Fw: Greetings

 

 

Hey! :D

 

Don't have a lot extra time today, so I won't write a ton.

 

The first full week of the transfer so far has been... Hard...  :/  So far, we don't have a lot of people to teach, and finding is honestly not my favorite activity in the mission.  Starting fresh with no investigators is a bit discouraging.

 

After a few unsuccessful days at the start of the week, we were planning on picking things back up on Friday and work hard and find new people to teach.  We've been trying to focus on part-member families, who have a better chance of being baptized than straight tracting.  When we went out on Friday, it was raining.  It was raining hard.  We got hit by some typhoon or something, and the rain came down in buckets.  We ignored it for the most part at first, but then when we reached a certain part of the area and the road was flooded knee-deep as far as the eye could see, I was like, "Ahm, no."  :/  The last time we tried crossing floodwaters to reach an appointment, we ended up not being able to come back home until the next morning.  So we retreated back to the apartment for the rest of the day.  Then I woke up on Saturday with a minor fever and couldn't go out then until the evening.  Yeah... :/  It's been kind of a rough week.

 

It's taking a bit of time adjusting to the new ward, too.  Everyone here is nice, of course, but I kinda miss the familiar faces of my previous ward.  Every other person I shake hands with at church, I'm like, "I don't know you yet... I don't know you yet... You're not familiar yet..."  I'll get over it eventually, of course, it's just... taking some time to adjust.

 

Sunday after church, though, we had a glimmer of hope.  The members gave us a few leads, so we went to go contact some of them after church.  As we were looking for the house of a less-active member, we stumbled upon another family.  We asked them for directions, and they directed us across the street to where the right house was.  Then the man we talked to asked if we were Mormons, and we told him yes.  He said he was a member who used to go to church in Cavite, in Naic, but moved here a few months ago and didn't know where the church was.  We told him there was a member family who lived close by who could show him exactly where the church is on Sunday.  We gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon, since he had accidentally left his copy at his old home.  Then we went across the street to visit the less-active member who was referred to us.  Sister Monalisa has been inactive for about 4 years now, and wouldn't immediately tell us why.  We talked with her for a while, though.  She had before been a very active member in Quezon City.  Elder Casio asked her if she missed going to church.  She started crying.  She then admitted that she had done things in her past that she was ashamed of, and had stopped going to church as a result.  I was happy to invite her to start coming to church again and to begin the healing process of repentance.  She agreed.  Both families are part-member families.

 

President Howard is leaving this Friday.  :(  Our zone conference on Wednesday was basically a last opportunity for him to say goodbye to the mission.  I'll miss him.  There's certainly going to be a lot of changes once President Stucki gets here on Friday.

 

Anyway, that's about all the time I have.  I got the socks you sent.  :D  Now I'll probably never run out of socks again. ^^''  I also got the mountain of candy you sent with it.  :D :D :D  I might make myself sick... ;P

 

Love you all!  Ingat kayo lagi!

 

Love,

Elder David Jones