April 16, 2017 Araw ng Pagkabuhay

Hello everyone!

This week was pretty great and busy. We had interviews with the mission president, which is always uplifting and inspiring. I really do appreciate President Andrada and all that he does for us in the mission.  We also had a ward activity this week where we updated the membership records (so we essentially had a ward census haha), which gave us a lot of referrals. I don't have any pictures from the activity because I accidentally left my camera at home (sorry Mom). 

So, Eric was not able to meet with us this week because of Holy Week. He traveled to Cagayan with his family, but we are setting up appointments with him this week and hopefully we will see some progress.

Speaking of Holy Week, here in the Philippines Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are national holidays, everything is closed on those days.  However, they give more emphasis on Good Friday rather than Easter Sunday.  One of the churches next to our house also had an interesting tradition for Good Friday.  From what I understand, the members of the church all dress in white, and as a church they make three statues of Christ dressed in red and three statues of Mary dressed in white. They place the statues on a float that is attached to a sidecar of a motorcycle, and the congregation follows the statues while holding candles and singing hymns.... Definitely a new experience.

Anyway, I gave a talk in sacrament about the Eternal Ministry of Christ, which focused on all that He did to help accomplish the plan of salvation.  Starting with His premortal responsibilities and ending with the anticipation of His Second Coming.  I also shared about the importance of His Atoning Sacrifice.  Afterwards, I asked, referring to the question of Pilate, "What should we do with this Jesus who is called Christ?"  My answer was found in Alma 36:24, which you can all look up ;)  The joy that we can all feel from the Atonement of Jesus Christ is so powerful.  No joy is so exquisite as that found through the grace and virtue of God's Beloved Son.  I would invite you all to study the life of Christ and ponder what you will do because of what He did.

I love you all, and have a great week,

Pictures - April 9, 2017

General Conference! -April 9, 2017

Hello everyone, what a great week :)

Conference was fantastic! My companion and I were super excited throughout the whole week waiting for conference to come.  We are truly so blessed to live in a time where living apostles and prophets are here on the earth, with priesthood keys to administer the true church of Christ and to receive revelation to guide us in all that we do. 

We had an investigator attend conference too! He is a former investigator taught back in January, and we had been trying to contact him and teach him but he was always away from his home or busy.  On Saturday we tried to contact him but he wasn't home, so we texted him to remind him about conference the next day and he showed up! (on time too, which is really hard for people here to do). After the session, he told us to come to his house the next day and teach.  This was the first time I have had an investigator set up his own appointment! We will be going to teach him later today and I am so excited!

Our other investigators this week were a little... difficult. We think one of our progressing investigators is hiding from us because she is never home when we go, even at times where we have been able to go before. Woo.  Another investigator decided to turn down her baptismal date because she said she wasn't quite ready to make a decision. She also devised some sort of "points" system, which we score when we "impress" her with our righteousness... what?  So... yeah. I'm not even sure where to go from that.

Conference was seriously great. One thing I noticed was "The Living Christ" was mentioned several times, and we were invited to study and learn about the life and teachings of Christ.  I definitely feel like this was a very specific and direct invitation to all of us. I personally have not really studied "The Living Christ", but this conference I felt a definite prompting to take special care to learn more about Christ and what He did for all of us.  I planned to make this a part of my studies in the upcoming weeks and I will let you know how it goes!

However, I know that Christ lives. He is our Savior, Redeemer, and closest friend. He brings hope in this increasingly discouraging world. He is the Light and the Life of the world, and if we will walk with Him, we will never be lost. We will become more than we ever though we could be.

I love you all, and I hope you have a great week!