8/17/14

Dear Family and Friends,

So when I opened up my ldsmail account it took me to the account setting page. It was then that I realized that it must now be two years since I opened up my missionary email account. What a crazy thought. Tomorrow, Tuesday is my 23 month mark. It is so insane! Where has the time gone! Anyway, I changed my password for the last time and was very excited to see a full inbox. 

This week was another one of the awesome busy weeks. We started doing our new exchanges. usually Zone Leaders only go on exchanges with the District Leaders, but President Barrientos has instructed us to now go on exchanges with as many of the Elders in the Zone as possible. So we had exchanges with one of our district leaders on Wednesday then I worked with the Elders in Batac on Thursday after district meeting while Elder Ab worked with Elders in the next town over. The exchange went well, though we weren't able to teach as much as we hoped. All the missionaries here in Batac were invited to a memorial service for a person in the Elders area. This man was not a member but had a dream about the church right before he died. So he left instructions that his memorial service was to be done by the church. It was a nice memorial service and the Elders set return appointments for a few of the family members to teach them more. There was also a memorial service going on outside of the apartment, but it ended right after 10:30, so it didn't bother us too much.

Update on Sher: He relapsed on Friday. Disappointing, but, not the end. He is back on his feet and starting again on recovering and not drinking. He was far way from home with his friends when it happened. He confessed on his own though and is now getting ready for baptism on September 27. He missed church on the 10th of August and he attributes his relapse in part to that. He told us he is never going to miss another day of church. His mother also joined us for the first time on Saturday. She always listens from another room when we teach then talks with the family about how great the things she hears are once we leave. They all love watching the Restoration DVD we gave them and the Stories from the Doctrine and Covenants DVD. Sherwin even takes notes while watching and tells us what he learned. Please keep him in your prayers.

We are working to try to get more of our investigators with baptismal dates to progress. The biggest issue for most of them is church. Even for the ones less than a block from the church. That is our focus this coming week, helping our investigators come to church. It will take lots of faith and prayers but the Lord can work miracles if we do our best. One of the groups we will be working on is our investigators that live just down the street from the meeting house. They are a part member family and one of their friends. The son of the member, is a Tae Kwon Do champion in Korea who got a blessing from the missionaries years ago. He reads from the Book of Mormon and is very active in the lessons. They have baptismal dates for October 4 (my last Saturday) and we have high hopes for them. 

One of the things that I love about Pinili is the help that we get from the members. We had two miracles happen with fellowshippers this week. One was on Wednesday, when the second counselor in the Bishopric worked with us all day (8 hrs of work). The other was on Friday when we were in a really far out area without a fellowshipper and things weren't looking good. Then almost out of the blue our ward mission leader texted us and asked where we were at, and he was near by. So he worked with us for the rest of the day and then the next day also. The Lord is really looking out for all of His servants and is opening up the way for us to do his work. I have really realized that there is no way this work would work without the direct help of the Lord. These are the last days and there is no work as important as the work of salvation. He is directing it and it will not fail.

Thanks for all of the support and prayers. Keep doing what ever part of this work the Lord has given you to do. There is great joy in doing the work of the Lord, greater than in any other work. I know that for a fact. Kita kits!

Love,

Elder R Wood