Transfers, but staying

The sisters got dresses made and they also made us ties, so we were matching, then Jana wanted to join

Transfers are here once again, but I am still going to stay here!! Elder Yaba is going to Taytay zone and my new companion will be an American, Elder Bottoms. He is from Saint George and he is my second companion that is white, so this is interesting, hahaha.  We have to find new ways of finding in this area, because there are a ton of people that just want to talk to the Americans.  We get along great though. He goes home in the batch after me, so he is a long time in the mission too, still struggles with Tagalog though, but it is all good. I have come to learn that I actually have deep Tagalog, while others still have a slang Tagalog.

So, this week when it comes to work, we had a good full day of work with trying to figure out how to work this area with two Americans. But we had some great lessons. We have sooooo many friends we are teaching that all have a testimony of Joseph smith and the Book of Mormon but haven't come to church yet. They are still holding on to their former comforts, so we are trying to be patient but also trying to give them pushes to take the jump of faith. But things are going great. This last week all of our friends said that they wouldn't be able to come to church this week, but next week is a for sure, so we are hoping for a lot!!

The Aton family is set to be baptized this upcoming week!! So, we will be praying and are so excited for them!! Castro family is doing good but taking a little bit of time. They keep inviting their friends into lessons though so we keep getting some new friends to teach!! Jeff is doing great too!! He wasn't able to come to church this week but has been reading the Book of Mormon, so that is good!! A lot of our other friends are still pretty new and haven't been able to get back to them, but we are excited to help them out to!!

We had a meeting this past week about a new program that is being done here in the Philippines.  The missionaries and the members are "linking arms" to get missionary work and ministering done!!  Missionaries are now going to be assigned around 5 ministering companions, each of which will have 1-2-part member families that we will go with to visit. Through this, the missionaries will encourage, but not take over, ministering and at the same time, meet families with members who have not yet been baptized. So, both ministering and missionary work gets taken care of!! It should really help here in the Philippines because around 60 percent of the members in the Philippines are either Part-member or less active.  So, we are excited to get that started to!!

Spiritual thought:

You never know where help will come from. Sometimes it will come from those you never expect it too! When you ask for the Lord’s help, He will provide, just be patient! This week for me, there was a day where I was just struggling, and I wanted to feel peace. That day we were working hard like we normally do and were able to teach 6 lessons, and every single friend (they all are not baptized) where able to share some testimony of how the Lord has helped them overcome trials, and all of what they had said, helped me feel that peace that I needed. I thought it would come from a missionary, the scriptures, a thought, even a song, but it came from the friends that we were able to meet previous and all able to teach!

Love, Elder James Dunyon

This thing is called a Halo-halo (mix-mix in english) it is a ton of things put into shaved ice

 the night the volcano spewed ash, we were coming from a members house and we used bandannas to cover up, so yeah, we were outlaws