Tuesday, May 30, 2017

May 30, 2017

Hey everyone how goezit? So this week was pretty awesome. We had our first baptism in SJDM! Sister Ging or her real name is Cheryl Arellano (see picture below)

Well the rainy season is officially here!! It has rained everyday so far :/ Its kinda a blessing and a curse cuz when it rains the weather gets a little cooler and it also feels really good when we sleep because the sound, the downside is that we get SOAKED when we work. That is the worst haha. I am fine if my shirt (AND IT JUST STARTED RAINING RIGHT NOW AS I AM TYPING) and pants get wet because that dries up pretty quick but once my shoes get wet then I start to get a lil frustrated... Because then they stay wet the WHOLE day and it is just a mess. So yeah since last wednesday it has rained everyday. Hopefully it doesnt effect our trip that bad here:/ But yeah its pretty fun though walking around in the rain.

But yeah just this last Saturday Ging was baptized. It is actually pretty cool on how we found that family or more on how they found us. So Gings family consists of her and her husband and 7 kids... Her first 4 kids dont live with her so we barely see them but her last 3 kids Fairy, Anna, and Shine and also her husband were all baptized last december 2016 in a different mission. So one day in early April Elder Slade and I were out doing some finding trying to add to our teaching pool. Then we stopped by this cool street vendor thing that sold these cool little souveniers and he is there only once in a blue moon so we stopped to buy something. Then as we were there this teenage girl walked up to us and held out her hand and said "Hello Elder!" So we talked to her and found out that she and her family were members but her mom was not yet (Ging) and she said that they have been living in their house just around the corner from where we were for like about 3 weeks or so and they have been looking for the missionaries. Then we got her address and we went to them a few days later and met all of them. So we were super excited about this new awesome part member family. But as we started teaching her Ging was still a little hesitant and she didint quite want to go to church yet so we taught her for about a 1 week and it still seemed iffy. But then we expected them to come to church the next sunday but we got a text friday night saying that they were going back to their province for the weekend so we were disappointed but that Sunday we went to church and we walked upstairs and we saw all of them sitting down! We were shocked and so happy! Then from then on out she just kept on coming and we finished the lessons and now she is baptized along with her family! So it is a pretty awesome story and we are so happy to have met the Arellano family. 

Jack and Anna Manalang are also doing really well. THey came to Gings baptism and sister Anna cried as she witnessed the baptism and heard the speakers so they are on their way as well to being baptized this upcoming June. THey are probably my favorite investigators ever I love them a lot.

Brother Nathaniel (see picture below) is also doing really well. He has his interview this upcoming Saturday and will be baptized on june 10th which will be my last baptism to be witnessed in the mission. Pretty crazy. But he is also a great guy and the future of the church!

This past week I had a really cool experience as I was pondering about Covenants. Saturday and Sunday were days full of covenants. On Saturday I interviewed 6 people to be baptized in which covenants were brought up and discussed a lot then we had an actual baptism which is a covenant then we partook of the sacrament on sunday which is renewing covenants and then we did a special sacrament for this older man in our ward and then last we taught a lesson to a less active about covenants. So it was a covenant filled weekend. So as it says in True to the Faith a covenant is a sacred agreement between God and a person. So as I was teaching about covenants to our less active I just felt like I had a realization. Maybe a spiritual realization. I kind of thought about why God makes us make covenants to return back to Him. So I realized that God loves us so much that me makes us make a promise to Him that we will do our part to return back to live with him, He loves us so much that he wants us to promise that we will go back to Him. He wants us to go back to Him so badly. But then some people might realize "Well if He loves us so much why doesnt He just save everyone regardless of covenants or not?" Its not that he cant but that he wont because if he just saved everyone regardless of what they did then it wouldnt be possible for us to be happy in His presence then that would make Him not God because everyone is happy in Gods presence. So I just got a deeper understanding on really how important covenants are. I am not sure if that made much sense from what I said but hopefully it did a little bit. Anyways love yous all:) I will write you my LAST letter next week... woah I cant believe it.








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