Elder Blake Ellis' Mission Life: 6.16.14 The Lord's Work Sure Works Up an Appetite!

Dear Friends and Family,

Hello again from the Philippines! I hope everyone had a great week and that good things are happening back home and you are seeing miracles in your lives and seeing the hand of the Lord in your lives as much as I see Him in mine these past few weeks. The work has been really rough with school starting and things. So we've been trying to find some really long time less actives that we have a list of and that's what we do for 3 hours a day till the kids get out of school so that we can teach the other families.

I hope you liked the pictures from Zone Conference Mommy ;) I tried to get into some. I don't know if I looked good or not and here's why. In Bacolod there's a burger joint called, "Big Beefy Burger". At this place they have a 5 minute challenge: 1 pound patty, with all the works, a plate of fries, and a lemonade, you need to finish with nothing left in your mouth in under 5 minutes. If you finish, it's free. If not... 250 pesos. Your Son, is a champion! ;) Finished with 10 seconds left to spare. I have the whole thing on video so I'll show you when we meet again. Honestly the biggest thing I've ever eaten and soooo fast. Afterwards I didn't feel to bad actually, just felt really really full of food. The burger was gigantic. So, yeah, I might have looked a little big in the pictures, but didn't stop me from putting down 5 glasses of ice cream! The burger was served right off the grill so it was super hot, burned the whole inside of my mouth. I had no taste for 3 days. All is well now and back to normal!

This week we also had our investigators Sister die, so she's all in distress and worried and things, which we're trying to teach the Plan of Salvation, that's the next lesson, but she's been busy with her family. However, her Aunt was at church on Sunday. This is the second time that she's been at church. We haven't been able to give them dates yet or anything just with the timing of the death of their relative. It's hard to explain. The Aunt has 3 kids that live with her, none of which are her "actual" kids, they're all relatives, but I guess because of home life and what not, we don't know details, they live with the Aunt. But we teach them all and the neighbors and each lesson there's about 10 people, it's super good and they read the Book of Mormon and they all know how to pray now and it's super good and we love going to their house.

The Trumpita Family is doing really well. When we visited however they didn't read the assignment that we gave them in the Book of Mormon so we read it with them. We also committed them to come to church this Sunday and they even said sure they'd come. We explained that Church has classes and stuff too and the mom was like, "ah amo na gali, nami gali ang pagsimba". It means like, "Ah... church is actually nice huh?" Um... Yes Sister. Church is great ;)

Our week was a lot better in the fact that our number are triple what they were last week. Last week was not good at all. And we were even in Bacolod for a day. So this week was a lot better. We've found some new investigators and also went to a new part of our area that's SUPER far, but a member took us in their jeep, so we got a free ride. The family that we went and visited has just been recently coming back to church for the past 3 weeks, they have a son who's not yet a member just because they went less active for so long. I guess the Dad just felt something and said that he's needed at the church. Nobody visited him or anything and in fact, we had no clue there were members in his area. So now we know and we've got something good to work with.

Our progressing Investigators Jemma and Jennevibe her sister are doing really good. They're super progressive, only problem is the mother consenting. They haven't had a chance to talk to their mom yet, so we're just waiting on that to continue baptism :)!!!!!!!!! Boom roasted.

I love you guys! My personal study was really good this week and I've been reading the Joseph Smith History and in the Pearl of Great Price. I learned tons! About Adam and Eve mostly. Some things that make a lot more sense now when you add the temple and then the Pearl of Great Price, but Mormon Doctrine, it all makes sense now ;)! Love it!

Hope y'all have a great week! Everything is going great here so far. Don't worry!