I am Training again!!!!! I am pretty excited. I went from training to follow up training to training again, so I have pretty much just been working with new missionaries for most of my mission. My whole batch of Americans are training to so it will be pretty exciting. My guess is that I will train an American because there are 14 coming in. (And 5 Filipinos, and 2 from Pakistan.)We have some great investigators that continue to progress. We actually played basketball this morning with Reymon (who is going to be baptized next month) and it turns out he is way better than us. This last week we found and gave a baptismal date to May. May is 19 and she is the sister of one of our other Investigators. What happened is that she suddenly moved back home to live with her mom (a returning less active) and she is way receptive. She came to church yesterday and sat with her sister Jamaica in our investigator class. Our Gospel principles teacher is pretty amazing by the way.This week we were walking down a street of probably the most stiff necked people in Lingayen. I swear everyone on this street did not want anything to do with us, and at that point all we were doing was looking for a person that lived there. Well we were walking away after talking to a super mean woman (I hope that she was just having a bad day and isn't that mean to everyone always, because she was really grouchy) anyway as we were walking we heard someone say Elders. So we looked at this house that's doors were closed and looked like nobody was home. We walked to the house and there was some little kids. They said that missionaries used to come to their house, but then the family went to Manila. Well now they're back, and so are the missionaries, here to teach them again.Speaking of finding through children, last week we taught a group of kids on the street how to pray. I may have mentioned that. A few days ago we went and contacted the families of most of those kids. We've taught one family, have appointments with a few others, but yesterday something completely unexpected happened. A large group of our children came to church. Not with their parents (hopefully next time) but just the kids. We filled the primary...much to the 'delight' of the primary teacher. The kids came to church, and were not 'too rowdy'. I did not expect them to come, we did invite them, but they're kids (oldest is 12) and we didn't expect much. This gives us a little more initiative to be sure and follow up on their families.Right now we have two less active families in the hospital. Julieann has dengue fever, and they don't know why Gilbert is in the hospital, or rather what his sickness is. Both families are progressing, but of course neither came to church as both have children in the hospital. Actually Ritche, Julieann's brother did come to church.We have another returning less active right now who told us he wants to serve a mission. He really doesn't know what he needs to do but we will help him get out there.--
Have a good week, keep your head up, and smile.
Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill
Monday, October 29, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
We have a couple really progressing investigators right now. Funny thing is, we haven't been able to teach our progressing investigators very much. That is Tyson who is never home. And the Mendoza family who are also rarely home. They are always not home, or busy(and when I say busy I mean really busy not the we just want you to go away busy.) Whenever we see them, which seems usually to be as we are walking and we see them somewhere, we invite them to come to church, and guess what, they do. So they are coming to church, they just only get taught on average once a week.
Yesterday at church our Gospel Principles teacher didn't show
up, which meant I had to teach it. That was fun, but I miss our Gospel
Principles teacher, she is really good plus I feel like the
investigators should get to learn from someone other than
the missionaries once in a while. We also had a lot of people come to
church yesterday. We had the children, of a family we used to teach
come to church. That family wasn't progressing so we stopped going to
them, well the kids got the idea and decided
to come to church to ask us to come teach them again. We taught and the
family said that in two weeks they will all come to church. They told
us that straight up when we arrived, we asked what about next week, they
say they are busy next week, but in two
weeks... Well I think they will really come because they decided that
on their own before we got there. We had another member who is often
late show up at church before we did.
We were there at 810 and saw Julie Ann and her mom already there. To top it off they were sick. Finally I figured out why they were there, Julie Ann was saying the prayer in Sacrament meeting. Because they were sick they left right after Sacrament meeting, but it is good to see people keep commitments.
I also worked with Elder Adams this week on exchanges.
Elder Adams is only 3 weeks in the field. He is really good.
He doesn't speak Tagalog too well yet but he is pretty good. It is
always fun to work with new missionaries, it kind of reminds
you of your own first days as a missionary. Anyway with him we found
this one lady who didn't seem that interested in the gospel. I pulled
out the plan of salvation pamphlet and said it answers the questions of
where we come from, our purpose in life and
where we go after this life. Elder Adams asked her "Can you answer
those questions for us.' She said she didn't know the answers so we
asked which one she most wanted to know. Then we taught her a wonderful
little lesson about Our purpose in life. She
was very nice and we will go back. It was a pretty fun lesson though.
We are doing well.We were there at 810 and saw Julie Ann and her mom already there. To top it off they were sick. Finally I figured out why they were there, Julie Ann was saying the prayer in Sacrament meeting. Because they were sick they left right after Sacrament meeting, but it is good to see people keep commitments.
Have a good week, keep your head up, and smile.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Well this week we had one interesting and good experience. We have an investigator that is doing well and progressing and has a baptismal date, but over the course of this week we were not able to contact him, not even once. Then yesterday as we were waiting for investigators and less actives outside the church before conference, here he came riding on his scooter. We of course were very excited. He will definitely be baptized.
Conference was amazing. It was a little different watching
it in Tagalog. We didn't watch every session in Tagalog, but we did see
some of them. Tagalog is fun, and the investigators actually
understand it. It does add a new dimension of the
need to pay attention, and sometimes they use 'napakalalim salita' or
really deep words. My companion Elder Sagayno even noted that. It
depended on the talk and the speaker though. I thought they had some
really good music as well. I already downloaded the
music to listen to it later.
This week we had good referrals. We got a referral from the
Bishop of another ward. We were teaching, and he saw us and told us to
come to a house after we were done. We went to this house which turned
out to be his mother in law's house. We talked
with them for a while and then asked to share a lesson. We shared a
short but quite powerful lesson and then (I think a little to the
Bishop's surprise) we invited them to be baptized and they accepted.
I went on exchanges this week with my Zone leaders, this is
the first time in a long time that I have worked in another missionaries
area. For whatever reason it seems I always work in my own area. So in
the Zone leaders area I met one sister that
has been a member for a super long time, she was once the relief
society president and has had many other callings before the wards were
split. Once back in my own area I realized that almost every less
active knows her. Less actives ask about people they
know, and if those people are still at church. Now I know one of the
people that they almost always say, I just never recognized it before
because I didn't know the woman.
It's been good I think thats all for now.
Monday, October 8, 2012
I hope you all enjoyed General Conference. I am
excited to see it but will have to wait until Saturday and Sunday of
this week.
This week we had some good success with
finding. It's easy to find people to teach, but that doesn't always
mean those people will progress. This week we found people that really
seem 'elect'. We had one investigator ask 'Do
you guys meet somewhere?' 'Where is it, can I come?' Well yes, yes
you can. We found another less active that we met Saturday and she
showed up on Sunday Morning with her whole family. We found another
investigator who said I'll just go to church with
my neighbor (less active). Then the Investigator took the entire less
active family to church. Our other investigator not only went to church
but also took the initiative to go to the ward activities that we told
him about. All these people are just showing
up in one week.
We also taught this one old man named Oscar
again. After the first lesson with Oscar I didn't think we'd ever go
back, he told us he would never come to church and would never pray, but
one day we ended up with no appointment and
near his house so we dropped by to teach him again. Surprisingly he
let us in, and he understood very well. We told him that the book of
Mormon has the account of Jesus in the America's he said well of course
they would write about it if Jesus came. At the
end of the lesson he even prayed, and further he agreed to pray about
the Book of Mormon. Elder Sagayno said 'well maybe he forgot about
never praying'. We had another less active named Bobby who is really
shy and doesn't want to pray. Last week we put
him on our schedule as a back up plan because he is always gone, so
even though we told him we'd be coming we didn't make it. This week we
dropped by and taught him, we was concerned that we were mad at him
because he didn't pray in our last lesson and then
didn't come. Oh he is such a sweet innocent and childlike person in
all the best ways. We assured him we were very much not mad and
expressed our love for him, and then he even prayed at the end. I think
he prayed because he wants us to keep coming back.
He is a very sweet man.
--
Have a good week, keep your head up, and smile.
Have a good week, keep your head up, and smile.
Monday, October 1, 2012
This week was another good week. We met an active member from another ward in Lingayen this week and as we were talking she said she had a brother in our ward boundaries. We found her brother Tyson and started teaching him. After the first lesson we challenged him to be baptized and he accepted, and after the second we invited him to come to church. Well he came to church and knows some of the people there as well. It was just a great referral we are so glad that we found him. We found another investigator that is the referral from a referral from a referral of a less active. The less active is not very interested in returning, neither was her referral, or even her referral, but now... we have found someone who is interested in our message. I saw almost the best reaction I've seen from someone I've taught when Elder Sagayno told them God had a telephone and you could call him. Our investigator was super excited and very enthusiastically asked how they could talk to God. Elder Sagayno then explained that all you had to do was pray. Our investigators were very willing to pray after that.
Right now I am trying to help the less actives remember their
spiritual experiences, or have those experiences. There are a lot of
less actives that say they've never prayed and asked if the Book of
Mormon was true. When times become hard people must
rely on personal spiritual experiences to stay active, so for less
actives either they don't have those experiences or they don't remember
them to rely on them. Anyway thats what I'm up to and it is going well.
I will write again of course next week. Sorry
it's short
Have a good week, keep your head up, and smile.
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