Dear Family,

This week was the last full week before transfer day, transfer day is thursday, I don't know yet if I am getting transferred. Its always one of those scary things as a missionary after you have been in a area for a while, and then transfer day is coming close up. We have had a lot of success here and seen a lot of awesome miracles. Whether I get transferred or not I will never forget the people that we taught here.

This week we found a lot of cool new people, and we actually saw a cool new miracle, at least it is a small one to me.

I will start off with this cool new less active that we found. Her name is Sister Carbonel, she is married and we tracted into her. We were behind tuao north, and to the right are tons of corn fields, and we were walking and the houses we few, it wasn't a house to house sort of deal, and we passed this one house, and there were two older men and a women outside, I said to Elder Tadena that we should stop and oym them, he said they were busy, I was like, lets oym them anyway, so we go to oym them, and we ask if we could introduce ourselves to them, and sister was like "Oh hey Elders, I will go get some chairs." She leaves gets some chairs, elder Tadena and I look at each other like, I think this is a member, we started talking to her. It turns out that she moved to Auroa and got married there to a less active member, then they moved back to Tuao North, and stayed less active. She said that she really wanted to come back to Church but she was just really shy, she knows most of the Single adults there though. She said if she didn't get married she might be on a mission right now! We couldn't teach because there was no other male there, the two earlier went and hid in there houses or something... But she said we could come back on Saturday when her husband was there. I actually didn't because elder Crowley and I did splits in Lamut. But Tadena and Valdez did, and they said the the lesson was great and that sister was gonna come to Church on Sunday...she didn't but thats okay, we only taught once, once we get start teaching consistently then hopefully she and her husband will return.

We kept teaching Tatay Vallayos, he is a very interesting man. A man of strong opinions. He knows a lot about the gospel, but there are some principals, that he is still confused about like repentance, he said you can only repent once in your life.. we didn't argue with him about that but we will probably bring that up in other lessons. But something cool that happened with him this week was that he has a girlfriend, that just had a stroke, and she wants to be taught, she is 46 years old and has already read the whole gospel principals book. We have taught her twice this week, the lessons were awesome, but Tatay Vallayos, is really good at getting off topic, and he is super talkative... he gets into deep doctrine that doesn't need to be discussed at this point in Sister's conversion. Sister wasn't able to come to church because she just had a stroke and so she is still having a lot of health problems there, and she wasn't feeling like going to church. But Tatay Vallayos came to church, that is his 3rd in a row, he is close to returning.

Valen, she had her baptismal interview this week, she failed. Valdez interviewed her, he said that she doesn't have a very strong testimony of Joseph Smith, before the interview I just felt like she wasn't ready either, I told that to Tadena... he didn't really listen to me though... that was kinda frustrating. In the end the right decision was made.

We taught the Bontayon family again, man I love that family so much, brother is awesome, they finally opened up to us, they said that back in the day they used to be strong members in the ward, they were sealed in the Temple, Brother was a member of the District presidency. But they told us why they became in active. The missionaries literately drove them in active. First a rm, came back to them and married their daughter without even telling them, infact the Branch President performed the marriage and nobody told Sister and Brother Bontayon... well to be honest I don't want to get into it all, but they were treated very unfairly by the missionaries. One time they didn't have any money for food, so brother was forced to work on Sunday, a Sister missionary saw, went up and chastised brother, and said that if he continues something bad will happen in his life... then he had a stroke a few weeks later... its like whats wrong with the missionaries, its really embarrassing. Everyone in the area really looks down on the Elders now. President Tae, the Philippine area President, said to President Carlos awhile back, if the Lord can't trust in the missionaries, who can he trust in... well the Bontayon family and their neighborhood can't trust in us... that's gonna be Elder Tadena and mine new task, restore the trust to the elders and ward member in that family and neighborhood. 

Elder Crowley and I taught Tatay Magno last night, that was a intense lesson, we showed up and we didn't know what we were gonna teach, it was cool cause in like 30 seconds elder Crowley and I made this awesome lesson plan, we shared Enos 1:27 about Salvation... awesome versus, then we were like how do we gain this Eternal life, we opened up to Moroni 7:34, about faith, repentance, and baptism, we said that this is the gospel that the Lord prepared for us to gain Salvation, and if follow this Gospel we would, but there is one more vital part of this Gospel that we have to follow, Enduring to the End, and we opened 2nd Nephi 31:16..i think.. about enduring to the end. We asked tatay, what he was feeling, he said he felt pain when he heard that because he knows he is not doing what he needs to do. Elder Crowely and I both testified of Repentance, and that he is never completely lost... it was a awesome lesson. We will see what happens though.

I love being a missionary, this cycle has been awesome, I have learned so much, sorry the letter is kinda short, but we are running out of time. I love you guys thanks for everything.
Elder James

Oh yeah something else cool, one of the new missionaries arriving on thursday is from Bangladesh, he is the first missionary ever to be called from Bangladesh, its really exciting, he is serving in our mission.