People at Church

Hello Again,
I'm glad to here that Elizabeth is doing better. If her ankle is still having problems, she should do some exercises specifically that help ankle strength. I am pretty sure that squats would help for the ankle. Listen to the doctor though.
In the Philippines we watch a conference rebroadcast one week later. So we watch it at the Agoo chapel the 7th and 8th of April. I would like the Ensign, I wouldn't mind the conference CD's either although I don't think I would have much time to listen to them. We actually get the Liahona as missionaries, so we get the conference edition, but it is given one to each area not to each missionary so I appreciated having my own copy of the Conference Ensign. We actually get the Liahona in Tagalog and English.
Speaking about Tagalog, people are now often saying things like, oh you're good at Tagalog now. They like to point out that before I wasn't. "I remember when you got here you couldn't speak at all..." stuff like that. It's a good thing. Good that they consider me to be good at Tagalog. At least I am to the point that they don't consider me bad at Tagalog.
This week was a good week, we had 20 people that we are teaching come to church. They also came to all 3 hours, which is good. Sometimes people only come to Sacrament meeting, but we have been stressing church attendance lately, especially about coming to all 3 hours and it has paid off so far. It is really important for people to come to church. We have to teach them why church is so important. The other interesting thing about this week is that our efforts from previous weeks have paid off a lot. We really haven't worked harder this week, but the people that we've been teaching for a while now started coming to church. It feels like the Lord is blessing us from all our weeks of work. We worked hard with minimal success, we continue to work hard and now see greater results from it. We have been finding and teaching a lot, and now they have started to come to church.
There was this one sweet old lady that came, she was really funny. She is less active and hasn't been to church in years. We visited her for the first time this week, and when we came she told us that she knew we were coming. She said she knew we were coming this week because she wasn't at church last week. She told us she didn't go because she had no one to go with. We offered to come walk with her to church, which we did. When we went to her house on Sunday she was ready with 2 of her grandchildren to come. She then told her grandchildren, this is the first week that we go to church every week. It seems that she just needed a reason to go to church, a little push, and we provided that small means necessary for her to come back. We also have a couple of families that are attending church. Families are really good because the family is such a good support system. God established families to help strengthen each other. It's hard for someone to come without the family support. We absolutely love teaching families and are glad to have progressing families, not just individuals.
I'm also very glad that my branch is a hardworking branch. They really do their part in helping the missionaries. Elder Fraser says that some branches here really don't do much, but our members are eager and willing to do their part in helping us. They are friendly and fellowship the investigators we bring and will willingly go to visit them with us. I am very grateful to be assigned in this good area.

Good luck to you all and have a wonderful week,

Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill