Hello.  I am sending some pictures this time.  The first is of our Zone conference.  Urdaneta Zone and Pres. Jensen.  The next is me and Elder De Jesus, my trainee, and Elder Tolman, my trainer.  Elder Tolman is the Current Assistant to President Jensen. I put in a few pictures of Sister Villanueva's  baptism.  I also added a picture of a huge but friendly Pit Bull.  There is nothing in the picture to compare him to, but he is big, and he is only 1 year old.  That picture is mostly for mom.  That Pit Bull belongs to Lourdes Tabelin, BTW. 
     This was a good week, as you can see we had a Zone conference.  Actually it was a Tri-zone conference and it was Pres. Jensen's last conference.  He is leaving July 1 and Pres Monahan arrives.  It will be interesting, I don't know what that will be like.  I really love Pres. Jensen, but Pres. Jensen speaks highly of Pres. Monahan so it should be good.  We were told that Pres. Monahan will have a conference in his first week, and then the second week interview all the missionaries.  Pres. Jensen said in his closing remarks that what he wants for us more than anything else is to learn to always have the Spirit to be with us.  He gave amazing talks, but that is all I will say about them. 
      So this week we also had a Baptism.  That was great.  Elder De Jesus baptized Sister Villanueva.  Elder De Jesus was pretty excited as that was his first baptism on his mission.  Afterwards Sister Villanueva bore her testimony and mentioned that when she was baptized she really felt like Jesus loved her.  She also said that she had never quite felt like that before.  She has been baptized into other churches before but nothing compares to the feeling here.  She is such a great person. 
       This week we had some interesting experiences with some of our Less Active members.  First there was one name we had on our list that nobody knew.  The Ward Missionaries assigned to her are out of town so although we tried to find her, we didn't know how.  So one day we go to the house of an investigator (an interesting investigator here, because they come to church every week but run away when we go to her house).  She ran away, despite the fact she ran away earlier in the week yesterday she did indeed attend church, but since she ran away we decided to teach a less active nearby.  As we were talking before the lesson we found out she was the only member in her family, we also learned she had the same last name as the person on our focus list.  So I pulled out the list and asked if she knew this person, she responds "That's me."  The name on the list is not the name she uses, but it is her real name.  So we found her, in a round about way, and she did come to church yesterday.  We had another less active family come to church yesterday that hasn't come in years.  Years.  The members told us they wouldn't come back, well they did. And they brought with them a neighbor who is an investigator.  Missionary work goes on and will not be stopped.  We are focusing right now mostly on part member families.  As we find and teach less actives with investigator family members, they all start to progress in the Gospel.  We have quite a few part member families in our teaching pool right now.  A lot of people looking to come back. We are hoping and praying for them to return. 
                    Have a good week, keep your head up, and smile,
                             

                                          Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill

This week was a good week.  We have a lot of good going for us right now.  Sometimes I feel like you have to look for the good, other times you can see it everywhere.  This week was pretty good.  We had stake conference this week, so it was a little bit difficult to get investigators and less actives to attend. (They had to go to Urdaneta) But those we have been working with the most did go.

     This week we found and started teaching one great less active family.  They were very warm friendly and accepting toward us.  They didn't seem very much like Less Active members.  We managed to teach them a few times and then later we mentioned it to another member in the ward.  The other ward member was amazed.  You're teaching them. They actually let you in.  Those are the kind of reactions we were getting.  The ward was surprised they would even talk to us, and yet the family is doing well, keeping commitments and so forth. 
      We also have an investigator who should be getting baptized this Saturday.  This will be my first baptism with Elder De Jesus, and he excited because it is also his first baptism.  The Sister getting baptized is great.  She found the gospel and the truth, and now tells everyone about it.  She has given us so many referrals.  She tells everyone to come to church.  She even knows and encourages less actives to come to church.  She has been religious her whole life and now it finally so sure she has found what she wanted.  We are very excited for her. 
     We also found a new investigator in what I would call a miraculous way this week.  First off we were having a slow day.  It was raining all day, every appointment we had fell through, every backup plan we had made had been tried and we had just essentially been walking to appointments all day without any teaching.  After walking away from the house that we should have had an appointment, we decided to go to a recent convert's house that was nearby.  It seemed the only option at this point.  But it just didn't feel right to me.  I felt like we should do something else.  So I decided we would go back to the house we had just come from.  We were probably one hundred yards away and we started walking back.  When we got to the house, the person we were supposed to teach was still not there, but there was a family friend there.  The family friend had never talked to the missionaries before and agreed to let us teach her.  We ended up teaching a very receptive woman Tala.  We had a really good lesson, and then afterward we asked her to say the closing prayer.  During the prayer she very sincerely thanked God for allowing her to meet with the missionaries.  It was a very great prayer, and certainly made us missionaries feel pretty good too. 

I guess that's all I will relate right now, but I have a suggestion for the ward news letter.  I think in the ward news letter, accompanying  the missionary reports should be their missionary addresses.  Then ward members could easily find those addresses to write the missionaries.  Just my opinion.
Good luck to you all and have a wonderful week,
                                                            Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill

I've have been having some good days lately.  First question.  Has anyone ever heard of Manny Pacquio? He is probably the most famous and well loved person in the Philippines.  He is a boxer and when he has a fight, no one is outside.  Incidental he had a fight last Sunday morning.  (Saturday actually it was in Vegas but for us Sunday.)  The Sacrament attendance was supposed to go down, but we had 11 less actives we had visited come to church.  The week before we had 3, and this week was said was going to be low.  We also had 4 investigators come to church.  Manny Pacquio lost, coming to church won.  For at least 15 people that is. 
      This week we also had great success with our teaching in the last week.  We have one less active who really doesn't want to pray.  The problem is when we ask him to close the lesson with a prayer, he will refuse and then his wife would always say the prayer.  It was impossible for us to find out his concern because his wife would very quickly take the responsibility on herself and start praying.  So what did we do? We asked his wife to say the opening prayer.  We had a powerful lesson, and then at the end of the lesson, as expected he didn't want to pray.  Unlike previous however, we were able to ask why.  We found out his concerns, and then we helped him resolve his concerns about prayer.  I felt very guided by the Spirit in what to say to help him to overcome his concerns.  The Spirit was also very strong as he prayed, for the first time I've heard and probably for the first time in a long time.  Afterwards he was very happy, as were we.  We went in with a good plan and then were led by the Spirit to help a good man. 
     We had a couple interesting finding experiences this week.  First was an investigator.  We started talking to a man, and the first thing he said was can you guys come to my house.  I thought he must have been a less active, but as we spoke with him we found out that he was a nonmember and when our church building was being built he helped work on it.   He had some LDS friends and knew we had some "good stuff" to tell him.  We went to his house later and were able to teach him about the restoration.  It was interesting because he was very excited for us to come.  Our other find involved a small miracle.  We had been trying to contact a certain less active for about a week.  We found his house and then returned several times but he was never home and we never had contact with him.  Then a few nights ago we were out again in a far away place at night.  We knew where we could get a tricycle, but before we got far one drove by.  We are always thankful for a timely tricycle, but for this one we were especially thankful.  Why? As we were driving our tricycle driver started to cry.  When I noticed that I started to talk to him.  I asked him what his name was... And it was the very less active we had tried to contact so many time.  After our ride we talked with him a little longer.  He had recognized us as Elders and knew he was not doing everything he should.  He asked if we would come and teach him to help him change his life.  He said he had been trying to change his life already.  We have been able to teach him once and have appointments for others.  He is so receptive.   I am out of time here.
    Good luck to you all and have a wonderful week,
Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill

So this week there was a storm.  Not a Hurricane, maybe a tropical
storm.  All I know is that it had a name, Ambo.  This was the first
storm of the season, hence the name starting with A and means we are
definitely in the rainy season.  With our storm came heavy wind and
rain, and this was just a small storm.   The last few days there has
been more rain than sun.  It rains all day, and then it rains all
night.  Back in December I bought an Umbrella, and for the first time
this week I used it.  Yesterday was a particularly interesting day.
Firstly, at church a person shows up who I have never seen before.  I
asked the first councilor in the bishopric, who knows every member
less active or not, who it was.  He responded I don't know it must be
an investigator.  Now it is not very often that an investigator shows
up to church that the missionaries do not already know.  Then we as
the missionaries very quickly and excitedly tried to find out why they
had come to church and how we could help them.   It turns out that a
member invited this investigator to church and she took the
prerogative to come by herself. The member who invited came (luckily)
but the investigator was the first to arrive, which is what caused
much of our original confusion about her.  We later went to the
member's house and set an appointment to teach the investigator at the
member's house later this week.
      Yesterday again, but now in the evening we found ourselves
walking home with the other  Elders in Pozorrubio.  It was heavy rain
and the 4 of us were hurrying to try and get home before 9:30 and the
time is 9:15 and we are two miles away.  We had been walking already
for about a half hour and because of the time and the rain there was
absolutely no ride for us.  No one was out at all except for us.  We
had already been walking for a long time and then one lone tricycle
drives by.  This tricycle by my estimate was particularly small, but
nevertheless four wet Elders climbed into the small tricycle. This has
been one of many experiences where we find ourselves far away and by
sheer luck on our part we manage to get home on time.  This letter is
really short this week because we have a lot to get done today, but I
thank you all for your prayers and letters.


Good luck to you all and have a wonderful week,
Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill

    Hey I got two packages this week, there is a funny story with one.  Last Tuesday I lost my glasses.  I wok e up in the morning and they were definitely nowhere to be found, I assumed that they would  turn up, but until now they have not been seen.  Tuesday is also district meeting. We went to district meeting in Urdaneta and while there I was given two packages.  One of those packages contained contacts and although I still don't have glasses I didn't even go through a single day sightless.
    This week I met an interesting person named Lourdes Tabelin.  She is John Bytheway's first convert.  She told me she was the first baptism in a certain area and then later mentioned that was John Bytheway's first area, and now she lives in Pozorrubio.  She had a lot of things saved that  Elder Bytheway had given her. She also told us some stories about Elder Bytheway back then.  Sister Tabelin also has a big Pit Bull.  A very nice and friendly pit bull, but big nonetheless.  Elder De Jesus is afraid of dogs, really afraid of dogs.  When we got to that house, the Pit Bull was very excited to see people, it had a leash, but it very much wanted of the leash.  I could tell it was playful and nice, but Elder De Jesus didn't want to go anywhere near it. When they saw he was afraid they decided to help his fear.  They went to the dog to calm him down, and then took him of the leash to bring him closer and show that he was friendly.  Elder De Jesus was not happy with this change.  I told them to put the dog back,and they did and then we were able to go into the house.
        Speaking of dogs, I got attacked by one.  Probably doesn't help Elder De Jesus'  fear very much.  The dog tried to bite my leg, but instead bounced of my leg like there was a wall an inch in front of my leg, which left it stunned and then we walked away.  The dog didn't even touch my pant leg.   That is the first dog that I've met that is aggressive in any way, the rest just run away from me.  This week we found a lot of Less Active member.  It is interesting to see the Less Active members because a lot of them know the truth.  One less active would ask us trivia type questions about the church and then answer them to prove he knew about the church.  When he arrived at  his house he said' Elders I am immersed in sin.'  He essentially knows everything he should do but doesn't do it.  He even used to work with missionaries when he was a teenager.  He stopped going to church because his friends aren't members and he wants to keep them.  Another less active told us they don't go to church because they don't want to face a certain member.  It is very sad to see people who know but still don't go to church.
     This last week I gave a few blessings to some members.  One blessing I gave was to Sister Gladys Mundo because she is pregnant and wanted her child birth to go well. She was particularly worried that her baby was overdue and she wanted the baby to come soon to avoid any possible problems.  I asked her when her due date was...May 1st.  She said she got a check up and the doctor said she wasn't closer to having her baby now than she was then.  I gave her a blessing Sunday night (Yesterday) and said her baby would be coming soon and the Lord would take care of everything.  We got a text this morning at 8am that said she has had the baby.  12 hours from the blessing to the child birth that doctors said would not be happening any time soon.
Those aren't all my events I'd like to share, but it will have to do for this week.

--
Good luck to you all and have a wonderful week,
                                                                          Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill

It has been another great week here in the Philippines.  A lot has happened.  First of all on Wednesday I got my new companion.  My new companion is Elder De Jesus, straight from the Manila MTC. He of course is Filipino and he is from Manila.  Being from Manila means that he speaks Tagalog.  He speaks pure Tagalog, not other Philippines dialects, which is good because that means he knows Tagalog very well,and he can definitely still help me in Tagalog. We are doing well and are teaching well so far.  

         In the Philippines there are 3 seasons.  Hot, Even hotter,and rainy.  Right now it is almost into the rainy season.  It doesn't rain every day, but it rains more often now than it did before.  One day this week it very suddenly started raining very hard.   We walked in the rain for a few minutes until we passed a house with people playing outside in the rain.  They invited us to come sit on their porch, so we spent some time sitting on the porch and talking to them.  It turned out that none of them are members, but that they have a lot of family who are members. We were glad that they were nice enough to let us avoid the rain and they told us we could come back and share about the gospel.  It's funny that we only found this family because of the rain.  This week we happened upon one other great investigator. A few weeks ago I mentioned one of our investigators close to baptism left town, well he left his wife and two kids here while he went away for work for a month.  We decided to visit his wife (who is a member) and share with her about the importance of baptism hoping to help strengthen her faith in baptism as well.  It just so happens that because her husband is gone one of her cousins is staying with her to help with the kids.  We decided to share about the Restoration, and then when we came back she told us she had prayed and knew our message was true.  Essentially we could end up with two baptisms from this family instead of one.  All that came because Brother Christopher went away for work, which we saw as a great downside at the time. Of course his baptism was postponed, but if his cousin gains a testimony in the mean time it will all be worth it.  

        This week we had one kind of funny lesson.  We were teaching a little girl and her grandmother.  The little girl is 10, her name is Jenalyn.  Her grandmother was not paying attention at all while we were teaching, so half way through the lesson we developed a new strategy.  We taught Jenalyn, then we would ask Jenalyn to tell her grandmother what she had learned.  Her grandmother paid attention to her.  So we would teach Jenalyn well enough and simply enough for her to understand,then she summarized it for her grandmother.  It worked surprisingly well.  Afterwards they were both paying attention to us and both understood.  

            I am out of time here, but I would also like to mention I met some people from Provo.  Well they are from here but now are living in Provo.  The Edos family (i am pretty sure)  Anyway Sister Edos teaches Tagalog at BYU.  She also told me there was a Filipino teacher in the nursing department. 

--
Good luck to you all and have a wonderful week,
                                                                           Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill

How is everyone doing?  I hope you are all doing great wherever you happen to be.  A lot of things have happened this week.  We have a couple investigators that are just golden investigators.  We got referred to one family this that will most likely become a great family.  When we went to their house they said ‘Where have you been?’  It turns out that more than 6 months ago the missionaries here met them and set a return appointment but never managed to come back.  The missionaries only shared there once, and the member that referred them to us didn’t even know about that time.  They even kept their commitment from 6 months ago to read the pamphlet that was given them.  They were very receptive to our message.  Our other great investigator is Sister Villanueva.  We have only been able to teach her a few times, due to schedule misunderstandings, conflicts and unavailabilities, but she has been to church 4 times and last Sunday the Bishop told us she even paid tithing.  The only reason she can’t get baptized now is that we haven’t taught her all the lessons needed before baptism. 

This week we had the National Day of Service in the Philippines.  Well sort of.  The National Day of Service was April 28^th, but our ward did the service project for the National Day of Service this last week.  We cleaned out drains in an area of Pozorrubio.  We wore the Yellow shirts you always see in LDS service project pictures.  I was there with Elder Savage because we had exchanges that day.  Elder Savage is a pretty new American missionary.  He is a good guy, it was fun to work with him.  I feel like I see myself progress a lot when I look back.  I’ve worked with new American missionaries before, and I remember it being very hard, and also sometimes uncomfortable.  This time I felt very able to teach even though I was doing almost all of it.  My Tagalog has improved enough I don’t worry too much.  I was also able to focus a lot more on helping Elder Savage than previous.  Previously I was worried about pulling the lesson together, but now I could easily go through the lesson and I was trying to help Elder Savage to do as much as he felt comfortable with.  It was a good experience. 

I also went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders.  I was with Elder Teodoro, an Elder I really have a lot of respect for.  He was never in my zone before now, but in the few short times I talked with him I was highly impressed, and now I got to work with him.  However Before that, earlier in the day, Elder Tolman called.  My Trainer and now one of the Assistants called and told me I was going to be training a new missionary next transfer.  I still feel fairly new, but Elder Teodoro was very helpful for my confidence in training.  He acted in a way like a trainee by always asking me questions, he also as a Zone leader talked to me about some important things for trainers.  He is a very good missionary. I will find out who I am training at transfer meeting, I am excited but a little nervous as well to be training.  

This is a short letter, I am sorry for that, but those are the major happenings right now.  

--
Good luck to you all and have a wonderful week,
                                                                           Elder Nathaniel J. Merrill