Memories of a Mission – Page 9 – "We will work for the glory of our Lord"

“I just sat there and felt like crying”

Monday, January 17, 2005

Today was a good day except for tonight. This morning after our planning session we visited the Zapata family out in Niyayos to do a first lesson follow-up. Brother told us that he’d only been able to read a little bit but that little bit turned out to be the first 13 chapters of 1^st Nephi! He told us he wanted to read more but he kept on getting interrupted by people. He said it was good but that it was still far out of deep for him. We challenged him to pray about it and he said he’d do that. The rest of the day we got to teach a good first lesson to Sis Delfino and her son. It went well and I think we cleared up some of her concerns. The sad/depressing part was when we got back to Calintaan. We visited bro Andales and, well, he had drunk again. They were building a house next door and so he was helping them and of course thee marienda was alcohol. He didn’t have the strength to say “no” and he took a shot. When we visited him he gave all the normal excuses about how he’s just a man, Adam and Eve sinned, it really was “just one” etc, etc. Well so much for his baptism on the 5^th of February. We’ll have to push it back again. After leaving their house we went out to the ocean and I just sat there and felt like crying. It’s so disappointing to see him mess up when we’ve visited him daily almost since I got here. He was talking about how he wanted to be the “fruit” of my work here on Mindoro and that he’ll be baptized before I leave. I’m beginning to lose hope though. He just doesn’t seem to really truly want it.

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Meeting the other church leaders in Calintaan

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Today was an interesting day. First of all church. We only had 31 people attend because of lack of pera[1] and other various and sundry reasons. We did have three investigators there: Bro Aldana, Bro Andales, and Bro Manalo. We had really good meetings and the spirit was strong. Bro Viloria was one of the speakers today and he did a really good job. Even though it is his first time to speak in front of people, he did a really good job. In fact it was one of the best talks that I’ve heard here in Calintaan.

After lunch we had an interesting experience. We went over to the Catholic Church for that planning meeting for the Bible week. They fed us lunch, which was delicious by the way. The meeting went well but I learned again how different out church is from other churches. Hopefully that will be a really good way to get some positive publicity for the church. They had a lot of good ideas but I’m not sure exactly what we can do and so we’re going to have to ask Elder Fa’oa about it. Just for example, they want to have a biblical thought and prayer at the schools every day at the flag raising. Also they are doing an exhibit about the bible. The only things that I’m worried about are posting a banner on the church and the program after the Sunday parade. Obviously we’re not going to participate in the parade but in the program we got given the part to say a prayer about social transformation and also they wanted Elder Cox and I to carry a collection basked for gathering money. Well we’re not going to do the collection basket!! I’m not sure about the “prayer.” Hopefully Pres Isla can give it so that we can get rid of the “American Church” image. Anyhow, all of the church leaders were really respectful and kind to us. I think at first they were kind of surprised but it went really well and they’re all really nice. I really have good hope that we’ve started a good relationship with the other church leaders here. Hopefully this will all work out well.

[1] Pera = money

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Learning about National Bible Week

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Today was a really long day and I’m not exactly sure what we accomplished. This morning we went out to Niyaos to do work. We looked for some past investigators and found one of them. He was working and wasn’t exactly excited about talking with us. We also talked to a lady who told us about the upcoming “National Bible Week.” I guess a lot of the churches are getting together to emphasize the importance of the Bible. They invited us to a planning meeting tomorrow at the Catholic Church. Hopefully this will give the church some good positive publicity. Hopefully it will also become a good finding opportunity for us. We also went finding in Niyayos II this morning and had some good talks with people. While we were out there, I was reminded of Africa. Sometime I can’t believe I’m in this place and that I understand their language.

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Talok in the Bukid

Friday, January 14, 2005

We did service with Bro Andales today out in his bukid. We helped him talok. Talok is planting rice. They take individual plants that are already pretty big and they pull them out where they were seeded really think. Then each plant is planted individually. It’s really hard because you’re always bent over pulling out plants or putting them in. Just to top it off, I think I have an allergic reaction to the rice. My hands have little red spots all over and they are tingly. It feels like they’ve fallen asleep and are just waking up except that the tingling never stops. Anyways it was fun. I am really lucky to get to do that. It’s not every missionary in the world that gets to plant rice for service.

“Nagtatalok sa bukid” Planting rice in the field. Yep, that’s me.

Bro Andales working the fields

After lunch we had another good discussion with Bro Dioso. He said that he really knew that the Book of Mormon was true but he only doesn’t understand why we go to church on Sunday. We again told him to pray about it and he said he would. If he can just overcome this one obstacle he’ll be a really strong investigator. Our last appointment tonight was with Bro Ray Villadares. It was a strange experience. We sat down and then about 30 seconds later a whole bunch of people came in carrying a girl/young woman. He told us that she was his sister. She didn’t look in good shape at all and the first thing that went through my mind was that she’d been raped. They took her into the next room and she started to scream and cry. Brother came back and told us to come back another day. We offered to help but he declined so we left. Elder Cox also thought that she’d been raped. People are so evil. I just wanted to find the man and beat him to pieces. I feel really bad for Ray and his family. I hope we can do something to help him.

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Understanding Apostasy

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Today was a really strange day. I don’t think we taught a single normal lesson the whole day. Also we didn’t have a single appointment actually go through at the time that we wanted it to. We did a lot of finding today and had two really firsts come off of it. One was to a man in Red Hills that has been taught before but he doesn’t let what we say get in his hear. He’s convinced that the Catholic Church is true but says that ours is true as well and he seems to understand the apostasy. I even told him outright that the Catholic Church is wrong and that he needs to join our church because only through that can he be saved. That didn’t even faze him. I guess some people just don’t want anything in life and are just happy to float along. We did have a good first lesson review with Bro Freddie Pacheco. He told us he’d prayed and gotten and answer. Hopefully he’ll start to progress. I’ve been really tired today and I actually took about an hour nap today at lunch. I think it’s just because of stress etc.

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Letters and the truthfulness of the Bible

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Today was a good day. We didn’t have any places to go and so we just sat at the apartment and studied/vegetated. I also got to write a couple of letters, one to my trainer Elder Sangco and one to A. It’s really strange to write because it takes so long for my mail to get to them and even longer to get letters from them to me. I haven’t gotten a real written letter since the beginning of January. I really wanted to read some today but I’ve already read most of the old ones three or four times and so that would just have been boring. I ended up doing a little study out of the “teachings of the prophets” books about missionary work. It was good and inspiring to me. Our work was good today. We had a really long discussion about the plan of salvation with Mervin Dioso, He’s really good at the Bible but he has a little trouble accepting that the Bible has errors. I challenged him again to pray and ask if the Book of Mormon is true. He says it’s ok in his mind but I just know that he needs to pray and gain a sure knowledge so that he’ll realize that the Bible doesn’t have all the answers. I’m more and more impressed all the time at how vitally the first principles and ordinances apply to people. If they’d just exercise a little faith and accept a little their whole understanding would open up.

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Losing an email

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

We had district meeting today in San Jose. We got kind of a late start coming out of Calintaan and didn’t get to the church until 8:45. We were still the first ones there though. I got to conduct the meeting again today and I also got to teach an attributes lesson in district meeting. I taught about gaining and having knowledge. I guess it went well even though it was kind of a strange topic. I hope it was beneficial to the other elders. I also did my email today. As always I got a good bunch of letters from my family. I really wanted to write them a really long letter back because I had a lot to say; but, the computer I was working on started having all sorts of things popping up. I had to turn off the monitor and hard restart the computer. As a result, I lost most of what I had written and so the letter turned out to be a lot shorter than I had intended it to be. I did, however, get some good pictures sent home of the Viloria family and the Pulido family. After coming back to my area, we went out and visited Bro Sergio Aldana. We taught him another lesson about tithing and showed him how to work the slips. We also got to meet with Bro Delfino tonight and got him a baptismal date. He’s doing a lot better and he told us that he’s also doing well on avoiding alcohol. Hopefully he really is and he really is progressing. We also got to teach Bro Andales about the law of chastity. It went well and I think that he is making progress.

Mangyan merchandise that the Oretas showed us

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Ups and Downs

Sunday, January 9, 2005

I hate emotions. Today I had some time when I was feeling really confident and then just a little alter I would be feeling discouraged and not at all confident about the work. Church, for example, was really good today. I felt the spirit more powerfully than I probably have before in this branch. Pres Armoreta visited and he gave a really good talk about the importance of reading the scriptures. On the other hand, we only had one investigator at church, Bro Aldana. Again on the plus side, Pres Isla was successful in helping the Malakad family from Cansaliw come to church. We also got to give the priesthood to Bro Viloria. I really hope that he’ll continue to progress and get to the temple and that I’ll be able to see him there. We had an interesting lesson with a brother out in Niyayos today. He had a question about when the Sabbath day is really supposed to be. He would believe what we said but there isn’t a single scripture in the Bible or in modern revelation that says we should go to church on Sunday. I finally told him that if he would pray to know about the truthfulness of the church then he’d be able to accept Sunday as the Sabbath just because it is the day that the trud church has their church meeting. We also visited Bro Aldana today. It is hard for me to work with him because we’ve already taught him everything and now we’re really just waiting for the interview. I hope we can strengthen his faith enough that he will want to give us a referral and we will be able to teach some of his family.

Me with the Pulido Family. I got some serious sun in this area.

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The Church is essential

Saturday, January 8, 2005

People are so difficult. I don’t understand how people can think that they can worship God but that he doesn’t have his church here on the earth. We had a long discussion today with the R. family. I thought that he was progressing really well because he’d let us give him a baptismal date. He told us today that he doesn’t want to change religions but that he isn’t satisfied with the Catholics. He wants us to keep coming back so that we can “add to his knowledge.” He doesn’t, however, want to take any action of follow any of our invitations. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or if he’s just hard-hearted. I guess I just need to keep on doing all that I know how to do and let the Lord take care of the rest of it. I really want to be successful as a missionary but I often fell that I don’t know how to do it right. Especially I’ve felt like this since becoming a senior companion. I didn’t used to be worried about wasting time and not getting places quickly. Now all that is suddenly very important to me. I hope that I can learn what I’m supposed to from this experience.

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Trying to work with Members

Friday, January 7, 2005

I really have a lot more to learn about planning and being a senior companion. I had a lot of good things planned for today but some of them just didn’t work out. This morning I taught a piano lesson to Sis Pulido. That went well. She’s really improving and hopefully she’ll still be able to practice when she goes over to Oriental. I think that they have a real ward there and she’ll still be able to practice. We also got an iwas calendar made for Bro Delfino. After lunch we visited the Gregorios to do correlation. They were upset with us for not visiting them for so long. Bro Gregorio told us that it was our responsibility to visit all of the inactives. He’s really off obviously. This change in our hours has really messed him and some of the other members up. I’m still trying to figure out how to help the inactives without hurting our conversion work. The people have all come to expect that the elders will visit all of the members regularly and then when that doesn’t happen they get upset and stop coming to church. Anyway, we ended up visiting Bro Malakad and sharing with him. We also gave Bro Delfino the calendar that we’d made. Bro Viloria told us that he thought that he’d already stopped drinking. Hopefully that’s true.

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