Dear Family,
This week was great, we got a lot of great work done. I was a very normal week, but it went by really fast, we taught some great lessons.
We were only able to teach Myra once this week, but we were able to teach her about keeping the sabbath day holy, it was a pretty straight forward lesson, but she is doing great in her reading and praying, she is in 1st Nephi 25. Sometimes I feel like I am a little pushy when it comes to our investigators reading and praying, but there is no way that they will be ready for baptism if they aren't reading and praying everyday. She also was able to go to church, she went to church in Echague though, she has a aunt and uncle that are members in Echague, her uncle is actually a high councilman. She is doing great, her baptismal date is on Sept 15.
Sister Letlet is doing amazing, I am amazed at how much she has come along. She came to church this week, that makes it two weeks in a row! She is keeping our other commitments. This week we watched the movie Finding faith in Christ with her, she got really into it, her reactions were actually kind of funny when it showed Jesus performing a miracle. The spirit was super strong during the lesson. I think, but am not sure that we are gonna give her a baptismal date for Sept 15. She is ready for it, she doesn't have any problems with any of the Commandments, she has a strong testimony, she loves our Church. She is reading the Book of Mormon. As long as she keeps coming to church, and doesn't let the argument with sister Fe get in her way, then everything should be alright.
The Cristobal family is also progressing very nicely. Brother has abstained alcohol for about 3 weeks now I think, him and his son came to church on sunday, making them "Returned less active." It is nice to see some fruit of our work starting to come through her in Jones. Sister didn't come because she went to Manila to visit her daughter there. It was nice we were able to teach brother one on one on friday. It was a great lesson, I cant remember what script verse we shared, but it was about how the Lord keeps his promises and we have to do our part to keep the commandments and like that and we will obtain all of the promises and blessing of the Lord. It was a great lesson.
The Pemuliar family is doing great, we taught them twice this week, the first lesson about Faith and Repentance, it was a great lesson, it had good flow and the spirit was super strong. The next lesson that we taught them was about baptism. The lesson was great, we gave them the baptismal invitation and the accepted, they had a lot of questions, but that is great, brother at first was confused as to why he needed to be baptized again, since he was baptized as a baby. We explained that baptism had to be done by the proper authority. It was actually a good opportunity too, to explain to them the importance of praying to know if Joseph Smith is a true prophet and if he truly restored the true church and authority back on the earth. Sister has received an answer about Joseph Smith and she knows that he is a true Prophet, but brother has received or recognized his answer yet. Their baptismal date is for Oct 6. The reason why we put it out so far is so that we can teach their little daughter too, they have a 10 year old daughter that is never present during the lessons, but sister Pemuliar says that she does all of the reading assingments and loves coming to church. We are gonna focus on the mom and dad first, and when we have the opportunity we are gonna teach her, so they can be baptized as a family.
Tatay Quijas has officially become less active. I dont know if I told you this last week, but after sacrament last week he told us that he was gonna go less active until Jojo started going to church in Cauayan where he should. We are continuing to visit him and stuff, but he has a pretty hard head..
We found this new less active sister, her name is Sister Villiaflour, we actually technically didn't just find her this week, we found her a long time ago. But this week we finally were able to teach her. She is super super nice, I thought that she was hiding from us, it just turns out that she has been very very busy. I think things have been finally getting back to normal with her. She was back in the day the "house help" for the missionaries. There is no more house help, but back in the day they had this thing called the househelp, it was just someone that the church hired, to clean the elders apartment, wash their clothes, cook their food, do pretty much everything... due to some tax stuff the church cant hire them anymore, at least her in the Philippines. Anyway she also used to be the old Relief Society President. She used to be a super strong member, she just got offended and went less active, its kinda too bad. She loves the missionaries, she started crying at the end of the lesson because she said that she misses the Church and especially the missionaries. I really want to work with her to get her active again, she could be a super big help to the ward. Her daughter and her family also live with her, we could teach her daughter and her family too at some point.
I am not sure but I believe that Tatay Pong is gonna be the new Branch Mission leader, that would be awesome, he is working with us once a week, people absolutely love him. He would be a huge help to our work, like I am not kidding, if he became the bml here, our work could really take off. I mean its already doing great, but with his help we could get more organized and more help from the branch and it would just make a huge help. He is by far my favorite member here in Jones, I mean I love all the members here, but Tatay is just awesome.
I am not gonna lie, we taught a lot of less actives this week that I was sure were gonna come to church, it was kinda disappointing when they didn't show up.
For pday we didn't do anything, we are running a little low on support, our water and electricity bill for the last two months just poof showed up, so that took a good 750 peso's to pay... We are sleeping in Angadanan later tonight instead of going all the way back to Jones, because tomorrow is district meeting, and we meet here in Alicia, so to save some money the Zone Leaders are letting us sleep in Angadanan.. which is right next to Alicia.
Oh yeah, and Elder Lasay and I asked President this week if we could on some pday make a visit to Bagabag, and he said yes... so on some pday we are gonna go to Bagabag and visit some people there for a few hours! I am pretty excited to visit the Lacaden family and the Bodegon family!
Anyway thanks for everything,
Love you Guys
Elder James
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