The Adventures of a Hero

Every hero becomes a hero by starting and completing an adventure. Every adventure starts with a call(1) [when I got my mission call to serve which i chose to accept], which then proceeds to when you actually start the adventure and cross the threshold(2). In the threshold the hero now starts to notice that everything changes and is unfamiliar to what happens. This definitely happened to me when i first got here in the mission. Seeing that the food, the streets, the smell, everything was different especially the language...if anyone knows me you know I love to talk so throwing me in a place where I could not communicate as well within within around me was a change. However, i was able to adjust. But still, with all the new experiences and surroundings, the road of trials(3) can never be avoided. Over the course of my mission i have experienced trials of all kind whether if it has been rejection or the pain of seeing people not change for the better or whenever personal battles may have come but even in these moments any hero keeps pushing on and is able to push on. No matter how tough the fight gets the hero cannot give and needs to prove themself. Nevertheless, there is always one trial or a period where it almost is impossible to bear this called the Abyss(4). That may sound ridiculous to some, serving out alone in the mission no matter where you are tests you. You don't choose where you serve, who you serve with or really a lot of things. The Lord calls you and assigns you and because of His great love for us He allows us to experience hard times. In my mission I have experienced some rely testing times but I can confidently say that like every good hero I was able to go through metamorphosis(5). The stage of being able to adjust to the trials and rise above them. Because of the mission I have served I have changed, I am different, stronger, more adapted. I am not perfect, but I am better than I was before. After this moment in my mission where I made big changes in myself is where I was able to make the ultimate boom(6). Here is where I saw the success and fruit of my labors. I felt the satisfaction of being able to find those that the Lord led me to and I can say that there is nothing better than being able to do work that saves people. Being able to see the lives others change has changed my life. And now of course every hero no matter how great has to go on to the next stage, whatever that may be. As they continue to see success really the thing that makes them the happiest is to Return the Boom(7) or help others be successful, help others learn and grow and do the work successfully. Being able to help other missionaries as a trainer, zone leader, or district leader has really been a blessing and I am so glad. That I have been able to leave a legacy here in the mission and with those I have served. And thus is the hero's cycle. The mission truly has been an adventure and now it is time for the adventure to end and for me to move on. I believe anyone can be hero. I believe we can be all heroes to at least someone. Everyone has the capacity to do this because we are children of God. Christ was and is the greatest hero there ever was. Not all believe in Him and I want to leave my testimony that He lives and He loves us and He is a real being. If you want your life to be changed come into Him, learn of Him, try to know Him and if you already do try to get to know Him a little better. I know that He sacrificed Himself for us and He loves us all. This Church is His only true church. This is the Church of Jesus Christ and the Book of Mormon testifies of this. He lives. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Elder Wright

Ah man Pictures 6/24

Ah man, i dont think anything is worse than when you wake up at 3am and the power goes out and you feel the humid wet suffocate you. hahaha the power didnt come back until noon oh man that was fun hahaha. to make it better when i was trying to sleep just to tease me to the power came on for a second at five in the morning and then shut off again hahahaha. It was a good laugh i am gonna miss those days. A lot of people have been running out of water we are really lucky that we have not been cut off from having water.

This week was really good because Mellissa ever since her first time going to church has been continually progressing. It has been so awesome because we have seen their testimonies grow and they have been taking time to not just go to church every sunday but to pray and read the Book of Mormon. I am so happy that we have heavily focused on reading the Book of Mormon and they have sought for understanding. Many people will complain or say that they cant read it or they dont have time or it's too hard to understand but they have had no problem. I can tell that they truly are inviting the spirit in their life and allowing God to give them understanding. I have been thinking about that a lot lately that as we are doing things that invite the spirit into our life we are able to receive the Spirit in our life or as we are obedient than we are given understanding or intelligence and vice versa when we are disobedient, intelligence is taken away. 

Doctrine and Covenants Section 93:

36 The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.

37 Light and truth forsake that evil one.

38 Every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning; and God having redeemed man from the fall, men became again, in their infant state, innocent before God.

39 And that wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth, through disobedience, from the children of men, and because of the tradition of their fathers.

I have definitely noticed that, that is true in my life and really everything we do has a consequence and every good thing we do has a good consequence or a blessing. Seeing Mellissa and her family be blessed with the gospel in their lives has been awesome to see. I am so happy that we felt prompted to go there and we acted on the prompting. Mellisa will be baptized this sunday and i cannot wait to send photos.

Kian will also be baptized this sunday and we are really excited to be able to have seen the changes in him as he has strive to more obedient. His confidence has grown so much it is incredible to see the new person that he is. I know that the gospel does help us in all aspects of our life which is why it is so hard when we receive rejection as missionaries. This week had it's ups and downs i think one really good experience is the girl that we found Rica went to church! We are so excited because it seemed like she had a really good experience. Just yesterday we were able to teach her again with her mom and we had a good lesson. We are hoping that she will continue to search the truthfulness in the Book of Mormon and that this is Christ's church something awesome was that we were able to bring May Martin who is the daughter of the less active family we helped come back to church and she shared great testimony. It was an awesome experience I know that what we have done this area has been really good. I am so grateful for all of the people here in San Jose Del Monte. I am also grateful for all of you and especially my Savior Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. I love you all!

Elder Wright

w/ mango and green beans

jenelyn and Jennifer and jacob and jon carlo

cutest little girl

ubaldo family

Spider Bite, New Door and Guided by the Spirit

"First things first, I am the realest" - Iggy Azaela or however you spell her name the famous australian rapper...i hope any one will get that. Second things second i want to give a shout out to the tiny spider in the bathroom that after i flicked off of me landed on my foot and commenced to bite me and make foot sting for the rest of the night. Thank you. #noregrets i totally destroyed him after--no i dont actually know if it was a guy spider.

After almost a week, we finally made two doors into one door, got it painted and now we have a new door! Finally! 

I just love every single week of the mission and all of the wonderful different experiences even if it is being bit by a spider.

Cyyyharlotte got baptized this week which was amazing! my favorite moment was seeing her come out of the water and literally shake in excitement! That made me so happy. The best thing now is that the Cyyyharlotte and her aunts Cyyyeleste and Myyyelissa now really want to do missionary work and they asked us if they can hold a family home evening and help us teach families that we are teaching around their area.

It was awesome because we were out finding and it is so weird how the Spirit doesn't just push you but it also will hold you back sometimes and that happened to me twice this week. Last tuesday all of our appointments did not work out and we were left with not knowing what to do and we could not find this person we were finding and in that moment we couldve left and gone somewhere else but i felt so confused and then i decided to stop and we waited and all of the sudden we saw this little kid look at us from this one house, so we decided to go to the house. Long story short we taught the family inside and it turns out that they are family members of someone in the ward! Insane! Byyyelinda said she would go to church this sunday! One other experience I want to talk about is that yesterday we were walking around and we found this girl named Ryyyica who is really interested in the gospel and is looking for the truth. she literally said she is confused and doesnt know which of all of the different religions and beliefs is true!! That is our message!!!! We were so excited. Before we found her the same thing happened where we couldnt find the address to where we wanted to go and then i was confused stopped and then saw someone and felt prompted to talk and share.

The Spirit works in so many ways and i know that when we strive our best to live worthy of the spirit the spirit will guide us. The spirit will guide all of you and i pray it will. I love you all!!

Elder Wright

chicken macaroni alfredo

the door

melissa (someone we are teaching) and her cute little nieces

charlotte!

abad family

Jordia's birthday They love to invite missionaries to any birthday here hahaha

EL NIÑO

Classic skit by Christ Farley, i hope you all know about the EL NIÑO skit from saturday night live, i think only the adults would know. right now we are in El Niño season and i dont know if it affects the sky but the sky at night but it has been beautiful here. Every night we have been having lightning storms but the best part is, is that there is no rain or thunder! it is so cool! I dont know if you remember the opening credits when you start watching Harry Potter where it shows the title and then it has the lightning and the clouds and dark sky. yeah that is how cool it looks. I love it.

This week we labored in the vineyard and worked hard to help people to keep their commitments. honestly that is the hardest part of missionary work. Helping people see that what they need to do to be happier is change and that are messages is what they need as part of their change. I think it is a fact that if we are not satisfied with our life or if we are experiencing that feeling of route presentation or almost like that there is something missing that we need to do to those things that will not gives a temporary happiness but things that will help us live a higher standard of life, the one that helps us follow Christ and make covenants with Him to come closer unto Him. What we find sometimes especially with ourselves is we complain about how life is but we never do anything or get to comfortable where we are. We experience this a lot as missionaries where you cry repentance and it is so tiring and hard but, even through rejection it is still so much fun weirdly enough that no matter how hard it is, if you really focus on Christ and the work then you never get too discouraged. He always lifts you up but just like the people in the time of Moses with the snake placed on the rod all you have to do is look unto Him to be healed or helped.

One of the families we are working with is KYYYaren and TXXon TXXon. They are great because they do the assignments and they love the messages we share with them. We have been teaching them about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They became interested to know the message and have been praying to know the truth but have not yet gotten an answer. This last week we decided to share about the Plan of Salvation. It was a great lesson we explained how families can be together forever and talked about the temple. I love talking about the temple. I believe it is very important that people get familiar with the temple because this is one of the great blessings that can be found anywhere else, in any other belief! That God has created a plan for families and marriages to not be until death and then they part but for the eternities!!!! kYYYaren wants to know about the truthfulness of the message but she is afraid of changing religion and her traditions. The spirit was so strong in the message as we tried to help them see that they need to go to church and pray about the message. Hopefully they will see more what they need to do.

AYYnnie, JXXR and BXXenedict are still not sure about baptism, we are working hard to help them and have taught them a lot now so we are going to work on them reading the Book of Mormon all of the way through and try as much as we can to get them more involved in the church with activities and whatever else we can.The talk that Elder Uchtdorf gave was profound. Come and See, Come and Help, Come and Stay. Very simple and i know that combined with the Book of Mormon will really help them.

CYYharlotte was allowed to get baptized, we are so very excited, we got scared that she would not be allowed by her parents and yesterday we were really excited because her Aunt MYYelissa went to church and she really liked it and we are so very excited because before this family did not go to church and was visited by missionaries in the past being encouraged to go to church but they opened up to us and we are excited about it. We know the day that when all of our plans fell through a month ago and we decided to go visit a family we didnt know (the AXXbad family, CYYharlotte and MYYelissa's family) that we were guided by Heavenly Father to meet them and help them come unto Christ. God works in very mysterious ways. We are very excited for them.

We have been challenged to get 15 investigators every single week and this week was a busy and rough one so we fell short of our goal and yesterday we needed to find two more investigators and we finished our last appointment at 8:30. You can just imagine how worried we were to get those last two investigators. We went and taught one whose name is Darla. Coolest experience ever because we tried to keep the lesson short but we also wanted to help her according to her needs and it was really cool because i felt a quiet firm impression that she is facing problems with feeling judged at school among her peers and i talked about it and testified the gospel will help her feel happier and we testified that God loves her. it was awesome and then the last lesson we mightve found after curfew...because we kept getting rejected but we made our goal and kept our word to our mission president and then on the way home we found someone who was being taught and almost got baptized but then moved away. Crazy! i love how people just get placed in our path! it is awesome!

The Work of the Lord is great! I know His hand is in all things! I love you all and hope you have  a fantastic week!

Elder Wright

america, chile, brasil, and australia

BIGGEST SNAIL EVER 

we are trying to replace the door and so we can still shower as use the bathroom, this is the curtain i created out of garbage bags

this is me tired as we worked on the door...thats a story

coconut shells

Work is NOT Over Yet

Wow only one month left till i hit American soil and get to eat a real nice juicy pure beef burger BUT the work is NOT over yet! This week was another good one.

Elder Arias had his first real experience of pouring rain and flooding! that was really fun and also cold! We were traveling by jeepney to get down to this place called Katahan. On the way we experienced heavy traffic and decided to get out and start walking. No matter what, even with our umbrella we just got soaked except for our upper half. That was the first time Elder Arias had been cold his whole mission since being in the MTC with the A/C. He loved it. We eventually did not need to go to Katahan becuase who we were going to visit wasnt there so we kept walking and just laughed because that whole day all of our plans had fallen through. We finally got to Green Forbes where we were able to teach the Abad family. Charlotte, Celeste and Melissa. Charlotte and Melissa are both non members and we had a great discussion about keeping the commandments. We planned a Family Home Evening with them and later in the week got to do the family home evening. Charlotte's mom is a member but she has no interest in becoming active, they enjoyed the family home evening but they are not ready to make any bigger commitments that listening which is always sad, but you can never force anyone. Charlotte is still going strong though and we hope she will be baptized this month.

Other families we are teaching is the Rico, Destua and Bernaldo family. Every time we go there to teach we have around fifteen people in the house. It is crazy! We always have so much fun teaching them and they really enjoy the message. Things got really busy and we were hoping we could commit them to go to church but we could not get a good commitment in with all of them but we were able to visit the Bernaldo family before sunday sadly the mom didnt go to church and that was sad but 7 kids from those three families came to church! it was so funny because we were waiting outside and we did not see them because we were supposed to meet the family outside and it was already past 8:50 so we were about to go bakc inside till we saw a jeepney stop and all 7 of those kids run out towards the church hahaha I love the kids here. They are so responsible and have a strong spiritual sensitivity. We really hope that next time we will be able to get the parents to go to church so that their whole family will be able to experience the blessings of church. We have hope thought that things will work out and that these kids will be a big part of their conversion. That is one of the amazing things about kids is that even they make a big impact on their parents lives through their righteous desires and choices

I love being able to exercise the priesthood. I think more and more my testimony of the priesthood has been strenghtened. It necessary in the family. All Fathers need to be worthy of exercising their priesthood. We had a wonderful opportunity to give blessings to one of our investigators who was sick with her asthma and also the Martin family (the less active family i quoted "Man in the Mirror" to, who is going through a really hard time with finding out that she has a tumor. Sister Martin has been going through a lot of stress. The other night we went to them and she was not there yet and had just done a check up at the lab to get results for how serious it is. We were planning on sharing a spiritual thought and then leaving because we didnt want to overstay and Sister Martin was not back yet and then as were sharing she walked through door and that is where we found out everything. We felt prompted to give her a blessing and this last sunday they finally went to church. We know that it wasnt just coincidence what time we got there at at but it was guided by the Lord and I am glad that we were able to help them to be comforted and come closer unto Christ.

Annie, JR, Benedict and Jaya are so close to getting baptized but are still having some doubts after we invited them. We visited them and taught about the Restoration again and explained more fully about being baptized by priesthood authority but we are still trying to figure out what is missing. It is difficult but man it is so much fun to teach them. I have faith that they will be baptized and we are not going to give up on them!

My testimony on fasting has been strengthened a lot this week. As we are experiencing many trials and struggles in the work, fasting was something that gave us a lot peace and allowed us to give everything to the Lord and keep pressing forward. We saw that prayers were answered and that he is pushing the work forward.

The work is exciting, serving is exciting being a holder of the priesthood is exciting i love being a missionary and i love my calling! I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Wright

beautiful view

the deacons

awesome pday chicken din din

Conversion

What an AMAZING week. What i love about my week is that there always such spiritual experiences and always something ridiculous or weird that happens as you can already tell from the countless letters that i have written all of you over the past 22 months about my mission.

First I want to start off with that Sister Nadia was finally baptized!!!!! That was one of the best moments of my whole mission. Seeing Elder Arias baptize her, someone that we have been teaching and see grow closer and closer to Christ has been amazing. She is so much happier now and i think one of my favorite parts was being able to give her the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Honestly that is one of my favorite things to be able to do as a Melchizedek Priesthood holder. Being able to be guided in what to say and what to bless her with was such a spiritual experience. The spirit was so strong the whole baptism. The other people there also shared great experiences of their conversion and it was amazing. It is amazing how coming unto Christ can completely change who you are, another great thing is that we can experience this change over and over again. It does take constant thought for the little things like scripture study and praying and applying the teachings that God gives us. Through those little things though we will experience a mighty change and feel the love God overwhelm, its not as big as an event as baptism but we will feel the same great change in us and newness of life.

Annie finally went to church this week as well with her kids! We have been working with Annie for so long trying to get her to church since the beginning of these six weeks and she finally went to church on our sixth sunday. Last monday because i felt prompted to read the Book of Mormon with her is what we ended teaching and we had such an amazing lesson with them. We read from 3 Nephi 11 which talks about Christ coming to the Earth in the Americas and we talked about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and my favorite part of was hearing Elder Arias testify about Christ. Testifying about Christ is also one of my favorite things here in the mission, nothing brings in the spirit like a testimony.

Another great experience was with Kian, Kian is someone we are teaching who has been a little bit off track. ever since we have been teaching him he has been reading the scriptures and going to church and last sunday gave him a baptismal date and we are really excited for them. We are excited to see how much more he will change. Before he will never talk to us but now he opens up to us and shares more to us about how he feels.

I am so grateful for the wonderful experience that i have been able to have to see so many different conversions this week. It's amazing how the conversion process is the same but everyone goes through different experiences. I love the mission and i love every moment of this mission and i love my Savior and Heavenly Father and i love you all!

Elder Wright

Sister Nadia's Baptism!!!

Such an Amazing Baptism!

Salve and her daughter Cathleen

Elder Arias baptized the sisters person being taught

this is San Jose Heights...it's not all jungle here hahaha

some missionaries in the zone

Elder Arias and I at Eco Park

the Zone!

My awesome district

Broken Bathroom Door

So...yeah our bathroom door is broken. We had problems with our bathroom door and just yesterday was probably the last. We were all getting ready for church and just about to leave because we were running out of time. Elder Herrick's first thought of course was that he needed to punch the door to get out hahahaha. Elder Andrade (his companion) when he heard that worked on the door and tried to get it unlocked so that we did not have to break the door. It went on for ten minutes until Elder Herrick said alright thats it im punching out if this does not work in 60 seconds. The countdown started, poor Elder Andrade started to freak out and try to work on that door but time ran out and next thing Elder Herrick was pounding on the door, good thing was that the door was not solid wood and it didnt hurt him too bad but he broke a hole and then he realized that him punching through the door literally did nothing! XD we were absolutely dead!!! He was still stuck and then because we were needing to get to church, Elder Andrade kicked the door down hahaha. Then we made it to church. After he really realized that he didnt need to kick the door and we had a good laugh about it

We have been really working with Annie and her family to get to church but it has been such a struggle. We thought they were going to really come yesterday but i guess something came up again. That's always a sad feeling but there is still hope! We are planning on going to them again today. Hopefully things will get better. Last week we got the chance to teach her in the midst of appointments cancelled. Usually when things like this happen we don't always continue to teach the same people but for i just really feel like we need to keep teaching her. Elder Arias taught an amazing lesson the other day at their house about the scripture Helaman 5:12 i really just sat back and watched how in the little tagalog he has how he beautifully taught with the spirit and used the members in the lesson to help Annie realize how creating a strong foundation on Christ can help her. I was so proud of him because not many new missionaries, ESPECIALLY learning a new language can do that. That's my trainee. Elder Arias and i are like bestfriends, we think so much alike the other day we had so many appointments and other stuff we had to do so we both concluded that waking up earlier and starting our day earlier would be the best option. He's so diligent i love it. 

In our lessons we always try to keep it serious so that we can have the spirit with us and we really try to find out what their concerns are. We also really like to get to know our investigators and build a good relationship with them as much as we can so they trust us. I really love teaching people. One funny thing that happened is we were teaching this less active family, the Martin family. That family was really nice, they had the most amazing mango graham ice candy. I wish i could describe its like an otter pop but its creamy chilled ice cream and its only like 5 pesos. yum. We got in their house and started getting to know them and this one i let Elder Arias take to give him a chance to lead but the best part was is that i didnt have to tell him to teach, he just did. Great leader. They went on and talked about the different problems and concerns they have about the members and about being a new member which i admit its not easy. we listened and really tried not to be judgmental and i remember Elder Arias asked her question after empathizing with her and then he asked her" but sister in your opinion, is the church true?" That question literally took her back she leaned back and was just like that is a good question. she basically said that she does believe but she still kept complaining and then i empathized with her about how she feels about leaders and how she doesnt get visited and she made many other complaints but she talked about the church and how she loves the missionaries and they are the backbone of the church and elder arias told her that everyone is all of the members together are needed and thats when divine revelation came to me and i remembered a Michael Jackson song. I told her what Elder said was true and explained what he said a little more and then i told her do you know Michael Jackson and they said yes and then because she has all of these problems with the church which no one is perfect we admit but the church is true and we all need to be a part of perfecting the saints. So i told her after that there is this song where he sings, "If you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself and make the change." After i repeated and relating to her and then said "If you want to make the [church] a better place take a look at yourself and make the change." The Spirit was strong and then after that we talked about how the reason we go to church is to partake of the sacrament because no matter how much we pray or read if we arent baptized by proper authority, priesthood authority, and continue to take the sacrament worthily it's not enough. It was powerful, the daughter ended up going to church and we were really happy to see that. it was awesome!

Definitely a really good week and i was really happy to see Elder Arias grow. I am so grateful to have him as a companion and to be able to train before i leave. I love this work and i love the people I serve, especially Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ (Mosiah 2:17)

I love you all!

Elder Wright

our roomates

missionaries

Elder Arias and i

i was so tired that day hahaha

Nadia, brother custodio and elder burgess