Day number 357 of my imprisonment, the mangoes are once again ripe but it’s too early in the season for their plans of revolution. We have begun stockpiling umbrellas to ‘nip it in the bud’ so to say (name that movie/ musical/ book) though we are yet uncertain of our victory. Naw, just kidding, though today is the 357th day of my mission (thank you calculators) which is nuts.
Things that happened this week: not lessons! Joke! We had some good lessons this week and we had some really bad lessons too, but that is just how it goes sometimes. Me and my companion are still trying to adjust to the new missionary schedule (study time is flexible so we actually can study at different times to better fit the needs of the investigators in our area) which is just in time as one of our progressing investigators is only available at 1pm, when we are usually just starting our studies.
Ethan is pretty young, and a member of a part member family, but due to his mother’s partial activity he knows just about nothing of the church, and about the same for the bible. So it's interesting starting from the bottom with him and helping the family move into full activity. That being said it's also fun as Ethan’s family is from Manila so he doesn’t speak all that much Tagalog; so he’s mostly English speaking! So I'm having a blast with that and my companion is not. But she is really smart and depends upon the Spirit well so I know she will be fine. This may be an opportunity for her to realize how I feel in most lessons! Haha.
Despite having found only about 1 person who we feel will actually be willing to take the lessons in the last 4 weeks of finding the work is really progressing. We are shaving down on the Investigators that are not quite ready yet and focusing on those that are- this is limiting our teaching pool, but giving us more time to find those people who have been prepared. That’s the fun thing about The Work. This Gospel and this church are for everyone. Literally every single person on this earth now, in the past and those not yet born; this church is for them and they are made for this church. That is the result of it being the TRUE church of God. He wants to save everybody; you just need to stick to His rules. Kinda like how a parent would love to take their kids to Disneyland (I know my parents do haha) but if the kids are rowdy and are not ready for that… sad day! So we are out inviting people to ‘Spirit Disneyland’ and sometimes people are too busy to go which is sad because I know it's hecka fun, and way better than any fleeting happiness you find on earth. This is the stuff that is for eternities.
In other news I got charged at by Kalabaw. If Maleficent turned into a cow instead of a dragon that is what she would look like; its big, black, and got super cool horns. It does not look so cool when it charges at you. Luckily it was tied to a giant mango tree so it couldn’t charge for very long and got rewarded by a bunch of green mangoes falling on its head so then it just ate the mangoes instead of us. So hooray for short attention spans!
This Thursday we had 4 members contact us asking if they could work with us- it was nuts! We had a great time on splits and I hope that we can continue to help the members in their desire to learn how to, and do missionary work. Language wise I go from days where I feel just about fluent and others where I get politely reprimanded by other missionaries or by some well meaning members to focus more on my language study. I guess it's like drawing, I know I can but sometimes that talent just leaves- especially when I'm nervous.
The thing is, Filipino’s have almost no concept of accents. It's not really in their vocabulary. And I'm not kidding. Most of the time a member or an investigator or whoever will say: “Oh my! Slang!” What they mean is “By golly, my dear fellow I can’t understand your accent!” so that will be added to the list to do:
1) Learn the language
2) Lose the accent
We had a baptism this week from Batac B (my area is Batac A) and boy what a convert! She was introduced to the gospel through her member boyfriend who was very avid in expressing that while he introduced her he didn’t convince her to join. She bore her testimony beautifully after her baptism and the spirit was very strong. It was an incredible night, and I know it's one Allyna (the convert) will never forget.
Well that’s all!
From the sister with an umbrella of steel and Kalabaw repelling mangos.
Sister Eldredge
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