Week 37

Sister Eldredge & Elder Eldredge
Serving in The Ring of Fire

11/14/2016

This has been a week… On Monday we set up a FHE with a member and invited two investigator families, however when we went to go pick them up they were not at home. So we arrived to the FHE sad until we realized that they had also invited their own nonmember friends! It was really cool. We had brought with us a sister who had just moved into town and had been going all the way to Laoag to attend church. She had a great time and got to meet their daughters who are somewhat close in age to her, then we went to the Espiritu’s home. An active member has been working with Edgar Espiritu (the son of Salvation) and he had set up a FHE and had invited us. Can I just repeat that? The members had set up a FHE in a LA home and invited us missionaries. When we got there basically all the young men were there to support JR, who is 17. Salvation loved all the visitors and all in all it was an incredible experience. Not to mention their economic situation is improving. We are thinking of talking to their neighbors and teaching them as a family. (the neighbors take care of nanay when Edgar and Jr are at work.)

    So Sister Ganaden is scared to go out and work now as we keep having days were we will do everything within our power to find, have appointments, meet with investigators, and all that good stuff- yet we keep having days were we are wondering and knocking on doors and it just feels like we are not making much of a difference. The Ward is great, we have two progressing investigators who will be getting interviewed this Saturday for baptism but it seems in the finding and lesson area we are lacking. We joke that Tuesday mornings are cursed, but we go out and we work our tails off trying to find those that are there. This is a city, so we know they are there somewhere we just gotta find them! And Find we did! We may not have made it up to the number goal we had set for ourselves but we found some families that seem really interested and have member friends!

     So this was a great pump up for Sister Ganaden, then we ran into an American. I was shy and didn’t want to approach him at first but Sister Ganaden was insistent so we went up and talked to him. In English. At the house and while emailing I'm pretty good at speaking in English, but I realized during our chat with Albert that I speak Taglish. That isn’t English. So it was slightly embarrassing how I couldn’t speak. He wasn’t interested and refused a pamphlet or anything so I was worried that it would make Sister Ganaden sad again but she was too busy laughing at my terrible English so it was all good.

    So Nanay Tina, the one with all the questions. When we first met her she was sooo against baptism, as she didn’t want to discuss it, and sometimes it felt like she just wanted to check and see how much we knew the bible, but it seems every time we work with her its just a milestone in spirituality. During the lessons you can tell the spirit is trying to talk to her. If he was any more present he would be visible. Sometimes it feels like he is waiving his hand in front of Tina’s face! But This lesson I feel like she finally got it. She had agreed to our discussions and the logic behind it but this time she felt the spirit and recognized it for what it was. She just kept saying ‘I want to be baptized. I want to be baptized.” You can imagine my excitement. She still has a way to go and a few more questions she wants to work through but it feels that she will begin to progress now. She still needs to work on building a testimony but she can recognize the spirit and to me, even if she isn’t baptized or anything I feel like I have made a difference in her life. I would like to also point out we had gone to her house every day this week but this was the first time she had been there (on Friday.) She teased us about not having come sooner as Friday was her birthday and she had a party to celebrate turning 61.

    Our progressing investigators are Mary Jane and her sister Jennifer. They are really good friends with the Recent Convert family that will be getting sealed in the temple this December [temple family sealing is making the family for eternity; they will always be a family.] and they always beat us to church on Sunday. This last Sunday when we got there we asked the members if they had seen them and they hadn’t. So we called them but their grandmother had the phone back at their house and said they weren’t there. So we called Sister Domingo- the RC- and she said she hadn’t seen them and was about to leave for church. Her daughters were already there but they said Mary Jane and Jennifer hadn’t come with them. We were just about ready to go and find them when they jumped out from where they had been hiding – they and all the Domingo’s had been pulling our leg and totally pranked us. Sister Ganaden chased Mery Jane around saying “Don’t do that!” and Mery Jane and Jennifer were just laughing and laughing. It was a good prank! Haha.

    This next cycle [6 weeks] will end on Christmas day and Sister Hermosa will be training again so we will have a new sister in the apartment, which will be super fun! I just can't wait.

From the Sister who, despite ups and downs, is working her hardest.  

Sister Eldredge