I Love This Area, I Love This Work

1/30/11
This week was pretty good. Some really good things happened, some funny things happened, and many spiritual things happened.

So the good. We got a good amount of lessons, not as much as we would have liked, but it was still good. The lessons that we got were way good too, and our investigators (most of them) are progressing, well too. We have a baptism on Feb 19 so we are getting things ready for that too. It was going to be five people getting baptized, but the fifth didn't come to church this week and it was his second absence in the four week period, so according to the rules here, he can't be baptized, but he will later. He had a good reason that he wasn't there, and he has been coming to church for a while now, so we just have to wait another four weeks. But the four others are all good. They are Michael Tilanas' mom, brother, and brother's wife (soon to be. They are going to get legally married the morning before the baptism. At least thats the plan and it looks like it will work) and then Micheal Francisco's older sister. It's going to be great. The four of them, it's like they are already members, just need to be baptized.

Funny, but also good thing that happened. Nanay (Mom) Tilanas got home from visiting two of her daughters that are in Manila. Yesterday while we were at their house she was on the phone with one of them and sitting next to me. She asked her if she would go to the Mormon Church next Sunday and then kinda shared her testimony about going to church. It was great. It was also the way she said it that was funny. I can't explain it though.

Spiritual things that happened, aside from pretty much every lesson we had this last week. We have been visiting the in-active members in the area around Michael's house. Micheal told us that he wants us to get him first when we are going to do that so that he can come too. Having him come has made quite the difference in our visits to inactives. The group is getting bigger too. Not too big though. But other members are saying that they want to come too. So when we tell the inactive that the members of the church want them to come back, we have proof of that because we have a couple of them with us. Our experiences with the in-actives has varied, but they went well. We are going to continue to visit them. Also yesterday Michael bore his testimony and talked about coming with us to visit in-active members and basically said that others should be helping too. Many agreed with him.

The attendance at the branch this week was amazing too. 55! It was full! I have never seen that high there. The highest was two weeks ago at 44, and that is the only time it has been above 40 while I have been here. We also track how many recent converts are coming to church, and recently we have been getting 8/10 or 9/10, but this week it was a solid 10/10! I was looking around and then whispered to E Reidhead, "We might have all 10 recent converts here." And sure enough, the official count showed that all 10 were there.

I love this area. I love this work. Especially when you have awesome members that are also excited about the work. Such as Michael and his family. They are all awesome. We also have a recent convert that is going to be getting ready to go on a mission, so he wants to come with us, which is fantastic! We just need to find more investigators in the area around where he lives. And that is turning out to be harder than we thought, but we are finding a couple.

Tomorrow we have mission tour, that's where a member of the Area Presidency comes and tours the mission. That is going to be fun, then we also have a fireside with him later that night. So it will not be that good of a day with lessons taught, but we will be spiritually charged and ready to go out and share the gospel! So it's going to be awesome.

Love you all,
Elder Jordan Phelps