Well this week we filled our Gospel Principles class again.  It was great.  One of our investigators brought a friend to church because she liked it so much last week. We of course were happy with that.  

     This week we met a few really cool people.  We met one investigator that Elder Sta.Ana mentioned 'It's like she's already a member."  We have an area in Lingayen that I don't really like to go to.  We have very few people progressing over there and it is far away.  We were down to only one family over there that was really listening at all and we were going to go visit them.  They weren't home, and then we dropped by 3 or 4 other people we knew in that area who also were not home.  We were walking with still an hour and a half before our next appointment and I was thinking that if we didn't find someone to teach right now, I would probably never come back to this part of the area.  There seemed no reason to ever come back as it is the least productive area.  Well we saw a group of people and decided to talk to them.  We started talking to them and they all ran away except 2.  They turned out to be great.  We taught this investigator and she agreed with everything, then she gave her opinions and insights that were exactly right.  We taught about the Book of Mormon and she got it immediately.  She said ' Oh so the Bible has 2 testaments the New and the Old and the Book of Mormon is the 3rd'. Then she started reading the Book of Mormon.  When we went back she said she only read a little bit and then proceeded to give the summary of the entire section we left for her, and then read to us some of her favorite verses, which I would mention were near the end of her reading.  She prayed about it and said she's knows it's true.  That is just a great story.

        I have yet to actually encounter Jehovah's Witnesses (they are called Tasi [Tassy] here), but I always meet people that know them, or people that have been taught, but the most common is people whose children are being taught.  They tell me that the 'Tasi' come and teach the kids on the street and give them candy.  One father was super happy when we talked to him and said we were the first religious people to ever talk to him and not just the kids.  We have 3 families we are teaching that have said similar things.  All 3 families love that we have family focus.

      Another thing we have been doing as of late is that when our appointments fall through we go and teach ward missionaries.  These wonderful ward missionaries always seem to home and willing to listen, and then we share to them about how important it is that they do their assignments and visit their families.  They seem to be excited to visit and teach after we have talked with them. We are hoping to get that to become actual visiting  not just being excited to visit.

        We have a lot of people coming back as well.  Last week we helped a less active man come to church for the first time.  We went to his house and picked him up.  He saw his old friends and loved church. This week we didn't manage to teach him because he was never home.  So imagine our great surprise and excitement when we saw him walk into the chapel at church.  He came completely on his own.  People are coming back.  There are so many great experiences.

Have a good week, keep your head up, and smile.

                                                                           Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill