May 13

Dear Family and Friends-

This week has been alright, but a little frustrating because of the lack of support from the ward.  As I mentioned to you there are a lot of people in the ward roughly 500, but there was hardly anyone at church yesterday and none of our investigators.  It is just really frustrating, when the ward doesn't have very much unity, we are trying to work with the ward to make them more accepting of people and on the 25 may we have a big party that all the members are suppose to bring an inactive friend or non member.  Hopefully that will help add to our teaching pool. 

We have been meeting with a lot of these members and they all have really solid testimonies, but they just don't understand why going to church really matters.  Some of them live really far away from the church and can't afford they fare to get to church.  That has been the problem with the Raro children.  The mom wants so much to go back to church, but they just can't afford it. I hope though that they can have the faith to come to church.  Those kids are my favorite I love teaching them and always look forward when we go there, even though we have to walk through a lot of rice fields to get there.  I have a picture, but I forgot my converter so I will have to send them next week.  I will send a lot of pictures next week.

As mom found out the Mayan Volcano erupted last Tuesday, we didn't see it, but we heard about it from the members.  It really didn't effect Guinobaton, but it did effect one the the elder's area in our zone.  All the elders were okay though.  The 4 people that died were climbing the mountain.  Also it has started to rain a lot, which  I love, but all the natives don't like the rain because rain means flooding, which can wipe out neighborhoods.  Oh well we will just have to see what happens.

On Friday we had a zone training in Legazbi (which means Air conditioner), and we listened to a talk that President Holland gave at a Mission Presidents Conference,  He said that if missionaries complain that missionary work is hard and wonder why if we have the restored gospel are not people lining up to be baptized to tell those missionaries that of course missions are not easy... because salvation was not easy... every time people reject you remember that Jesus Christ was rejected by many... In this way, in a real sense missionaries come to know the savior better because they are experiencing in a small sense what the savior experienced... remember though that in those times of rejection the savior stands beside you to bear you up.   That was just a paraphrase of what he said, but it was really powerful and of course it was Elder Holland it was pretty intense.

I am so glad that I have a savior to help me and I know that when I rely on the savior, I know what to say and when I teach with the spirit the words that I have studied so come to my mind and my Tagalog somehow makes sense. This is why the spirit is so very important to teach.  On the plus side though not knowing most of what people say makes it a lot easier to accept rejection.

Well hopefully the new investigators we found this week will continue to be receptive of our message.  I love doing the Lord's work.
-Sister Richins