HAPPY NEW YEAR

Man people here love New Year's Eve! so many fireworks and the sky was filled with the smoke from the fireworks! It was really loud especially with not having any windows you can close shut.

Monday- we had another day of curfew so we ended up just staying inside the rest of christmas and didnt do too much. the church movies help to keep you from being bored, like the restoration and legacy. so taht is really nice to have

Tuesday- We worked with a ward member, jeppoy again. and that was good. we went to Rosales (their baby just died) and the visit could have been better. we also met with this other girl meydelin and tried helping her out. earlier i had a prompting to talk to this one lady and then i decided to follow the prompting and then it turns out that she wasnt the person that we needed to talk to but this other lady that we sparked conversation with who has just been sitting on a bunch of questions just confused and wants answers! the Lord works in mysterious ways. we also visted the Canete family again and taught the restoration and temples to a nonmember in their family who we are teaching. We went back to the Sabado family (less actives) and we visited with them and they didnt have time to do a lesson so we were gonna come back on the 31.

Wednesday- We had our district meeting and a gift exchange there. we visited Canete family again because they are stuggling and we talked about goals and then we went to Sandoval to teach tithing and fast offering.

Thursday- Elder Pajarin and i had better studies today which really made an impact on our day. We went back to Maricel's house ( a new investigator) and she wasnt there but her kids were and we taught the Restoration. We got potential investigators and the Glen took us to two people who ended up having a lot of questions. We also went to a new investigator Josaphine.

Friday- We had weekly planning again which went good setting goals for this new week and then we taught the Canete family again with teaching the one member in their family who is an investigator about the Word of Wisdom with new year's eve coming up...we will see how that went.

Saturday- We taught Maricel and had teach her the Restoration and so her kids listened again. they are a good family and i hav e hope for them. they really are  kind to so it is fun going over there. We then had a baptism which Erwina showed up like an hour or an hour and a half late to her own baptism. so we started at 6:30 or somewhere around there instead of five. 

There were good things i was able to learn like from the importance of unity to the Lord. Jesus Christ and God are perfectly unified. their unity is so perfect that they are referred to as being one even when they are two separate beings. in all of our companionships or relationships with our families or spouses, we need to be unified and the gospel is what truly unifies. so we need to live it.

Love you all and a Happy New Year!

Elder Wright

IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR!!!!

"IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR!!!!"

I just CANNOT stop singing Christmas songs, i love it! No matter where I am I will just sing songs about Christ! and the other christmas songs as well. Sometimes, it is hard being here and not being with family BUT it is so sweet to have the opportunity to bless the lives of others! On Monday we had a great time at this one members house named Jenny, we shared a message for Christmas about Christ and we tried scheduling for a time to come back to them, so that we can share to her family that are not members. we are excited to be able to help them and we had such a great time with them.

As time kept getting closer this week to Christmas I felt the Christmas spirit kick in, and no it was not because of all the dance caroling i saw here...yes that is a thing. people will not just sing here and ask for money but they will play loud remix pop music and dance for money haha. It also was not because of the remixed jingle bells and Fifth Harmony song that i heard in Puregold but our Christmas conference that we had this week was wonderful! President spoke about many things but one was a story about monks in a monastery, who were wondering why no one was visiting the monastery as much and one of the spoke to a Rabbi about the concern and asked for advice. The Rabbi said all he could say to them was that "One of you is the Messiah". They had pondered this and all thought what it could mean and the result was that they begin to all treat each other with great love and respect just as if they were the Messiah. This simple act attracted others to their monastery. I thought it was a great story. What better way to invite the Christmas spirit or the spirit of Christ in our lives than by seeing every one as children of God. After Christmas conference I had such a wonderful time and felt the love as I greeted those and wished them a "Merry Christmas" at the closing of our activity.

The week was filled with a great spirit as we worked with members we saw great success as we brought our relief society president with another member, Arnan, and introduced them to our investigator, Shirley, who is having problems following the word of wisdom. Our relief society president also struggled with smoking and it was great to see them talk and connect about the struggle and also with life. This got me thinking, "why havent we gotten Sister Datinggaling down here a long time ago!?" Hahaha you live and you learn and you try not to make the same mistakes! Shirley plans on quitting on the new year!

I am so grateful for the wonderful experiences that I have had this wonderful month to see others change and desire to come unto Christ! This church is true! I love you all!

Elder Wright

THERE'S A SQEEK IN MY BOOT

I have had a squeak in these shoes that i am wearing for about probably my whole mission. I dont know if you have ever seen the episode of Spongebob (sorry i am quoting spongebob again...dont worry i will bring up peanut butter again also) but anyway the episode where Mr. Krabs goes to throw away an old pair of boots but i think sells them to spongebob and then they are super squeaky and it drives Mr. Krabs insane...yeah that is literally my life. I find it funny though so it doesnt drive me insane.

Now about the peanut butter. Okay I dont know what took me so long to figure this out but a toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwich is the most amazing thing ever!!! My mind is blown by all the wasted hours of eating just a normal PB&J. Just goes to show to never limit yourself, dream big, and to always toast your sandwich bread.

I cannot really remember what happened last tuesday, except for that i was so glad to have finished my essays for BYU. I feel good about them!

On Wednesday we had to take care of transfers again which consisted of us waiting at McDonald's for hours and then sending people off to their new areas. We got to go on a ride down to show the new office Elders their new apartment, which was fun and we also got free food out of being at the mission office because our transfer point was nearby there. So that was pretty great! Who does not like free food?! We had to rush back to our area for an appointment with our relief society president. We had got to her house and then we sat there not doing anything and we totally thought that we were waiting on her son but it turns out he couldnt go so we couldnt work with her, which was way sad because we were so excited to work with Sister Datinggaling! Instead we went to go find less actives but couldnt find them. Wednesday was a rough day but we kept our spirits high and i said merry christmas still to a lot of people.

On Thursday we had a good day as well, we taught this old guy named Danny who was really nice. Originally his wife who we had met wanted us to teach her kids and her kids whole dance crew because they are apparently pretty good and go to other areas to dance. Impressive. But they were busy and a bunch of teenagers so we sat down with Danny and ended up teaching him and it was a good lesson. We are hoping that things will go well adn he will read his assignment. 

On Friday we had weekly planning and then we also taught Nita and Bonifacio again, they were not available to go to church this week but we tried teaching them a lesson but Brohter had so many questions which was awesome! i loved answering his questions with the bible and he asked some good questions. we had to be inspired and guided for sure. They were sad when we told them that we had to leave because we had been there already for about 30 minutes so we had to go but we told them that we would come back and share with them more about the Plan of Salvation! It is exciting to see people so interested, they are tough investigators though.

Saturday was amazing! Jovelyn and Windelyn were baptized and we got come investigators to go to the Christmas party! it was incredible they loved it and had so much fun! We had to kind of get Estrella and her kids to get out of the house and go across the street to have fun at the party. she totally had fun and i loved seeing the ward so happy there with our investigators and less actives.

Yesterday we had an amazing day with teaching Carmelita and Carlito, two new investigators and referrals of Sister Arellano. It was an amzing lesson we had becuase i really felt guided by the spirit in helping them to understand the importance of our message it was great. Carmelita went to church and said she felt like she walked in paradise! such an amazing thing to here. We are really excited and blessed with the wonderful opportunities we get to teach such amazing people. Again this season is perfect to help others come unto Christ and i love seeing people's lives change it is awesome! There is no better feeling than serving!

Love you all!

Elder Wright

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I know it is not Christmas yet but boy am i feelin' the Christmas spirit! LITERALLY everyone i pass by i say "merry christmas" to, okay maybe not everyone BUT i am going crazy! And not everyone is replying so i am currently trying to make it a thing here right now. Slowly but surely they will all be saying it everywhere. I got told by an old guy that i was advanced because i guess it's too early...

We had a good week, we tried different methods of working in our area and had two family home evenings and got to know some members more!

I am sorry this is going to be a short one because i have been writing essays and applying to BYU but i loved the Christmas devotional! if none of you have seen it, watch it now! I loved the talk about pure light. Our heavenly Father really does have pure light and he is very easy to be entreated and is very proud of us when we are trying to do our best no matter how short we fall. I think this is such a great season to express our love and appreciation for everyone in a simple way that will express our love not only for them but for Christ. i love you all so much! i wish i could see you all and tell you that personally this season. but i am having so much fun here also serving for the Lord. You are all the best!

Elder Wright

YOU DON'T NEED A LICENSE TO DRIVE A SANDWICH

I got my license!!! Awesome! i feel like a Filipino 16 year old now! I dont know why exactly i have it but we will see if i need to use it soon. We had to go to this place that was like the DMV if it had a catholic mass in it...why do i say that because literally there was a catholic mass inside the "DMV" here. Who would do that? Only the Philippines hahaha. We had a lot of fun being there and also being able to spend time with Dennis who chauffeured us.

this week was a good one, i have been writing a lot of essays. trying to apply to BYU again. It has been stressful but really good because i have learned a lot about myself through all of the activities that i have been a part of.

Last monday on P-day we spent so much time trying to find this person's house who we had met at church but the address that we got seemed to be no where to be found. When hope seemed to be lost we got a text from Cheril who we talked to at Angel's burgers and said that we could come over to her house to teach her. We had a great lesson and as we were teaching her she seemed to understand the lesson and wanted us to teach her family! We are looking forward to that.

We have been trying to visit more members so that we can grow closer and stronger relationships with them and we had a bit of a frightening experience when we found out and saw that one of the members we visited had a kid who had mumps and had an inflamed lymph node...she told us it was contagious. Well, nothing stopped her kid from giving us high fives and touching us and as a missionary in the philippines we didnt have anywhere to go and wash up so we went to the nearest member and washed up. I made sure to wash all the way up my arms and even my face. we got pretty scared at the possibility of us getting sick, of course we still love the member hahaha but no one wants to get sick hahaha!

Had another great experience of what happens when you always smile and say hi to people. We had the chance to teach this nice woman named Mayabelle. She seemed genuinely interested but it is too early to know if things will progress. But if we always smile and greet people,it shows that they will be drawn to us!

Estrella and her kids finally went to church it was amazing, we came to their house before church and made sure they all started getting up and moving and ready for the day! The members did a great job at showing friendship and love to them.

The other day we had the wonderful opportunity to meet with our ward's relief society president and we experienced a miracle with our relief society president giving us a referral, after we talked with her about our investigators and also served by giving her a blessing, it was a great experience. i learned that as a missionary, as we love the members and serve them, they will love and serve us too.

another thing i wanted to talk about was the great lessons that we had with a less active family and an active member family in sharing a message about Christ and his sacrifice, in this special time of Christmas. We felt the spirit really strong as we shared about the importance of Christ and heard the less active family share about their own experiences. It truly is a wonderful time to be a missionary. I love my Savior and i love being able to testify of Him. May we all testify of Him this Christmas season and always!

Elder Wright