have never heard of the church explained in that way before.”
This man and all of his family went to
church yesterday and one of the leaders came up to him and said, “Brother
Austria, it’s good to see you again! What brings you to church?” He replied, “ I’m here to repent of my
imperfections.” The brother then
replied, “Really? Me too! “ Haha! It was really a joke but to Brother Austria it
helped him realize that even as members we are not perfect and we all need to
rely on the same God that gave us life.
We went back to that house last
night and had a few branch missionaries give the lesson. At the end I bore my testimony of the
truthfulness of the church and said, “At alam ko po na na yung kamatayan, hindi
yan yung katapusan ng buhay. ” Death is not the end of life, which struck
another cord with the brother. He then
asked, “Elder, what do you mean that death is not the end of life? Where does our spirit go?” It brought up the Plan of Salvation which we
quickly taught but will get into at the next lesson. It helped me realize that I am speaking for
God to these people and that there are so many that are prepared.
Be an instrument of the Lord this week!
Spiritual thought: John 16:33
Doing you Proud,
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