It Takes Time! :) (Week 39, San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan, Elder Arandia)

Another good week in Metro Manila. This your host Elder Wright and here i am going to talk you about another week in the Philippines. And now here's the weather.

So it looks like we a got a forecast of it's hot, it's burning hot and you might as well call yourself bacon because you're fried! but we will get about an hour of rain on Thursday and a little on Tuesday.

So that was the weather folks! but seriously i am just waiting for more rain to come because it is getting hotter here! Yesterday during church we had a black out or what they call brown and no fans or a/c was on during sacrament. and also none of the speakers too! it was a pretty quiet meeting.

We usually work in this area called Pabahay which is a large relocation home complex because the people there are usually more open and willing but we also did work in other areas and tried working on some more less active work. 

On Monday we went over to the Rxxxxxx family house. they live in a nicer area called Verde Heights and we had a family home evening lesson over there! Brother Rxxxxxxx is this really goofy short member but loves the missionary work. he was the old ward mission leader. he had brought some neighbors over for the FHE and we tried to share an object lesson about the Atonement and one of the people he brought over really opened up to us on the first visit and we didnt really get to teach our lesson and had to stop the lesson. But it was a good lesson still. We got to know her and her life. Sister Rxxxxxx had cooked but almost everything she made was mushroom stuff, different kind of mushroom and i am not super into that hahaha im glad there was other stuff!

Speaking of gross food. i got forced to try a sour mango (not ripe mango) dipped in a salty shrimp paste...can i just ask...why would you do that food??

We have been working with this less active family the Arxxxxxx family and this was one of the few times the mom was there and we felt like we had some progress with the father of the family but we taught them and none of them really listened and at the end, after everything we said they werent interested. My heart broke for that family and for their children that have such sweet spirits. Sometimes this work can really brake your heart, but its only a little bit of what our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ feel when someone doesnt follow. But whenever there are hard times there are always good things that happen and later that day we talked with the kid Felipe who is having family problems and i ask him if he feels lonely and he opened up to us. it was a good moment. i cant wait to help him and share with him how the restored gospel has blessed my family.

In the philippines you get a lot of people that just sit around and do nothing and so i decided to try to something when they started saying something to hopefully get a potential investigator and gain some trust. so i started acting like one of their "homies" and joking around with them which is always fun to do when you can actually speak that language and it worked one of the kids Bxxxxxie said we can come by. so we will see how that goes.

We are really trying to change the way we do things because we have noticed there isnt much progression when there are no members helping the investigators, so we are hoping to get more members involved this week.

Sometimes it's hard to gain good trust because you have to really find ways to joke with people or make them feel good about themselves because that is just the culture here! but we are working on our skills and gaining trust.

We had a very successful day on friday but found out that one of our investigators Clxxxxx is not going to be able to be baptized because of her parents but we talked with her about not giving up hope and on continuing despite trials. her cousins who live right next to her (jxxxx, JxxxRxxxx, and kxxxx) still are able to get baptized but they all dont have testimonies yet of the Book of Mormon but are willing to continue so we are still trying to help them. they are such great kids though i love them so much and we are trying to help them gain this testimony that will strengthen them for the rest of their lives

or investigator Jxxxxna is still making slow progression but is willing to continue. she was supposed to be baptized on April 14. hopefully things will keep going strong.

Really sometimes progression of investigators is slow and sometimes its fast but it is so important to not rush things and wait for them to come to know the truth. The Lord has a plan for them and they are in His hands and if they will continue to follow them and strengthen their faith in Him, they will come closer and closer unto Him and come to know the truth and this even applies to all of us in our efforts to improve and come unto Him, it takes time and dedication. I love you all so much and i say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Elder Wright

Riding in the back of a truck to home from a family home evening

i made fettucini alfredo and they loved it

just a pic of me and trash

i made sweet and sour chicken

Baby Bird is Spreading His Wings (Week 38, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, Elder Arandia)

Hey everybody! i am doing great and loving the mission life!!! my birthday was awesome and i sent some pics to prove it! hahaha anyway my kid and i had an awesome experience that i wanted to share and i want to share some things about investigators!

First off i have been getting so many compliments on my tagalog and it makes me happy because people are impressed! i love it! pinoy powers activate! my kid tells me im the best he knows but he just hasnt really heard others hahaha.

Speaking of my kid...Really it looks like Elder Arandia will hopefully be prepared by the end of his training to spread his wings and fly away from momma bird...i guess that makes me momma bird...but anyway he is doing good. Earlier this week there was a rough patch because we started talking about different things and then he acknowledged to me some of his different concerns and one of them had to do with success. He sometimes feels down because the work is hard or maybe it is not as easy as he thought it would be and he also talked about how it brings him down a little when people just dont accept what we are saying. Or when we may not know what to say. So this brought a really good discussion about success and the Spirit. This can also relate to worldly things too. We talked about success and as i listened to his concerns that i mentioned earlier i started showing him that our success is not always based on the actual result because people have their free agency, success doesnt mean that we will become the best or that we will get a lot of baptisms. True success comes from our efforts to do our best! As long as we are trying the best we can, we are successful in whatever it is we are trying to accomplish...i mean maybe we may fail or not get that job or they wont get baptized but at least we learned! like what i think Lynn G. Robbins explained in general conference is that our "mistakes" are steps to success. So we talked about what that means to have success and i gave an example of where we found success in our lesson even when there may not be a result and he agreed that it was successful. Then we talked about the Spirit because we know we are successful is the Spirit is working through us and guiding us in our work. He had told me how he had been discouraged because of not knowing what he should do or say sometimes in lessons, so i explained to him about how the Spirit sometimes works. We talked about always have the Spirit to be with us as one of the blessings from being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and then i also talked about how right away we are not gonna know immediately how the Spirit speaks to us, it takes practice knowing how to follow the promptings of the Spirit. And really by the end of our conversation i was telling him that even if we are learning, the Spirit is working through us. We had a really good conversation and i shared with him my love and willingness to help him. Training really is awesome. on that same day we had such an awesome day and were really edified in our work!

We also had the wonderful opportunity to give baptismal dates to our investigators and with our investigator Jyyyya who has not been baptized yet but was supposed to be on april 14 is starting to get a stronger testimony of christ!

the work is awesome and i love you guys!

Serving Others, Serving Christ (Week 37, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, Elder Arandia)

Hey everyone! man i cant believe i am turning 19 in a couple days! that is like around 7000 days on this earth that i have lived. i really have been touched by the love of the Savior as i just started writing this letter. and i just want to talk about Him. As serving a mission you get very familiar with the Savior. this happens as you help others come unto them and repent and change their lives and as you do the same thing. I have started to read the New Testament so that i can get to know Christ more along with reading the Book of Mormon. and most importantly i have been trying to apply those things to my life. Studying Christ-like attributes has really helped me to understand who Christ is and how to be like Him. although sometimes we try to change and be more christ-like we realize sometimes that we are so far from being like him but i love what the President of the Quorum of the Seventy said in general conference how every mistake is in fact not a mistake but another step to becoming more like Him. I don't exactly know why i am saying this but there was a lot of talks in general conference about being Christ-like or a Christ-like minister and it really was stressed heavily, i really hope that general conference inspired you all that watched it as it inspired me to be better. So let's not now forget about everything that we learned from the wonderful conference. Let's serve and love like we never have before and make this world a better place and prepare for the Second coming of Christ here on the Earth. I learned that as i try to be better and more Christ-like and as i try not to focus on myself that i am edified and strengthened in everything that i do and i also have been able to be guided, feel God's love and help others. I know that these same blessings can come unto you. 

I love working with Elder Arandia my companion. sometimes he has had his struggles but as i have tried to be christ-like i definitely feel like it has helped him into his rough adjustment into the mission because he doesn't come from a strong solid background and testimony of the doctrine that we need to teach. but i have tried to help him and love him and guide him and i have seen him grow and i love being able to help him and hopefully help him create a strong foundation for the rest of his life to help him stay strong in his testimony of Christ. just last night he did such a great job in our lesson and was bolder than he normally is which is something we have been trying to work on. being bold because he is so shy but he is definitely making the changes and is becoming a fine missionary. He is learning the skills of how to plan and teach people according to their needs and he is just such a great guy. he has taught me so much about the importance of prayer and seeking counsel always from the Lord.

We have been having such great success in our area and see the Lord guide us in our efforts. We are currently trying to help Myyyy Ayyyyn and her family who are neighbors of members and we had an family home evening which was fun and some of them came to church. So later we are gonna visit them and see how they liked church.

I am so grateful for Christ and his love and the opportunity to serve him and all of his beloved here in the area I serve! I hope that you all will take the opportunity to serve him by serving others!

I love you all!

Elder Macklemore (Week 36, San Jose del Monte, Bulucan, Elder Arandia)

What better way to celebrate over 8 months serving then turning into a macklemore look-alike. So after last pday when someone messed up on my hair and we had to shave it a one all the way around which is SHORT i pretty much just looked like macklemore knocking on doors just without the fur coat or green gator shoes...so thats been a fun week hahaha but its okay its growing back and i got the top of my hair cut a little shorter and although tempted i did not decide to go thrift shopping ;) still did missionary work

Besides being mackelmore i have pretty much transformed into a pinoy or filipino because of mastering the ancient arts of filipino cooking. the other week we made some bomb adobo and this last week we made a dish called sinagong, it was good! and we use all natural ingredients because i aint about using artificial flavors in my flilipino cooking. so hopefully by the end of my mission i am just a master chef thats pretty much the vision ;)

Before i get into other things i have to share somethings about my companion that just have made me laugh. my companion does a lot of thinking, like deep thinking and will get distracted because he will start thinking about random things and get all deep about it. the other day we are at our last hour and we are at a members house eating some food and my companion for some reason i cant remember why asks about where dogs lived before they became pets. were they in the desert or jungle or whatever. and then he's all like questioning where shiatsu's come from or where they would have lived and another time he starts laughing and we are alone in the house and i ask why are you laughing and he was laughing because he started thinking about a llama and just said they are funny animals...honestly my companion is so funny haha.

in all seriousness though, this week was a beautiful week. i finally got to watch general conference because the philippines is scheduled a week later and then i learned a valuable lesson about the Book of Mormon.

For the past seven months when teaching investigators i didnt realize or stress on my investigators reading the Book of Mormon. it is has been a little rough because for some reason our mission is not really receiving Tagalog Books of Mormon right now so i have given many away because sometimes people may accept one and not read it but i decided to teach it to our investigators this week who we had taught The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to but they didnt come to know the truth that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God. So we brought now to two different groups of people we teach the Book of Mormon and taught them in a way where not exactly focusing on the history of it but focusing on the holiness of the Book of Mormon and what it testifies and how it can change their life. I cannot tell you what we have been missing by not really stressing on the Book of Mormon. In both of those lessons that we taught, especially the lesson with this family that is a member referral, the spirit has been there. The lesson with the member referral was a powerful lesson. You really can see and feel that this book will change their lives if they read it and allow it to change them. Even if they don't accept it i felt so good about the opportunity to give them what will create a keystone to their faith to know that this Gospel, the true gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored. My testimony of the Book of Mormon i feel has been strengthened from teaching it. and i hope they will gain testimonies of it too.

Also i want to briefly talk again about when Jyyyyye was baptized because she really had opened up to us before her baptism about what has happened in her life and for a while we just didnt know! but she told us about her past and basically she is ready to be baptized and receive a new life and just being able to help her get to that point as God has prepared her, it was such a wonderful experience that she was able to be baptized.

Okay General conference was amazign! Were any other priesthood holders blown away by the choir that sang How Firm a Foundation??? that was BEAUTIFUL! I learned so much from the Priesthood session and about who i am as bearer of the Priesthood. I loved Henry B. Eyring's talk about being charitable and serving others as a servant of the Lord and also i loved how Dallin H.Oaks told us that we are always on the Lord's errand no matter where we go and as priesthood holders or even as anyone we need to always be in that mindsight and if we are, the Lord will guide us through out our life! Same thing if we will just choose to accept to have the Spirit in our life through exact obedience to God's commandment, praying in faith in christ, praying for other's needs and how to help them and then being humble before God. I learned so much in conference about being a true Disciple of Christ and was touched by the many messages that inspired me to draw closer to my Savior and Behold Him. Behold the Man who loves us, saved us and continues to save us everyday. We have been commanded to be like Him and although we are not perfect if we try and if we use His atonement we can improve everyday and have the hope that we will never be forgotten or abandoned. He is always by our side and we all need to strive to be like Him.

I really since conference have been thinking about that because i love my savior and i hope you all too will try to be like Him. i love you all

Group Email (Week 35, San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, Elder Arandia)

i got no funny stories but i just want to express my gratitude for the opportunity to see Joyce get baptized this last weekend it was such a wonderful experience and i really felt touched by the love of the Lord! this week and see her life change forever!

love you all