December 9

Dear Family and Friends,

Well this week has been good.  We had a good week and I continue to learn more and more. We had some really great days and then some hard ones too.  But that is okay, that is how missionary work is.  We were able to find a couple new investigators, which was good.  It was interesting because for the past two weeks I felt that I had talked so many people and no one wanted to hear our message, but we had a couple of great miracles this week.

The first one was Rodel. So we were tracting in one of our areas and we saw one of the less actives that we teach.  This less active we see him all the time, but he never wants us to teach him, but we was with his friend and he told us we could go and visit his friend Rodel. We set up an appointment with him for the next night.  I am not going to lie.  I was a bit apprehensive about the appointment I felt that he really wasn't interesting in our message, but instead interesting in the two white americans speaking Tagalog. But it is not that way he listened intently as we talked about Joseph Smith and invited him to pray.  Also his two sisters listened too.  When we came back, he said that he had prayed and felt so good about Joseph Smith, he said that he couldn't come to church yesterday, but next sunday he would be able too.  So hopefully he will continue to progress.

The second miracle was Maricar.  So there is this one street that we walk down everyday and all the kids on that street know us and always run up to us to give us hugs and high fives.  We were walking down they street and starting talking to one of the pedjack drivers.  He is like 19 years old and we started talking and we asked if we could visit him.  He said that he lived on that one street.  We went to the house and we taught his sister, who is married and has three kids.  She said she had always watched missionaries walk up and down that street, but they never stopped to teach her.  It was such a powerful lesson and by the end we were both in tears.


So Christian is doing good.  He is working on giving up things in the Word of Wisdom.  Yesterday he just kept on sayin that he couldn't do it, that he couldn't make it, but we testifyin about the atonement and that if he relied on the Lord, he could give those things up.  He has so much desire he wants this so bad and through Jesus Christ he can do this.


So these were the highlights of the week.  Of course there are stuggles too.  We are still do hours and hours of tracting and street contacting. It is just so different becuase for the past two transfers we had so many appointments that we almost never went tracting and now I feel that is all we do.  But it is good.  I really do enjoy it.  You get to meet so many people and share what we teach.  There is a lot of joy in finding.  We are still working to bring up our teaching pool and finding those that will recieve us, like Rodel and Maricar.

We had a great zone training this week, it was good to hear from our zone leaders.  We talked about increasing the number of total lessons in our zone and extending baptismal dates early within the first or 2nd lesson, and continue to find people to teach. President encouraged us to teach 7 lessons a day-it is a lot, but It is good, we just have to reach higher and plan and teach effectively.

Well we have to work hard this week because next week we will be in Legazbi for two days for training and our Christmas Zone conference.

Thank you all for your prayers to find those that will recieve us here in Bulan,

-Sister Richins