Friday, February 4, 2005

Today has been a really long, hard, but also very rewarding day. I taught another lesson to Lennie Tardio on the piano. She is really improving a lot. She finally figured out how the rhythm “sixteenth-dotted eighth” is supposed to go. She really has diligence and is doing well. This morning early we went jogging.

We started doing that for 20 minutes every morning since Monday. We were just given a new health manual and so we’re following it. It feels really good to go running and I’m really enjoying it.

We got to have a really good discussion with Bro Aldana today. He shared a lot of his favorite scriptures and we taught him about missionary work and sharing the gospel. I’m continually amazed at how strong he is. Hopefully he will find the courage to let us teach his three children and his wife once she comes back from the middle-east. The spirit is really strong every time we visit him and I’m grateful to know him.

We also had a really good experience with the Andales family tonight. We got to teach all of them, both parents and all seven children, about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. This is the first time that I’ve actually seen all of them together. The spirit was really strong. We gave them the commitment to do family prayer and scripture study. Each of the children individually said that they would support it and Brother and Sister said that they would do it. To close up we sang “Sa Inyo aking Diyos, Lumalapit”or “Nearer my God to Thee.” As we were singing they were all smiling. I’ve never seen them so happy before. It must have been a reflection in some small way of the joy that will exist in the Celestial Kingdom.