3-7-2016

I'm really glad to hear that things are going generally well back home, with sheep adventures and the safe status of the farm! It sounds like the goats are such little clowns, did I tell you guys that there are goats literally everywhere here? I mean that's really what they use to trim down the weeds and stuff in fields... how funny! And tons and tons of baby goats everywhere! It's really sad to hear about what's happening in D's life, one can see how life goes when there are addictions involved in some way, be rest assured that I'm praying for him out here. It's so sad to hear about how hard that situation is... and honestly I think God truly is the only way to help get out of that! Anyway though, I'm not going to keep being sad about that, but trust that things will work out! It's so exciting that Chris is going to have the marriage talk, be sure that when he does... Dad is just conveniently cleaning his shotgun xD
So, this week was pretty great for me! I suppose that I'll go ahead and start with the spiritual coolness that has happened. Like we were teaching Brother J this week, and we taught him about the Word of Wisdom, and of course at the end we committed him to live it and he said that he would! And just a few days ago we learned that he hasn't been having coffee since that lesson, which was a really awesome experience! It's so humbling to be experiencing people changing their lives to be closer to our heavenly father! Another really fun moment was while teaching an investigator named J-J (she lives with a recent convert family because her mom is abroad) and we taught the 10 commandments, what was really fun was making up little hand gestures or motions for each of the commandments, and it really helps for younger kids to understand and remember what each of the commandments are. I really enjoy teaching that family because they are the happiest people that I have ever met! Other pretty awesome news was the fact that I met the mayor of Balungao with our Mission President on Friday to get to know him and to introduce ourselves, kind of let him know that we have things to offer and would love to be a part of the community! I really enjoyed that because the mayor speaks really good English and nobody used Tagalog for that xD Anyway, that's really all that happened over the course of this week. Elder Q and I have been working hard to find new investigators and to get the old ones to progress! We'll see how that goes for this week! I really wanted to send some pictures this week, but the internet cafe computer that I'm using doesn't seem to want to accept my card... so maybe next week :)P

Love yah guys,

Elder Morris

ps- My spiritual advice for this week is in Ether with the story of the boats and the importance of trusting in the strength of the Lord. And how without the winds and the waves, I don't think that they would have really reached the promised land, it was necessary for them to be pushed through all that to reach their destination.

The computer that I'm using somehow reformatted my memory card of my camera without my permission to do so.... and so I lost ALL my pictures again. That's pretty frustration. NOT USING COMPUTER 8 HERE EVER AGAIN.

******

Wow, it sounds like this week has had a lot of ups and downs for all of you! It is SO CUTE that there are new lambs, and the names made me laugh and love it so much! Frodo, what a great name for a lamb!!! It's really sad to hear about what's been happening, that sounds really tough. But I know that by trusting in the Lord, burdens can and often will be made light. I hope that they BYU independent study works out better for H. :) I hope that things continue to improve and things are safe and sound back there at home! :) It's nearly been two whole months out here in the field and coming up on my fourth month out on my mission... it's so crazy to really be out here, especially since the time really is flying SO FAST. I feel like I came to San Leon only yesterday, and I'm beginning to see the fruits of our labor here in San Leon. So this week was really kind of hard, but that's because it's been "relentless week" and we have every day everything we have (which we do anyway, but even more so this week!) And by the end it all payed off with some 5 investigators who actually managed to attend sacrament meeting, I guess I'll talk about our experiences with focusing on them! First is brother, J... I think that's the name I used, but anyway, we had been teaching him a few times this week and probably the one that really really helped was our lesson on the importance of baptism, receiving the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end! This lesson is one where I'm going to testify of the language of the Spirit, because I led the lesson and taught most of it, and somehow it was the most powerful lesson that I have ever been in. He listened so so well and you could really just feel the power of the spirit in the things that we taught and testified. And finally, what was really cool is that when we showed up to church at 8:40 or so, he was already there interacting with some of the members, so that's really been a hand of the lord in our work. Next, would be the F. family and their two kids, we only taught them one lesson and met them early in the week, and went ahead to invite them to come to church, and they actually showed up and came to church. Now THAT was pretty amazing. And the last would be JJ, she's been coming on and off for a while, so that wasn't TOO new to see, but it was still a really neat experience to have her come to church. I guess we'll see if all five of them, hopefully more will come to church this week too!!!

There's not really too much else I know what to say, except in regards to the quote I came up with this week! "Without going through the fires of this life, the best we can achieve is only half baked"! I'll let you think about that, especially when thinking about trials and hardships that come in this life! It's just like a twist off of the refiners fire!

Well, that's really it. I'm also sorry for few pictures, I've been so busy this week that I haven't really worried about taking pictures. So this morning I went ahead and took a short video that made me laugh SO HARD.

Love y'all,

Elder Morris

The noodles is what I had for three days while we had no support... it's called "Instant Mami" but is so so so RAMEN... ew xD

And a beetle, he was super huge and I've named his Raynaldo. He was my best friend in the whole world!!!

 

*****

 

Haha, don't worry Mommy, I haven't worried about it at all since I think... two Mondays ago. I've really been trying to lose myself in the work and in doing so have not worried about that at all! Anyway, I loved to hear about your week and I'm so happy to hear about everything that has been going on, I hope that you guys are staying warm still :) It sounds like life really is an adventure out there in Virginia :)

This week, I've really seen the hand of the Lord in our work this week. I guess that this week I'm just going to kind of do what I usually do with our spiritual moments first! So here in San Leon, our investigators are really having a difficult time progressing I feel like... and they never are coming to Sacrament meeting, which has been really difficult for us. But the success that we have been finding here in San Leon is among the less active members, I think this previous Sunday was the most less active members that I have ever seen come to church. And I think we have 3 or 4 returning members, which is really special to me :) We also have one investigator who I feel like is actually beginning to progress, and that was just by reading I think it was one page in the Book of Mormon, the sad part is that that's the second person here who has actually read the book of Mormon here in San Leon. I don't know what to do to help them keep their commitments, so this week I'm really going to be studying out in PMG about how I can help our investigators to begin to keep commitments! My final really special moment and hand of the Lord in our work is what we call the BLITZ... basically on Saturday all the missionaries in our district came to San Leon and talked to people and taught lessons to find new investigators from 8am-12pm. I think we have 6 new investigators from that and some 60 names that we got permission to go back and share a message with, so this week is really going to be a relentless week in finding investigators... so I'll update y'all on that progress here next week!

For me at least it was really funny but hard to teach the lesson that I did, because we went on spits, so I taught the Restoration completely without my trainer and in Tagalog... that was a really fun experience, I learned a lot! The funny part about the lesson is that the family was Born Again and this old lady during the final parts of our lesson got REALLY really... I don't know, into hearing our testimony... and starting to repeat Hallelujah and other things, a lot I didn't really understand... but she was really into hearing that. It was really a different experience!

Okay, so now for my more different news, we didn't have any support until Wednesday evening, so Elder Q and I lived like super poor and basically lived off of rice and a couple of canned foods, so that was fun. The good news is that we have support now and are buying food for this week after I finish emailing! I also had a totally different kind of food this week, it's what they call Chicken Head (or Ulo ng manok in Tagalog... but they just say chicken head ;)  ) and it was probably one of the grossest things that I've ever eaten in my life... so I can now say that I've eaten a chickens head and am also able to say that there is one food out here that I will NEVER ever eat again xD

These next seven weeks I've decided to follow the Christ like attribute of Humility and strive to become a more humble person. So things that I have learned is that to be humble, it's to show gratitude to the Lord for his blessings and to recognize that I always need his divine help. (as defined in Preach My Gospel) and thought about the opposite with pride and how better I can rid myself of pride. That search led me to the analogy of the wise man and the foolish man. In 3rd Nephi the wise man is defined as one who "hears and acts" upon the words of Christ while the foolish man is defined as one who "hear and acts not" upon the words of Christ. So I realized that the wise man is also the one who had rid himself of Pride and relied on the wisdom of the Lord to build his home, while the foolish man had pride and expected to build his 'home' by the strength of his own arm. We of course see how well they both turned out when the winds, rain, and floods came. So I think what I learned is that to be humble will also mean that when we hear the words (now in this life, will be maybe be scripture study and then following the counsel of our living prophet) and then act on them, or to follow the advice and counsel of them and in doing so we grow more and become stronger in faith!

If y'all have other thought on becoming more humble, I really would love to hear them :)

Thank y'all!!! Love you guys

********

Wow, what a week! I'm sorry that I can't really reply to every thing that you've written. But kkow that I did read it and loved it all so much, thank you for emailing me! I just don't have tons of time left to email!!! I hope that you guys stay safe and warm out there in Virginia... all the way across the world!

So it turns out that my camera card is not broken, I had to reformat the card using my camera, which deleted all of my pictures, but it works... and last week I think that it was just the computer being unable to read my card. The point being that it works now and I'll send you my pictures :)

So where did I leave off? Okay, so last Monday is of course where I will start! So last week, my Monday was kind of rough due to some fairly painful news. So basically I'm going to just leave it at Dear Johned, and that's all. Haha, so that day hurt, but then by Tuesday where we had a full day of proselyting and the whole week I've been totally fine. It's got to just be a side effect of getting lost in the work!

We did see the hand of the Lord in our work this week with finding 7 new investigators through OYMs and referrals. What was really cool is that they were all listening very well. This area is awesome in the sense that people do like to listen to our message, the problem is that nobody keeps commitments, so basically we've extended baptism dates, invited to church, invite to read and all that stuff. Of course the people accept the invitation but it seems like nobody ever actually follows through on the things we invite them! By way of invitation we ought to have had at least 6 investigators attend church, but nobody did. Which is really rough, but I suppose that as long as we do our part, then it's up to them if they come to know the truthfulness of our message. And that comes through exercising even a particle of faith, because if they don't even have part of a desire to believe, how on earth are they going to? Sure the Holy Ghost carries the message to the hearts of the people, but it is up to them to accept and act on it! 

We did have a really neat experience with an investigator that we found through looking for a less active. I'll just call him J, since of course I don't want to let out their personal information :) So he's this 60 or some year old Filipino who we got to talk to and teach the lessons. At the end of our second lesson, we invited him to pray but of course he said no and next time. But being missionaries and feeling it was important, we continued to urge him to pray and bear testimony of it. After a little bit he did agree and couldn't even start to pray for a minute because he started to cry. And his prayer was so simple, but beautiful. We found out then that he has a lot of family problems and feels abandoned by them, and that when he prayed... he did feel something "masaya" or happy, and it was just a really touching experience. We invited him to church the next day, sadly he didn't come... but it might be that he does work a lot... but we'll see. That was probably my favorite moment of this week, it was a testimony that people are being prepared in one way or another to accept this message :)

In a different awesome sense, I forgot to tell y'all about this... but our Ward mission leader, Brother M. He has a job for the church cleaning the grounds and the chapel through the week, and he still finds time (that job is one that he does every day) to come out working with us. And not just that, but he works with us from 1-9 almost every single day... you'd think that he's a missionary just wearing a t-shirt and shorts! What an awesome guy he is, probably the most above and beyond filling his church calling that I've ever met!

And finally, my least spiritually related news... but I bough a belt this week, it's made out of Water Buffalo horn. Which is so so cool, probably my favorite belt :)P I also am able to lead lessons in Tagalog, which I'm really grateful for! It's been one crazy journey to even learn those basics... and I still have a long way to go!

I know that I've been being blessed with the gift of tongues and of being able to interpret tongues. Because there is no way that in three months, I could be able to teach lessons and invite people to change their lives and come unto Christ if I did not have the gift of tongues or the hand of the lord in this work :)

I love this place and this people so much!

I love you guys, thanks for being so supportive!

Elder Morris