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
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