So I'm emailing today because we didn't have P day yesterday! Today we had temple day and it was awesome. I love the temple it's the best thing ever. It always helps me step back and think of the big picture of things. The Manila temple just reopened up last month and it's super pretty. So that was awesome earlier today-probs a highlight of the mission so far.
Well Wednesday I said goodbye to my trainer, Elder Cibuco, who is off to Palawan. Elder Lambert is actually going back to Palawan again to follow up with my MTC companion, Elder Carter! Haha that was super crazy to hear, I'm excited they're going to be together. I'll miss my comp a little but hopefully I'll see him sometime down the road. We had a lot of cool experiences together and helped me grow a lot as a missionary and as a person.
My new companion is Elder Jervoso. He's from Tacloban and has 14 siblings haha! His parents are separated so there's lots of siblings on both his mom's side and his dad's side. He's actually the ONLY MEMBER out of all of them! He said he had absolutely no support heading out on his mission and they wouldn't pay a single peso to help him. Wow that made me thankful. I've had two companions in a row with very different ways of growing up than me, that's for sure. This one however had the opportunity to go to school so he knows a little more English, but not that much. He's pretty nice it's been good so far really. I'm learning tons from him as far as new ways of OYMing people and new ways of doing missionary work. He's a little older in the mission so has lots of good ideas. His accent is different so we're still working on being able to understand each other haha. That's been a little hard honestly, but I'm glad for change and the opportunity to grow more. Also, he is a prooo chef! Haha it's awesome. My last comp didn't really cook so I did lots of the cooking, and i guess you could say the "menu" of the food we ate was pretty small haha. But now I'm learning how to be a better chef, even though earlier before my mission I thought i was the best chef in the world;)
Our area has been slowing down the last few weeks so we did a lot of dirty work (finding) this week haha. We talked to tons of people but honestly didn't really find anyone. I know there's people out there ready (like Danni Santos haha), we just have to keep looking. My new companion is super good at introducing the gospel and like I said I'm learning lots of new ways of doing that. He's pretty determined to share the gospel like my last companion so I think we'll get alot done. Hopefully we can start getting more people to teach this next week to increase our teaching pool. Apparently my comp has a brother he's never met who lives here in Tondo so we're definately keeping a look out for him!
Some cool things for the week. Sister Fattima passed her baptism interview on Saturday and will be married and baptized this Saturday! She's been meeting with missionaries for quite a while and my last companion and I were to get her back to church. We really stressed the importance of baptism and marriage. We just focused on the blessings of baptism and being a member of the church, and here she is now, ready to go! She's really really nice and I'm super pumped for Saturday. Also, I got to pass the sacrament with Danni Santos on Sunday, that really hit me hard for some reason. I guess I can't really explain how cool it was, I guess i just realized how much the gospel can really help people. Last thing, I guess not a cool thing but I broke up a crazy fight between two 11 year old kids. It was actually pretty scary how hard they were hitting each other so I being some tall white guy just went up and separated them. I think I startled both of them a little haha. That followed up by one of their moms running up screaming at her kid. We just quickly left after that haha.
One thing I really learned this week is how important it is to be thankful. I was being a loser earlier this week and was pretty unhappy for a few days. I was getting frustrated with myself for about everything- my teaching, my language skillz, my interacting with the people, etc. We were also disappointed with some investigators as well as having a hard time finding people. But I read a talk from that package you sent that helped me a ton. One thing it said was "the more often we see the things around us the more they become invisible to us." I realized that it's very simple, we can choose to be happy or choose to be sad. We can look for good or just complain. But all in all external conditions don't necessarily make a person happy. You can have all the earthly things in the world and not be happy. I realized I needed to stop focusing on what I don't have, what things are diffiicult, and what I'm not good at. I needed enjoy the sunlight and stop seaking out the storms. D&C 78:19 is pretty solid too. All things we go through in this life are for our benefit. I'm thankful for God's plan for all of us, and i challenge you all to search for the good in all things. Always lift others and you'll truly be happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment