New Investigator

WEEK 28
Dear Family and Friends,

     We had another great week here in Socorro.  Our work is progressing well and the members' involvement in the work is starting to grow.  This week we had the great opportunity to work the whole day with our two recent converts.  It was the first time in a while that we have been able to have a member present in the lessons.  All the members in our group are always so busy with work, they never have any time to work with us.  They both have really strong testimonies of the Book of Mormon and prayer.  We also found a new investigator while we were tracting and she's awesome.  She seemed really interested when we talked to her outside of her house.  We gave her a Restoration pamphlet and set off down the trail that we were walking on.  When we came back about 30 minutes later, she came running out and said that she had finished the pamphlet, she had a lot of questions, she wanted to see a Book of Mormon, and she wanted to come to church.  My companion and I were absolutely stunned.  It really helped me to know that there are people prepared to receive our message.  All we have to do is open our mouths.

     I would encourage all of you, especially the young men, to work with the missionaries in your ward.  It will really help them, but I know that it will also help you build your faith.  That's something that I wished I had done before my mission.

     Everything else is going great, and we have our interviews with President this weekend which means a lot of jeepneys and one really long boat ride.  We really are out in our own little world.

     Thanks for all of your support!  I appreciate everything!  Things are going great here in the Philippines!

                                   

- Elder English  

Progress

WEEK 27

Dear Family and Friends,

     It's been another great week here on Mindoro.  Our group is continuing to progress and we can see the members getting excited about the work.  The brother that I talked about last week who was always drunk, but is coming back to church is doing amazing.  He has even started bringing back other inactive priesthood holders with him.  He is really helping the work progress here.  I have gained a very deep appreciation for the priesthood here in Socorro.  It is so simple, if there is no priesthood, there is no church.  I've really come to the realization of how real and how powerful the priesthood really is here on the mission.  

     This last week, we also had the opportunity to attend the Philippines area broadcast.  The Philippines area presidency presented the new goals and vision for the church in the Philippines for 2015.  They are really focusing on the Philippines becoming self-sufficient.  They said with the amount of members in the Philippines, there is no reason that we should have to rely on the general church fund or pull from other countries for temple names or have foreign missionaries here in the Philippines.  I guess that means no Elder English.  They're just trying to tell church members that the church is strong here, but it could be so much stronger.  It is awesome to know that these leaders are receiving revelation directly from God for the church in the Philippines.

     Our work is going great in Socorro, and we have been finding a lot of potential investigators, now this week is all about following up.  It's exciting to see our hard work paying off and the members' excitement also.  When we put the Lord first, everything else will always work out.  Thanks for all of your support!  Excited to get out and work hard again!

                                                              

- Elder English

 What we walk on all day in Socorro.

It floods quite a bit during December and we have to be prepared.

Miracles

WEEK 26
Dear Family and Friends,

     Another week has gone by on Mindoro and things with the Socorro Group are going great.  Our group is really progressing.  This week we had a great miracle.  Every day we walk by one of the member's houses in our area who has not attended church for a long time.  One day, we walked by and he started yelling at us (like he often does) because he is usually drunk when we see him.  We always ask him if there is anything we can do to help him and when we can visit him.  When we asked him he said, "Elders, don't worry.  You can talk to me at church this week because I will be there."  We left not really taking him seriously.  We showed up on Sunday and saw him with a new haircut, he was clean shaven, and he was wearing a white shirt and tie.  We don't know why he decided to change, but we're sure glad that he did!  It has really strengthened my testimony to see the way that he has changed and he is really starting to realize how happy the Gospel can make us.

     There has been a lot of buzz around the members lately that our group will soon be becoming a branch.  I realized last week that we have no organized quorums or auxiliaries in our group.  It has been bothering me since I first came to Socorro.  I said to the group leader that if we want to become a branch, that is something that we need to have.  He said ok and that we would have a meeting for all the members after church.  We were really excited and we got up in the meeting and told the members about these things.  I didn't even realize that most of the members didn't know what Relief Society, Elders Quorum, or what Gospel Principles class was.  They also didn't know what area they fell into.  We had to go through and tell everyone individually where they would go for the second and third hour of church.  It was definitely a new and eye-opening experience for me.  So that means that this last week, Socorro had its first organized Relief Society, Primary, and Priesthood meetings ever!  Right now, all the priesthood just meets together in a little side room, but there really is a power in the way the church is organized and it was exciting to see the friendships of the priesthood holders, the youth, and the Relief Society grow stronger.  We had another successful week of finding and we have a lot of new investigators to return to so we're going to take a break from tracting and focus on the members and their families for a few weeks.  

Everything's going great on Mindoro!

                                                     

- Elder English

New Year - New Challenges

WEEK 25
Pamilya at mga Kaibigan,

     Well transfer day has come and gone and there have been a lot of changes taking place on Mindoro.  About three fourths of the missionaries on Mindoro were transferred and they were all replaced with experienced trainers training new missionaries.  Let's just say that the island kind of has a reputation of not having the most obedient missionaries and President is really trying to change things here.  My companion and I are both really excited for the coming transfer.  

     Our work and our attendance really reached a climax around Christmas and now it seems like things are starting to fall back to where they were.  We are just trying to figure out why.  We've been working really hard on finding for the last week instead of our regular visits to families and then our attendance really dropped at church.  We were a little disappointed but now we can see that we need to find a balance in our work.  We worked on it for a quite long time in our weekly planning session and now we are really excited for this coming week.  

     We've had some really good experiences this past week with tracting and had the opportunity to teach the Restoration quite a few times.  I've been focusing really hard on learning the first vision in Tagalog.  I really make sure that I pronounce every word correctly.  When you recite the first vision in the lesson, the spirit is always so strong.  We're really excited to go back and continue teaching these people. 

     December was full of a lot of just traveling and waiting so we're excited to get back into the swing of things.  Thank you for all of your support!

                              

- Elder English

(He couldn't get the computer to upload his photos again this week so hopefully we'll see some with his next e-mail.)

Christmas in the Philippines

WEEK 24
Dear Family and Friends,

     I'm officially finished with my first Christmas in the mission field.  It was an odd mixture of being homesick, tired, and really excited at the same time.  We had our Christmas Zone Conference and it was a blast.  President Mangum delivered an amazing message on the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  He has redone the whole training plan of the mission.  The whole thing is now centered around discovering and teaching the Atonement.  He kept saying, "Elders and Sisters, the ATONEMENT IS NOT A DOWNER DOCTRINE."  He told us to practice teaching the Atonement with a smile on our face.  It's a lot harder than it sounds.

     It's helped me realize that we really are helpless without the Atonement.  I always say in lessons, "Kung walang Pagbabayad-sala, walang pag-aasa sa atin." (Without the Atonement, there is no hope for us)  The Atonement is the true gift of Christmas and it really is the good news of the Gospel.  

     As far as our work, we have been having a really hard time finding new investigators lately.  Since referrals are extremely rare, we are left to tracting.  This is probably the hardest part of missionary work for me, but there truly are blessings that come from it.  We are going to be doing a lot of walking over the next few weeks.  We have been asking the office for bikes, because we walk for about 45 minutes to an hour between some appointments on gravel roads through rice fields.  Let's just say that bikes would be a truly appreciated Christmas gift here.  It would also give me a tiny taste of the mountain biking I've been craving.  That's all for now!  Thanks for all of your support and Christmas letters!

                           

Maligayang Bagong Taon! (Happy New Year!)

                                                               

  

- Elder English

White Christmas

WEEK 23

Pamilya at mga Kaibigan,

     I've definitely been dreaming of a white Christmas.  I guess I got it in a different way than I was expecting.  We had to postpone the baptisms of Joseph and Jessica because of the typhoon so we got a baptism the week of Christmas!  Every missionary's greatest wish.  It was a great experience and very spiritual.  I know that both of them will be future leaders in the church. 

Baptisms of Joseph (23 years old) and Jessica (19 years old)

     We also had some other great news this week.  The president of the Oriental Mindoro district attended the Socorro group this week and he said that we are about 95 percent of the way to becoming a branch and that the whole district presidency has been very surprised at the progress in the Socorro area the past month.  He said it's been stagnant here for about the last 25 years and things have really turned around (in Tagalog of course).  I guess my companion and I hit it at just the right time.  We've also been focusing on being exactly obedient lately, and we have felt more power in our work and our teaching.

     We also have Christmas zone conference this week.  We will be traveling to Lipa and staying in a hotel.  With a shower head, hot water, and a flushing toilet!!  That's what everyone is the most excited for.  We really live in our own little world here on Mindoro.  That's all I really have for this week.  I'm definitely feeling the Christmas spirit here in the Philippines and it's great.  I think that I have heard more carolers in the past week than my whole life in Utah.  It is really popular here, especially for the little kids since the people in the house usually give them a few pesos.  Thanks for all of your support!  Maligayang Pasko! 

- Elder English 

 This is in Calapan. (Where the port for the island is.)  We were there for a Zone Training Meeting and they had a huge display at the capitol with all these cartoon characters.  It was really random.

Post Typhoon

WEEK 22
Pamilya at mga Kaibigan,

     This week we had the opportunity to see quite a few miracles in our area (this might be a long email).  We got back to our area on Thursday afternoon and we decided that unpacking could wait.  We threw our packs on the ground, had a quick companionship study, and headed out.  We visited all of our members and investigators.  We  were very surprised to find that none of their houses had been damaged by the typhoon even though we got hit by the weakest part of it.  Most of the houses where we work are designed to be able to be rebuilt quickly after a storm instead of withstanding the storm.  Most of the people we teach just don't have the means to buy building materials.  Surprisingly, we heard from almost all of our investigators and members that they would be able to attend church and all of our investigators had been reading the Book of Mormon.  I guess no electricity for 5 days was a blessing in disguise.  

     My companion and I had a pretty intense experience where we both had to become really bold.  We are teaching an elderly couple who have been taught by three sets of missionaries now.  We taught two lessons to them and it felt like we were getting nowhere.  We taught them again and the same thing was starting to happen.  They were saying that they believed the Book of Mormon was true, but nothing was happening.  I was getting really tired of just teaching in circles with them.  I finally just asked, "Tatay, bakit hindi pa kayong mabinyagan?" (Brother, why haven't you been baptized?)  I'm pretty sure that the grammar is incorrect and my companion looked at me like I had just said something horrible.  Then he proceeded to say that he was born "a certain religion" and he was going to die "in that same religion", and that he didn't think it was necessary to join another church because God knew his desires.  My companion and I proceeded to tell him that faith isn't actually faith until we act.  We left feeling like we had just insulted him and his wife.  Then we saw his wife walking down the street the  next day pushing her husband in his wheelchair on their way to our sacrament meeting.  It was pouring rain and they didn't have an umbrella, and it's about a two mile walk from their house to the chapel.  My companion and I just stared at each other for a while and then ran out into the rain to help them.  

     This experience has helped me see that sometimes we need to be bold.  One of the biggest things in the missionary training is to be bold, but loving.  It can be a hard balance to find, but it really shows that we care about what we are teaching and who we are teaching it to. 

     Well, that's my miracle for the week and my companion and I are starting to see our hard work pay off as the district presidency is starting to talk to us about getting a new meeting house for Socorro and for the Socorro group to become a branch as we have really been focusing on the priesthood holders.  The Group has really come a long way in the past few weeks and all the leaders in the area have been surprised at the progression.  The Lord really is blessing the members here in Socorro.

     Thank you for all of your support and emails.  I really don't have much time to respond, but please know that I really do appreciate it.  The work is moving forward here in the Philippines!

- Elder English

Some fun at the beach on our zone p-day. The picture actually happened on accident.  There's a soccer ball, you just can't see it.

10 elders in one apartment waiting for the typhoon.