The Hike and referrals

This week had its ups and downs… Tuesday we hiked a mountain (again) to our referral from a couple of weeks ago, but she wasn't there. This mountain is about 1 mile long and no vehicles go up it except, for personal ones, that everyone has up the mountain, so we had to hike it. It is a stupidly steep mountain, and I’ve put some pictures below.  Everyone else doesn't like us on the mountain, they are all solid Catholic and Iglesia. So we headed back down and ended up walking for 5 hours because we got punted from everywhere we went! Then it started down pouring rain.  Yeah, we were wet, I had a headache and it was late now, so we headed home a bit earlier to get some studies done that we didn't do in the morning.

Then Wednesday, at District council, I got one of the sisters angry at me, not on purpose I swear. She had to practice teach to me, and I was told the type of person that was tough and I had to do it well.  I did it so good, she got furious!!! WOW it was scary. I tried to calm it down afterwards but she was LIT UP. I Promise, I didn’t mean to provoke her at all, it just happened to be that way I guess, because I was such a good actor!!

Then nothing really on Thursday.  On Friday We found some cool new investigators!! TONS OF REFERRALS from investigators and they even gave them copies of the Book of Mormon. One of our investigators even started kissing the Book of Mormon.

Friday was really great!! Really the only good day out of the days to be honest.  We did teach a man on Sunday who WAS SO EXCITED to know about the Book of Moron and the history. Now that he is interested, and we told him it is more of a story that is the Bible, he was excited, and said we would read as much as he can with his crazy schedule.

So overall it was a decent week this week. Next week is transfer week and we will see if anything happens to us this week or not. If not, we go to the New Mission! The tension is high for transfers!!

So spiritual thought for the week!!

Keep pushing forward!! There will be times where you are discouraged. Whether it is about your body, grades, school, friends, work, anything, this is the adversary’s job to tear you down. Don't let him!! You are Amazing!! keep doing the best you can and know that He is here for you always and he loves YOU!!

You are His child!! never forget it!!

Love Elder James Dunyon

And a duck shall lead them.

This past week was great.  We had our mission conference, we did some hiking to some referrals, and we had a great baptism (Jamaica who is 12), and we should be having another one in a couple weeks.  The work is really starting to go strong.  We just need to finish up the lessons and then he can be baptized.

So this week, we have been trying to find all these less actives and finding some referrals around here. We put up our whole ward directory on our wall and I wrote down all there names to take with us to the different areas we will go to, and if appointments fall through, we go find some less actives!!

One referral that we received, was great.  It was a major hike up a mountain and the invited us in, gave us something to drink and then had a great discussion.

While we were looking for several of our 500 less actives, we just couldn't find this one sister's house.  People said it was just over there, like right here, but we couldn't seem to find it. That is when this little duck comes running at us and starts cuddling us then it heads down the road and turns as if waiting for us. So we decided to follow it. Just down the road away and around the corner we found the sisters house!!! She was just sitting there and exclaimed "Elders!! I haven't seen you in forever!"

Then I went to the other elders area, which is the district leader and well.... changed there whole area for them because they didn't know what to do with there area. So not being a district leader I am helping other areas as well!! Such a blast there!! I talked to 50 people in only an hour

My spiritualist thought this week comes from my zone conference.  My President said "Our heavenly father is more concerned about our future than He is about our past".  Those pains that we have repented from in the past are things that we can learn from, but something that our Heavenly Father has moved past. 

Cleanest Apartment Award

Interesting Experiences

This week for teaching, we have this older man, June, who has now come to church twice and he is super excited to be baptized and keep on learning!! It is so cool!! He had  a stroke three years ago so it is a it hard for him to move around, but his testimony is just going!! He was found tracting in our  new area !!

Ricky is doing better, but struggling a bit. He knows what we teach is true but he doesn't want to be baptized only because he has work on Sundays, and that is the only job he can get. He doesn't know if he can always come, but we are trying to help him out there.

So...a fun and interesting story this week:

We had an Iglesia ni Cristo preacher start ranting to us and try and argue with us!!  Iglesia ni cristo is a huge church group here in the Philippines, and they really don't like us, because their founder was actually a former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  He created his own church and just wanted to argue with us, and just kept getting louder, so we didn't really say anything. He just wanted to make a scene.  So we just stood there and listened and tried to bear simple testimony and that was about it and left. He asked three questions:

What is church?
What is religion?
What is the main thing that we as missionaries do or teach?

We tried to answer, but he just talked over us and kept getting louder.  The question of  What is the main thing that we as missionaries do or teach really made me really think about things. I wanted to REALLY know what it was that we do.  What is the most basic core and simple but bold doctrine that we teach?  I started asking other missionaries and members for thoughts.  I asked our mission president what he thought as well.  What I have found is that simply the main thing you teach is ...

Through the Book of Mormon, the prophet Joseph Smith restored plain in simple truths of how we can grow closer and return back to our Heavenly Father.