Hey!
This week was awesome!! We had lots of time in the area and were blessed to see lots of people grow and progress. Monday night we met an sweet less-active family who we didn’t know was in our area! A member actually texted us asking us to go visit them. Their name is the Lobo family and it consists of a mother, 18 year old son CJ, and 12 year old girl Bea. They’re super super nice and were excited to have us come. The son is really into computers and gaming and we’re going to work with him to help him get interested in the church again. He said he’d come out to teach a lesson with us sometime so that should be fun. This week we’re doing a family home evening at their home with some members and the kids are going to teach Elder Mitchell and me how to cook some nice sisig.
After that lesson it was time to head home but we decided to knock on one more door nearby. We went to their neighbors and met a college student named Rowen and her friend Sebastian. We quickly taught the Book of Mormon, gave them both a copy, and left. As we left we found out that she’s actually the cousin of sister Lobo! On her own she read the introduction and actually looked for the reference scriptures that were in the parenthesis. Yesterday we brought 4 of the YSA with us to go meet and teach her with us it was super fun!
I went on exchanges with Elder Pehacek over in his area Friday and Elder Mitchell worked with his companion in ours. They had a sweet experience! They visited a less active and as they left they heard someone call out “Elders!” They met a guy named Miller from Phoenix, Arizona who was looking for the church here in Makati. His mom is a filipina and his dad is American. He was with his mother in the province for a vacation but after some sad events he got stuck up there for awhile! He met the missionaries over there but then moved over to our area the day before he saw elder Mitchell. He’s the man!! He has a baptismal date set for the 24th and has given up so much in preparation for baptism. He graduated high school at age 9, college at age 13, and has been to Harvard, Italy, and France for schooling. I wouldn’t have guessed he was a genius just because he acts like a normal guy. We plan on having President come teach him this week :)
Funny thing for the week. We visited this awesome grandma named Angie in the ward the ward a few weeks back and last week she came up to us at church saying she wanted to work with us. Haha she’s kinda strange but we decided hey why not. “fortune-teller lady” is her nickname haha. Well she worked with us twice this week and took us to 6 referrals haha! An 80 year old lady was leading our area! It’s crazy how fast she still walks and how much she is willing to talk to people and share the gospel. It gets better though. Sunday she goes up to bare her testimony and as she makes the turn up on the stand I was slowly saying “oh no! no way… oh wow!” She was wearing her missionary nametag!!! Haha we were both in the back in tears yet everyone else didn’t seem to notice anything different. Right off the bat Angie quotes two Doctrine and Covenants scriptures about missionary work perfectly then next thing we knew she started singing her favorite church EFYish song! And we’re not talking just a few lines here we’re talking the first verse, corus, second verse, corus, bridge, corus type deal. Best few minutes ever! To top it off after sacrament she came up to elder Mitchell and I and gave us Christmas presents. Yes, they were neckties wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. Nanay Angie is the best!
Well that will about wrap it up! We had a great MLC which was more of a council rather than training and messages the whole time. We all sat at tables in a circle and were able to discuss what the mission needs moving forward and what changes we can try to make to improve. A big take-away is for the leaders to minister rather than administer. Rather than just calling missionaries to collect numbers, talk about their area, etc we are trying to be more real with them and how they’re really doing. The goal is to become friends with the other missionaries to where they can trust them and remember what they did. Reaching out one by one like the Savior did. I’ve realized that the leaders I remember most were those who genuinely reached out to me and seemed to really have a desire to better get to know me. One thing Elder Mitchell and I are going to try this week is calling all missionaries in their training just to see how things are. We’re excited for the changes in the mission!
Love ya all!
Elder Reber :)
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