Power is out again (7/20/14)

Dear Family and Friends,

This has been a great week. The typhoon that I mentioned last week did not make it up to us, it was down in the Manila area. Hopefully the departing missionaries weren't delayed too long in Manila. We had some heavy rain for a few days in Pinili and the power kept going out. Luckily we have a good supply of candles and not much in our apartment needs electricity. It just gets very hot during studies without electric fans though. We survived though and are looking forward to a good week this coming week. It was a great first week with Elder Ab. He is from Manila and many of the members here know his dad since he works for the church and was a bishop in Manila. Elder Ab's dad actually performed the wedding of our ward mission leaders son back when he was a bishop. It is a very small world. 

So some updates on recent converts. The Aqu family us doing great. Sher and Eme have actually started working with us to fellowship and are still coming to church. Sher is slowly getting rid of his smoking and is very close now. He is down to 1 or 1/2 sticks a day. A funny incident happened yesterday when we taught them when Iv stuck Sher's cigarette in a hole is a statue and lost it. We were all laughing, especially since I am sure Iv did it on purpose. He is like his dad's personal reminder to always be keeping the commandments. 

Sacrament meeting wasn't quite as packed as last week, but there was still a good 20-30 people there. Bro. Ne came again and is now our unofficial Gospel Principles teacher. We haven't even taught him yet and he is coming back to church. It is all because of the efforts of the members. They are doing their own missionary work and home and visiting teaching and everything. That is one of the things that I really love about Pinili is that the members take such a big part of the work upon themselves without us having to constantly remind them.  That is the way the work is supposed to be. Members and missionaries working together in unity to bring souls unto Christ.

We have been working to get new baptismal dates for the coming months. Unfortunately, only one of our investigators is coming to church, which is Sherwin. We have committed many of our investigators to come to church, but they have not come yet. We are really going to focus on that in the next few weeks and get some more people ready for baptism in September. One of our new investigators is Mr. Wh, the man from Singapore that i mentioned last week. We were finally able to teach him (he really likes to talk) and he enjoyed the message about the Restoration. He even opened up to us about some of the problems in his family that he wants to fix. He really wants his family to listen to us too. We are excited to teach him and his family again this coming Thursday.

It was a pretty normal week this week. Considering it was a transfer week it went very well. Just in closing I want to share with you a little miracle that happened this week that testifies to me of the love of our Heavenly Father for all of us. On Saturday we had a baptismal interview in one of the district leaders areas and on the way back, I left our phone in the jeepney right before we switched vehicles and we realized it way to late. So our phone was gone. Luckily we had an extra in the apartment and after getting some minutes on it I texted President to let him know. He then forwarded us a text from Elder Ew, whose investigators we interviewed, that our phone is now with the Elders in San Lorenzo, who got it from the jeepney driver. It was such a miracle considering the number of phones that get lost and not returned. We had prayed that we would be able to recover the phone since it has all of our contact numbers on their and our prayer was answered. I know that Heavenly Father knows what happens in our lives every day and that He does little things for us all because He loves us. He is always there for us and as we seek to do His will he will bless us. He lives and so does our Savior. I love this work and am excited to keep on working through these last months! Thanks for all that ya'll do!

Love,

Elder R Wood