Dear Family and Friends,
Well this week was full, but very good. Since I'm in the Philippines we listened to Conference yesterday and Saturday. We were able to watch all of the sessions except for the Sunday morning session, so if you have anything you would like to mention to me about them, let me know! Fro conference on Saturday we went to the District Center (for those of you who don't know about a district, its basically a Stake, just not enough priesthood holders). But on Sunday we went to our home branch to watch conference. Well it turned out that the branch only had discs to the Saturday sessions of Conference, so watched a repeat of Saturday morning. Later we decided to travel to the other branch in Malasiqui (my assigned area) to watch the afternoon session. I really liked what each of them said, but I will go into that later.
This week I have another story about spiders. So I have mentioned earlier that we had some pet spiders, now these were relatively small, maybe about the size of a Peanut M&M. Well earlier this week I came into my room to find a spider the size of a baseball chillin' on my wall. Well this creeped both me and my companion out tremendously so we spent an hour trying to catch it. Well we eventually did. Well not even 5 mins later, another Elder in the house said he found another one outside. Well of course our thoughts were "Why not have a spider fight?" Here in the Philippines we have spider fights. You simply put 2 spiders together, and they try to eat each other. So we put the two spiders together, but nothing happened. Ironically the bigger spiders are less aggressive then the small ones. After we came back to the house after our work, we came to find that our 8 legged-fellows had somehow managed to escape their tupperware cage. Elder Tomas and I think it was Elder Comendador though. Needless to say it was hard to fall asleep that night.
Later in the week we had exchanges (where you switch companions for a day) with the zone leaders. While we went to work in the area we came across a weird shed with these weird brown things hanging from the ceiling. Well come to find out it was tobacco! I had never seen tobacco before so it was kinda cool to see, but of course since its bawal (forbidden) we took pictures of disapproval.
So as I mentioned earlier I really liked conference. Before my mission, conference was just two days were I listened to old people talk and while I listened I snacked on Oreos and stuff. But my view of conference has changed immensely. I found the Talks given to be oddly relevant to things I wondered about. I was a good refresher for me. In particular I liked what Elder Bednar talked about. Something I was thinking about this week were about why its hard to follow thee rules sometimes. And his talk helped to see that disobedience comes when the fear of men overshadows the fear of God. Doesn't that sound right? For some missionaries the view and feeling of praise of other missionaries seems to drown out the importance of doing what the Lord needs them to do. I know in my life I have let the fear of "now" blind me of consequences "later". Something I also noticed is how our decisions are majorly affected on our perspective. Satan works most often by changing that perspective from eternal, to temporal. I have found that hard decision become easier (notice I didn't say easy, just less difficult) when we decide to focus on the later, and not the now. As Elder Bednar spoke of Peter walking on the water, its when we shift our view, that our faith weakens. So simply put, "look forward to Christ".
I'm happy healthy and well, I am very blessed to be here, and very blessed to serve, I love you all!
Mahal ko kayo,
Well this week was full, but very good. Since I'm in the Philippines we listened to Conference yesterday and Saturday. We were able to watch all of the sessions except for the Sunday morning session, so if you have anything you would like to mention to me about them, let me know! Fro conference on Saturday we went to the District Center (for those of you who don't know about a district, its basically a Stake, just not enough priesthood holders). But on Sunday we went to our home branch to watch conference. Well it turned out that the branch only had discs to the Saturday sessions of Conference, so watched a repeat of Saturday morning. Later we decided to travel to the other branch in Malasiqui (my assigned area) to watch the afternoon session. I really liked what each of them said, but I will go into that later.
This week I have another story about spiders. So I have mentioned earlier that we had some pet spiders, now these were relatively small, maybe about the size of a Peanut M&M. Well earlier this week I came into my room to find a spider the size of a baseball chillin' on my wall. Well this creeped both me and my companion out tremendously so we spent an hour trying to catch it. Well we eventually did. Well not even 5 mins later, another Elder in the house said he found another one outside. Well of course our thoughts were "Why not have a spider fight?" Here in the Philippines we have spider fights. You simply put 2 spiders together, and they try to eat each other. So we put the two spiders together, but nothing happened. Ironically the bigger spiders are less aggressive then the small ones. After we came back to the house after our work, we came to find that our 8 legged-fellows had somehow managed to escape their tupperware cage. Elder Tomas and I think it was Elder Comendador though. Needless to say it was hard to fall asleep that night.
Later in the week we had exchanges (where you switch companions for a day) with the zone leaders. While we went to work in the area we came across a weird shed with these weird brown things hanging from the ceiling. Well come to find out it was tobacco! I had never seen tobacco before so it was kinda cool to see, but of course since its bawal (forbidden) we took pictures of disapproval.
So as I mentioned earlier I really liked conference. Before my mission, conference was just two days were I listened to old people talk and while I listened I snacked on Oreos and stuff. But my view of conference has changed immensely. I found the Talks given to be oddly relevant to things I wondered about. I was a good refresher for me. In particular I liked what Elder Bednar talked about. Something I was thinking about this week were about why its hard to follow thee rules sometimes. And his talk helped to see that disobedience comes when the fear of men overshadows the fear of God. Doesn't that sound right? For some missionaries the view and feeling of praise of other missionaries seems to drown out the importance of doing what the Lord needs them to do. I know in my life I have let the fear of "now" blind me of consequences "later". Something I also noticed is how our decisions are majorly affected on our perspective. Satan works most often by changing that perspective from eternal, to temporal. I have found that hard decision become easier (notice I didn't say easy, just less difficult) when we decide to focus on the later, and not the now. As Elder Bednar spoke of Peter walking on the water, its when we shift our view, that our faith weakens. So simply put, "look forward to Christ".
I'm happy healthy and well, I am very blessed to be here, and very blessed to serve, I love you all!
Mahal ko kayo,