The struggles of addiction

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Satan has so great hold over these people. They literally are his slaves because they are slaves to their addictions. Everybody right now is getting ready to “celebrate” the New Year by drinking the night away. They have absolutely no self-control and often I wonder if the people we’re working with really are converted. The reason I’m talking about this is because we visited Bro Andales again tonight and he was drunk because he’d gone to a wedding earlier and was all drunk. Tardios were there when we arrived and were sharing a message to him. About half way through the message he cut them off and started talking about how he is only a person and how we all sin because of Adam. Just to top it off he had dragged another drunk friend home as well to “hear about the church of saints in the latter days.” I felt so bad for Tardios. They were totally shut down in trying to share with him. Also I felt bad because after they sang to close, Bro Andales asked us to sing. I think they were a little bit offended about it and they were a little discouraged about the experience after we finished. I don’t know how else to help Bro Andales. We’ve taught him, sang songs to him, made him little charts and everything else. He can go for a while without drinking but as soon as the temptation is there he loses all self-control and gives in. I’m all out of ideas of what to do. The rest of the day was good. We had a good visit with Bro Villadares and read with him. He said again that he’ll come to church this week so we’ll see what happens there. We also did some work on the CMIS so that it’ll get all fixed up. While we were talking to Bro Edward about people who are inactive, he told us that they used to use church money to help pay for people to come to church. Also we found that the old elders used to pay people to come to church. This isn’t all about free handouts. Really it’s about hard trials and sacrifice. There are two principles that the people here in the Philippines really need to learn. All they do is sit around and wait for some rich person to give them money. They don’t want to work and try to help themselves.

Singing with Bro Andales

Singing with Bro Andales

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