6.2.14 Happiest Week so Far!

Dear Friends and Family,

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY MONDAY MORNING! Everything is going great this week! One of the happiest weeks I think I've had maybe my whole mission. Even though not super fun things took place, it's rained every day, it's been the hottest temperatures I think in the past 6 months this past week, we've got punted, almost half of our investigators hide from us now, but for some reason, all of that doesn't matter once 2 people stepped into the waters of baptism on Saturday morning. The Lumacad Family are now baptized and confirmed members of the True Church on the Earth ;) Elder Espiritu and I both decided that we would both baptize, so I baptized Brother Lumacad and he baptized Sister Lumacad. We had quite a bit of members at the service and then they both gave their testimonies afterwards and it was soooo great! I was just super happy. On Sunday Sister Lumacad actually bore her testimony in testimony meeting and was crying and everything. She's super strong. I think probably the strongest convert that I've baptized. She’s already in Jacob in the Book of Mormon and trying to answer all her questions from the Isaiah Chapters was just the funniest thing to do. All the symbolism and things I don’t understand she was like, what’s this Elder, and I have no clue half the time. I mean, I have an idea, but I don’t want to teach deep/false doctrine to a new member!

Lumacad Baptisms

This week was super rough for work though, however, we were blessed soooo much! We’ve been really praying lately to focus on families and to be able to find solid families to teach and we ask Father in Heaven to lead us to them and for them to find us. Of course we can’t find everybody! So we asked for them to find us. If you remember the family that we found last week that came to church, the Artisano Family, while we were teaching them this week there were 5 kids that joined in the lesson. They are the next door neighbors. We asked them if it’s ok if we come over to their house and they said sure, mom and dad even said you could come over too. So we’re going to go there on Wednesday night! ;) Then on our way home, a member told us that she has a family referral that she wants us to visit with her on Sunday. So yesterday we went with her and she took us to this family and it’s a family of 5! The 2 sisters we’re there, but the others were. They were super nice and we got a return appointment and it was just a wonderful experience. A good solid referral. Doesn’t happen often, so I’m really counting this as a blessing right now!

Hiking the Mountain to find Investigators

As I mentioned above, it’s been super hot, rainy, and to even up with that, we leave our shoes outside our door just because of the rain and the mud that’s on the shoes and stuff so our house doesn’t get super dirty. To make the week better, in the middle of the night someone came by and just stole all the shoes that we outside our apartment complex. This is the first time someone stole my shoes outside my door. I always leave my shoes outside in all my areas and nobody ever steals them. Who wants dirty shoes that are too big to fit a Filipino foot, but I guess this guy wanted them. He got 2 pairs of my shoes, plus flip flops, my companions shoes, the elders that live next to us had their shoes stolen, so it was just a wonderful experience having no shoes for a bit. All I had are my running shoes, so we went to the store and got some new shoes, so right now I’m rockin some ugly foam shoes that look like shoes, but they were cheap and I’ve only got a few months left so I don’t care. I was just bummed, but school starts here today so maybe some kid needed some shoes for school, so I love him because he’s a child of God and I hope that he uses the shoes for school and that he gets some good grades! But yeah I was a little bummed out. Spending some money that I didn’t want to spend, but it’s all good I suppose.

My companion and I are doing great. We’ve been working good together. All of a sudden nobody works with us anymore. The bishop was pushing all the RM’s to work with us the past few weeks because of a report due, but the report is now done, now nobody works with us, so it’s a bum deal. Our WML got his teeth pulled this week so he didn’t work with us either. So we didn’t have a ton of member present lessons this week so we were really hurting for them so we were just grabbing member neighbors and things to bring with us to lessons and what not. All of sudden a lot of investigators are hiding from us now, I don’t know the reason why they’re hiding. If I didn’t want the missionaries to come over, I’d just tell them so that they weren’t wasting their time, but I guess that’s just the difference in culture. Here they just hide and they know that we see them, but rather than confronting, they tell their children, oh just tell them that I’m not here and then the kids learn to be a liar when they grow up. This week I saw one of our investigators, literally saw her behind this wall and then this kid told me she wasn’t here. So I said, “You mean that person right there (and I pointed) behind the wall isn’t who we’re looking for?” And she was like, no she’s not here. So I made sure that our investigators knew that we saw them and that lying isn’t good to teach or to do. Oh well I guess. Elder Espiritu and I were talking about it and how we’re just going to find new investigators and interested ones. If they hid, we won’t go back and we’ll find others that are interested and focus on them. That way time isn’t wasted at all and we’re doing the best we can and helping the people that need help.

We’re looking at a prospective of 5 baptisms this month of June. I can’t believe it’s already June! Time flies I guess ;) 2 of them are super solid, part members. The other 3 are cousins of a member and one of them, his mom is a member, but she doesn’t let him go to church. I don’t really know why, but she will answer for her sins in the next life I suppose. Haha. It’s just a super bum deal, the mom is not even interested in coming back to church nor listening to us. Just “too busy” with life is what she said. Which doing laundry and sleeping on Sunday doesn’t sound “too busy” to me, but that’s just the thing to do here! Got to love it and bare it with love.

Cornello Family FHE

Today we’re going to go to a hike. I think there’s a waterfall that we can take some pictures at so I will have some good pictures for next week I guess. I hope that all is well you all and you’re all doing great. You are all greatly missed, I wish I could tell you how much, but there’s a work to be done here and I’m the one that was called my God to do the work in this area at this time. So I will go and do. I finished the Book of Mormon again this past week, it’s true now as it was true before. Have you found out for yourself that it’s true? If not, I would encourage you do pray about it. I love you! Have a great week!

Travel Plans arrived!

Love,

Elder Ellis ;)