Week 5

Kumusta pamiliya! 

 

I know I say this every letter, but this week flew by!! Its hard to even remember what happened this week cause monday seems like such a long time ago. But remembering back...nothing really new happened.

 

We taught Roy and Rani again this week, both those went pretty good. We taught Roy about faith and the Holy Ghost, that was probably our best lesson with him. We were able to tell him why the Holy Ghost was important, and how it could build his faith. It went so well that Elder Allen was going to ask him to be baptised pero (but) we ran out of time, we are only given about 30mins for each lesson. And Roy said thanks for teaching me but he had to "go to work" haha. Our lessons with Rani have been going good as well, we taught him about the Salita ng Hangaroon (word of wisdom) he said that he didn't drink alcohol or smoke but he loves coffee. We promised him the blessings found in the last 4 versus of Section 89 in the Doktrina at mga Tipan. He said he would quit, we meet with him again yesterday and he said that he hadn't had a lick of coffee....he's basically the perfect investigator. Boy its gonna be a wake up call when we get to the Philippines and our REAL investigators aren't as how you say..easy as Rani. Oh well it'll be awesome!

 

Brother Hallstrom, one of the Presidents of the 70's came and talked to us on Tuesday, that was pretty awesome. To begin his talk he said "Decide now what type of missionary you want to be right now". Dont put it off, or else when the time arises, and you are tested in the mission field you will already know what you are going to do and how you are going to react. He talked about the need to be strictly obedient. And how if we decide right now to be obedient that..again when the time arises and you are questioned with breaking the rules, you will have already made the decision to be obedient. Also he said that remember your loyalties. You main loyalties are to God, the Mission President then Companion. Also he said that we are always to be reverent, pero the definition of reverence is not to be quite, we are allowed to have fun and laugh and even be loud at times. The definition of reverence is that all of our thoughts, actions and words, should be in correspondence with God, and should mirror Jesus Christ's image, and that is how one we will be able to draw closer to God and two be able to show others through our example how they can come closer to God, So to be reverent is just to try our hardest to mirror the Saviors image. He said some other good stuff too.

 

Oh this week the district that has been here about 3 weeks longer then us, got the travel plans yesterday. We are really close to them, there all in the 20's but their all really chill. One is from Australia, haha he is probably one of the funniest people I know. He is really big and plays rugby, his uncle is a famous rugby player too. The rugby player that one of the apostles talked about in a few conferences ago is his uncle...idk who he is really and why he is so awesome, but its cool that I know his nephew. But no their district is really cool and I'm sad to see that their leaving in like 11 days. But I'm very excited for them I know that they will all be great missionaries. I guess their going from slc to san fran to Hong Kong toManila. And its collectively about a 18hr plane trip, and their traveling into the future. So....ya not really looking forward to the actual plane trip...just the part where ya get to the Philippines. Its crazy to think about it, but in just 4 weeks I will be leaving for the Philippines, be in a totally different culture and be REALLY teaching the gospel...its gonna be an adventure, and hopefully my emails are gonna be more exciting then this one.

 

Other then that this has been a uneventful week, more of the same ol same ol, just learning the Gospel, learning how to teach the Gospel and learning how to teach the Gospel in tagalog haha.  

 

Mahal Kita! Ingat Kayo!

 

Elder Ryan James

Week 4

Wow I cant believe it is already week 4!!

This was a gggrreat week!! So much happened, well kinda. More like a few really awesome things happened.

First of all, every sunday and tuesday someone comes in and talks to us. Sometimes is someone random I have never heard of before...actually most of the time it is someone random. Every devotional I tell my companion ``Its gonna be President Monson I just know it.`` Well this tuesday it was not president Monson. Buuuut, it was Elder Richard G. Scott of the quorem of the 12 apostles!! It was so awesome. We were sitting at the top of the auditorium, so when he walked in we didnt have the greatest view of his face. And so we didnt think he was a g.a., which is okay. But after a while we were sitting there waiting for the devo to start. And ``I was like, that guy looks really fumiliar. I dont know why.创 Well it turned out to be Richard G Scott. And I almost had a heart attack when we finally realized who it was. But anyway his talk was great! He said alot of things that were really cool. He mainly talked about revalation through the holy ghost. He said that the best way to tell between how a personal thought is actually the spirit is if that thought is leading you closer to Christ. Also he said that if you are in tune with the Holy Ghost, most of your thoughts will be in line with the Holy Ghost. Also he said that Father will not give you more personal counsel if you dont follow the counsel he gave you first. Pretty much, if Father gives you any councel or direction, you better do it if you want more. Also he said that having a contrit spirit is being prepared to be lead by the Lord, and willing to do his will. During the bearing of his testimony...WHICH WAS AWESOME!! he said that he knows without a doubt that each and everyone of us is going to the place the that we should be going. Because the way that they choose missions isn磘 by trying to fill missons. But by looking into the eyes of each missionaries picture and then praying where we should go. Then the Lord will reveal it to them and they will call us there. That was cool cause it testified to me that the Lord knows each of capabilities and where we can best 1. serve others and bring them to him, and?2. grow personally ourselves. He said alot more but I dont have the time to talk about it all. Sorry.

Something else that was really cool that happened this week was our lesson with Roy. It was such a simple lesson. All we did was tell him that he was a Child of God and that God loves him and wants him to return to him. The spirit was so strong. We told him that the best way he can come closer to the Lord now is by reading the Aklat ni Mormon and praying to God about its truth. We also told him to ``magdasal taga puso ni Diyos`` which is grammatically very incorrect. Cause thats saying pray from heart to God. But the taga...means 'from' which is 'from' as in a location, not like from me to you. I guess though that there are alot of really deep words in tagalog. And that all their words are very very deep, unlike our language, where every word is not necessarily deep or meaningful. Sooo thats good to know by the vocab they are using, that when they say something deep...they are meaning it, or else they just wouldn't use deep vocab.. Anyway....he agreed to pray everyday and read the Book of Mormon everyday. He also said the closing prayer, which was awesome cause he hasn磘 for any other of the missionaries that have been teaching him....not trying to brag or anything...cough cough. haha no but that was a very spiritual experience and he took a major leep forward in his progression.

Also something that happened this week is on wednesday, new missionary day, a whole bunch of new missionaries in our zone came in, cause we had like half our zone leave for the Philippines on monday and tuesday. But it was exciting because for one, our zone isnt the youngest anymore. Two it marks the half way point for being here at the mtc. And three it was awesome talking to them in tagalog and seening their expressions. We went up to this one missionary and all we said was "Kumusta po kayo" which means how are you....hahahha he gave us the most blank stare in the world and was like "Uhhh its my first day" hahahaha...sorry if thats doesnt seem funny, but his expression was hilarious. One missionary in our district bore his testimony to them in Tagalog because honestly we still cant say that much other then missionary talk. And so he just said what he knew...which was his testimony. Eventually though we spoke to them in English. They seem pretty cool, the real test will be in gym during 4 square. If they cant hang there then idk bout them. Something kinda scary that happened yesterday though was, it was just their 2nd day and a tricompanionship disappeared. The zone leaders went looking for them, and they couldn't find the newbs anywhere. Finally at 10:30 they walked back in to the residence, apparently they were sent to the outside world, for some hospital appointment, that took them all day. And the mtc health clinic forgot to tell the front office where they were. But oh well, they are back.

Oh and my pinky is doing much better, it doesn't hurt at all! I can bend it, half way, for some reason I bend it down and it just doesn't bend all the way..hopefully I can bend it all the way soon. But something I have decided is that I am not going to play basketball at the mtc again. Its not worth the risk of getting injured. But 4 square...that I will play alllll day if I could. Before the mission I would have never thought that 4 square could be so competitive or fun! But now I have realized that it is both! hahaha

The tagalog is coming along pretty good, we have finally gotten into verbs and how to create your own sentences, so I am very greatful for that. Even though the conjugations can be very confusing sometimes. But I know that if I work my hardest and am faithfull the Lord will bless me with kaloob ng mga wika (the gift of tounges). This week I kinda had a wake up call, we had a evening class, and no one was really really trying their hardest to get the new verb down, cause we were all tired. So he gave us a 3 min break and when we came back into the classroom. He then said that you will not receive the gift of tongues unless you try your hardest, including when you are tired and all you want to do is rest, but instead of resting you work more. And we cannot receive a true witness of faith until it is tried, and if we dont work hard and have faith alllways even when we are tired, then the Lord will not bless you with kaloob ng mga wika. That really struck me, and that was a very powerful and spiritual experience, now I am trying harder then ever to learn this language! The cool part is I think the Lord saw that or something, cause another elder, in the district that had been here 3 weeks more then us asked if I wanted to have 10mins of syl every night. Which would really really help with vocab and grammer..syl is "speak your language". So we are doing that and I am learning alot from him.

Anyway thanks for all of your love and support, I really appreciate it.

Ingat Kayo at Mahal Kita?

Elder Ryan James!

Week 3 at MTC

Wow, this week went bo sooo fast, it feels like just yesterday I was in here writing you last friday. When I first got to the mtc a missionary told me that the days drag on but the weeks fly by. I was like, that makes no sense how can the days go by slow..but the weeks go by fast...? Well it turns out he was right, sometimes the days are so long, but then looking back the week has just flown by. Its weird.

 

But this was a pretty good week, nothing completly out of the ordinary has happened, just the same ol' same ol'. Learning the gospel and learning the language. That missionary, elder roberts, did end up leaving. That was a bummer. But in reality it was for the better, he wasn't being able to sleep or eat, seperation anxiity from his family or something I guess.

 

But tuesday Sister Beck the relief socity president came in and gave us a great talk! It was about the importance of temples in missionary work. And how we are not only working for bapitisms, but for people who will go to the temple and proceed to taking on all of the covenets. Cause if we are trying to bring them to the Lord, well...baptism is just the first step,  then all that sweet temple jazz. She also said that we are sent to love the everyone, including the unloveable. That really struck me because, I thought of Christ and how he loves absolutly everyone, and how in his earthly ministry he blessed everyone. He helped the vilest of people, the trodden down, he helped everyone. But then us as missionaries being related in our work to what the savior did, in that we are being sent to love everyone, just like him....Idk it just was a big reminder and strengthener of why I'm here and it was a reminder of how the Savior was a perfect example. In everything he did.

 

Anyway, I had a pretty funny language experiance this week. It was at the end of the day and we were doing our district planning and such. And Elder Procter the district leader, asked me to say the closing prayer. And we started praying in tagalog about a week before, so I had got the basics of the prayer down. Wasn't to nervous about messing up the tagalog. But I started saying it, was going okay, then I said "Paki-Basbasan po ninyo kami ng kasalanan" which means please bless us with sin. I meant to say "Paki-basbasan po ninyo kami ng kalakasan." Which means please bless us with strength. So ya.....totally just asked the Lord to bless that the whole district will become wicked and start sinning....man I'm a good missionary! haha. Good thing the Lord knows it was an accident. But anyway that was funny and my district won't let me forget it either.

It made me feel better when another missionary told me a story about one time during a lesson a investagator told then his mom died. And he said something like "Im sorry you killed your mom." hahahaha I think he meant to say "I'm sorry your mom died"....haha but ya, and my guro(teacher) told me he was bearing his testimony one time and he accidently said "Jesus killed the people." Instead of "The people killed Jesus." So ya apparently you'll get mix up like that in your mission. It stinks though cause the sentence order is backwards to english...tagalog would basically be yoda talk in english. There is also 3 different ways one could even structure his sentence. So ya....it'll be funnnn learning.

 

Oh, so it turns out that our investagator Rani, is actually a co-teacher, so now he teaches about 50% of the lessons, and then we also teach him as an investagator. Rani is really Brother Mansfield, and our other teacher Brother Nuttel is now our 2nd investagator Roy. We had one lesson with him, and he is ALOT harder to talk to then Rani, we could get away with alot of tagalish. None with Roy though. Also Roy has no concept of the atonement or prayer, or anything like that. The first time we prayed, he sat there and didnt close his eyes or bow his head. So we had to scrap our whole lesson plan and teach him about prayer. It went okay though, we were able to extend a commitment that he would read the intro to the Book of Mormon and pray about it. He said he would. Next lesson we are going to focus on telling him why we are there, and that he is a Child of God and that God wants him to come unto him. I think that, that will be a good lesson. I am excited for it, it has the oppertunity to be very spiritual. Even if we can barely understand what he is saying to us.

 

Oh also my companion might get moved to a different mission, because he is dislexic and he didnt include that on his mission papers. So the president is kinda mad about that and threatened that he would move him, if he fell behind at all in learning the language. So that has put some added stress on him. I really hope and pray that he doesn't move missions cause well, he is in the best one now haha...no but I would be really hard if he left. Cause dispit all of our many many differences I am very gratful he is my companion. We are almost exactly unlike in everyway. But I'm grateful for that cause, you learn to get along and sacrifice more with those who you dont see eye to eye with. More the people who you are exactly alike.

 

Anyway Love you all, sorry but I got to go!

 

Alam ko na Diyos mahal tayo

Alam ko na tayo Diyos mga anak

Alam ko na si JesuCristo is tayo manunubos.

Alam ko na totoo po ang aklat ni Mormon.

Alam ko na totoo po propeta Joseph eSmith

(not all grammatically correct)

 

Ingat Kayo

Elder James

Week 2

This week at the mtc was better then the first few days, for one I didn't get anymore injuries, but gym is soooo boring now, it get to sit and watch everyone else have fun, and for two I kinda had a sense of what was going on, and it wasn't as overwhelming. It seems that once you get in to a groove here at the mtc, that this life just becomes normal and not sooo overwhelming.

 

But this week we got to listen to conferences and that was a pretty neet experience, it was way easier to concentrate there, then at home. The only problem was that the the auditorium was sooo packed and the seats were soo squished in together you had very little personal room. The hymn in the middle of a session was the best cause we got to stand. But other then that conference was good. I loved Elder Hollands talk during the priesthood session, he was so bold, and just layed it out there. He doesn't beat around the bush, he just gets straight to the point and makes sure that you get it. I especially loved President Eyrings talk during the priesthood session, how he said to not let our duties get us down. And not let our own personal flaws get us down, cause if we are willing to come to the Lord he will strengthen all of those weaknesses. It was very encouraging, because at the mtc it is very easy to start to see your own personal flaws, especially our spiritual flaws, and satan is quick to jump on you when your down. But if you have faith in the Lord he will strengthen you in every way. After the priesthood session I went back to the residence and layed in bed looking up scriptures about the Lord providing strength. And I found one I really really liked it was 2nd Samuel 22:31-35, it basically says that the Lord is a rock, and he is our God, and he can strengthen us in everything.

 

Anyway we taught our investigator Rani Bulos 4 more times this week, since our Tagalog stinks it took us 4 lessons to get through the 1st discussion. But we were able to teach him about the apostasy, Restoration and ang Aklat ni Mormon. We even were able to commit him to magbinyag (baptism!!) it was so awesome we felt the spirit so much, even though there is a huge language barrier. He started asking questions, he like why his magbinyag didn't count when he was a baby, and if we could teach his pamilya in the Philippines, we were able through much difficulty and a very unorthodox method able to tell him that Jesus set the perfect example by being baptized by immersion, and that ours should be like his if we want to truly follow Christ. He agreed with that. It was kind of funny though, later that day we had our first "Investigator Review" we found out that Rani actually spoke perfect english, has an american accent and served a mission and is now teaching somewhere here at the MTC. Oh well. But we also delved into how conversion comes. And I learned something very important, that the best way to convert someone isn't by becoming really really close to the investigator, thats good but not the way, what we want to do is give the investigator the knowledge and tools for him to come as close to Ama sa Langit (Heavenly Father) as possible. So God wants everyone to come as close to him as possible, and gain Buhay na walang hanggan (eternal life) but it it through us that he fufills that. So should we hold back in so great a work. Hindi (No) haha.

 

Something else that happened this week is, a elder in our district almost went home, because he was missing his family so much that he couldn't eat or sleep or focus. I don't blame him leaving everything behind for two years is hard. But ya he was going to go, and all of us started to cry, I don't know why, we all just didn't want him to go home, it would have really really put a hole in the district. We all wrote him encouraging letters and that told him that we loved him and that we were really sad that he was leaving. But GUESS WHAT! It turns our that he is staying, he went and talked to the Zone Leader, President Taylor, then he referred him to a mtc doctor and the doctor put him on these pills, that make him very....loopy...but its better then before. The only thing though is last night he pulled a prank on us by turning the alarm clocks on to go off at 3:30 and 4:30 am, and we woke up in the middle of the night. Then he took all of our name tages and was wearing them all in the morning. The worse part is that we cant retaliate...one because its not Christ like, but mostly because he is still struggleing and soo pulling pranks on him wouldn''t be the best thing we could do to help him.

 

Anyway...alam ko na ang Aklat ni Mormon is totoo, alam ko na si JesuChristo po tayo Manunubos, alam ko na si Joseph eSmith na totoo propeta. Ang ebanghelyo is totoo!!! The book of Mormon is true, Jesus Christ is our redeemer. Joseph Smith is a true prophet. The Gospel is True!!!!....sorry thats all I got I hindi po alam much right now. But I do have a testimony of Kaloob ng mga Wika. And can't to speak Tagalog fluently.

 

(p.s. use dear elder while im at the mtc, i can only email once a week but can write letters all week)

 

Ingat Kayo! Elder Ryan Santiago...thats james in tagalog.

Week One

These last few days have been cccccrrrrrraaaaaazzzzzyyyy!! They have been filled with so much. First day we got here they started speaking tagalog, they took me to my classroom and my teacher immediately started speaking tagalog, and he has barely spoke english since. When I got there he was trying to tell me something very important and I was just like "whhhhaaa", I felt so stupid. And I thought that there was no way that I will be able to talk like this man. Eventually when we started going on the language it wasn't too bad, we just have to keep in mind that the lord just wants us to put forth our best effort and when that isn't good enough he will make up the difference. But ya, these last few days have been crammed. We barely had any free time. And there is just so much thrown at you, it feels like trying to drink out of a fire hydrant. There is just so much, our brains feel like mush at the end of the day. The other elders that have been here a few weeks that are going to the Philippines said that it takes about 3-4 days to get used to the fast pace learning.


My companion is Elder Allen, he has a great sense of humor and we can really get along and joke around a lot.


Something that was interesting that happened is that on our third day, Friday we already had to teach an investigator!! They're more like fake investigators but act like they're real ones. But what's even more crazier is that we had to try to teach him in tagalog! He spoke no english! Its was nuts, everyone was freaking out, and it was so stressful. My companion and I decided that we were just going to use the things that they taught us, like basic "get to know you phrases" and then we were going to try to give him Ang Aklak ni Mormon. Which was very interesting seeing as how we didn't know how to put out that invitation. But we were able to by talking to him like he was an alien..haha with like hand gestures and short tagalog mixed with english phrases. But eventually he picked upt the idea and he took ang Aklak ni Mormon. It was awesome afterwards it was such a relief, cause it really wasn't as horrible as we imagined.


Anyway that was very fun, but I do have some bad news, I dislocated my pinky on Thursday playing basketball, it hurt alot, and setting it back in place hurt even more. But I was able to get off the campus and go to the byu health clinic!! All the older elders were jealous of that. Its really really swelled up now, and its hard to ice cause there are very few places here to get ice, or cool down ice packs. Sooo im kinda sol. But I know that it will be okay. The doctor said no sport activities for 4 weeks though which is a bummer cause gym time is one of the best times of the day.

Anyway I'm very excited to be here, conference should be awesome....I really hope some GA's come this weekend to the MTC that'd be sooo sweet!! But thanks for all of your love and support. 

 

Love Elder James!!!