Live after the manner of Happiness

Hi everyone!

First off happy birthday to capri this week!! I'm sure mom is happy that her last child is no longer one digit. Happy 10th bday i can't believe you are that old haha. Have a great day and make sure to get outta school for lunch ;)

Well this week was full of some new experiences! My companion got dengue and i got a beautiful amoeba so we were both man down. It was kinda boring haha i don't like sitting inside a room all day. I was able to read sometimes but most of it i was too whiped out! We were just constantly headin back to the medical center place taking tests but we're all good now! Our old investigator who was really close to being baptized - Joy gontinas- heard we were sick and brought us tons of food. she's really thoughtful.. people here are just straight homies. I'm happy to be here in the Philippines. I wasn't able to eat anything but bananas and crackers but i was able to eat some of what she brought that day it was great!

So i have a new companion! Whatta man. His name is Elder Petersen from American Fork and we're in the same batch (came into the mission at the same time.) Sadly it's not big remi davis petersen but this guy is also a stud. It's every missionaries hope to be put with someone from their batch! We're soo excited and it's already been a blast. We've got lots in common he likes the mountains like I do and everyone in the ward says we look like twins haha. He's a great worker we're going to have a fun time together and hopefully will spend christmas together here!

We weren't able to switch companions until saturday because of the whole sick thing but eventually it happened! Sunday we were able to work and we got to reteach our recent convert Jansen and try to introduce Elder Petersen to some of the people. We had to take it slow Sunday since i'm still kinda out of it which was annoying but hey life is good. Just glad to be outta the house now!

Funny random thing that happened. Elder Albis, who was one of the elders in our house, went home on Wednesday! It was cool to see him head home after working so hard up to the end. His companion Elder Brizuela finished his training and was excited/nervous for his new companion. We got the email saying his new companion is elder vinas and we told him that elder vinas is from Mexico (he's a filipino though.) Elder Brizuela was excited but i guess when they met he knew right away we tricked him. Haha it's hard to explain it to make it funny over email but little funny moments like that make the mission awesome.

I got to read an aweome talk out of the Liahona about being happy. It gave six reasons how to be happy. 1. We must live "after the manner of happiness." In the BOM we can read how Lehi's family faced tons of tribulation. But the people had many times where they had exceedingly great joy. It's because they understood God's plan and new we aren't supposed to be happy 24/7. There is an opposition in all things and part of life is growing and learning through adversity. 2. Live the gospel. Millions of philosophies and systems have been tried but to this day the only way to be truly happy is by living the gospel. Christ said "I am the way, the truth, and the light." By following Him we will be truly happy. I've seen that one on my mission lots with me and with others. 3. Choose hapiness. It takes effort to be happy! Rather than being tossed and turned with what life throws at you we need to "swim upstream" and really search for that joy. It's important to have good, constructive, hopeful thoughts. It all starts there. What you think about becomes what you talk about and it shows what's important to you. If your thought's are happy and centered on Christ you will find yourself a pretty happy person 4. Be kind and pleasant. Tearing someone down to lift yourself up is not happiness that lasts. We try to point out other people's flaws so ours don't glare so much. That's not very chill. Can you think of one happy person who is unkind or unpleasant? 5. Work at it. This is the main difference between the Nephites and the Lamanites (well at least when the nephites were righteous.) In 2 nephi 5:17 it says Nephi's people were "industrious" and "did labor with their hands." 2 Nephi 5:24 (just a few verses later) talks how the Lamanites were "an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety." Being a hard worker brings happiness that lasts. It brings true satisfaction. As a missionary i'm happy when i know i did my best. The main time i'm stressed is if i know i fell short! Finally, 6. Reject transgression. "Wickedness never was happiness."

It was a solid talk i just thought i'd share it! They're really good ideas and i think we can all find one of them to work on in our own lives. The five kids were at church again btw and we're scheduled to meet with them three times this week. We're excited for them and hope things will keep going well with them! We will also need to teach jordan alot this week to see where he's at!

I hope you are all enjoyin life. I hope you're all happy. Til next week!

Elder Reber

I think these two twinnies are going to do great things!