Well it's been a somewhat crazy week due to the hospital trip and such, I feel like I was just emailing the other day. So I forgot to mention some interesting news about transfers. We have a new Zone Leader here and his name is....Elder Lynn! I can't believe he followed me all the way up to Pagudpud just to be my Zone Leader. What a great guy. We'll have a lot of fun catching up about Cabugao. One more exciting bit; remember the pictures of the apartment? (the rather pangit (ugly) one). Well we're moving out soon! All the missionaries are moving out either this week or next into a new apartment. It'll be like being in Cabugao again!
Enough about that, let's talk about the good stuff. We went to Caunayan again and first off we gave a guy a copy of the Book of Mormon. He told us thank you like a million times for giving him something to read. I hope his whole family is that excited about it. Then we went to the Lagalo's again and they were excited to see us and asked why we didn't come the other day. We said sorry because Elder Ramsay had to go to the hospital and it messed up our schedule and we felt bummed because they invited a whole bunch of people over to hear us and we never showed up. Sayan! (what a waste). Tomorrow we're going back for sure though. Tons of people out there are willing to listen.
We had a District meeting about helping people overcome addictions. It was really good and then the thought occurred to me that we can use a lot of that to help people overcome the addiction of missing church. It's become a huge problem lately and yesterday for the first time in a while we had 0 investigators at church. It's heartbreaking. Well while we're on the sad stuff I might as well mention this next experience. One of the coolest guys that lived a lot of the gospel (including the Word of Wisdom) told us he hadn't read and he didn't want us to come back anymore because he was more interested in focusing on being a born again Christian. I really appreciate that he was being honest with us instead of hiding or trying to make excuses to avoid us, but at the same time it was sad becuase he hadn't done his part in trying to know. We bore strong testimony that he needs to read it and ponder it in order to know it's true. We left him with the Book of Mormon and I sincerely hope and pray that he reads it, for now he isn't ready yet.
Thursday we got to work with the best (well really the only one too, but still the best) fellowshipper in the branch. Bro. Carlo! He's such a hard working and gospel loving guy. We had a really good lesson with one of our investigators with a baptismal date and then another girl that has lots of questions about the gospel. Two of the greatest lessons this week by far.
And then things got hard again. The next day we had a lesson where the Spirit just wasn't strong at all and the nanay refused to show any interest. So we cut it short to go find a way to teach where we could have the Spirit. The next lesson was much better. We were dropped by that investigator on Saturday, but before his lesson we were having amazing finding and teaching opportunities in one of our weakest areas. We got a lesson to people that we hadn't been able to teach since I'd been here. Then we found a guy who had no religion and he wanted to know if we believed in the Bible or something else. We got to share to him about Joseph Smith's experience and the restored Church of Jesus Christ on the earth and how the Book of Mormon is the additional word of God that helps us know that this gospel is true. I thought that was a great lesson. Then on Sunday after we had been dropped by the investigator the previous day, had 0 investigators at church, and then ended up breaking our fast early because the branch brought food for a baptismal service we had (that was a really great baptism though), Elder Ramsay got frustrated because none of the branch was doing anything to help clean up after the lunch and one of the branch presidency was telling him he broke the sabbath since he was sweeping the church. Elder Ramsay made a smart comment to him and you could feel the spirit...the spirit of contention. So we tried to learn from that and try to handle things more like Jesus so we have the Spirit of Truth with us. And then I screwed up in the lesson we had and tried being a little too aggressive in saying that this is the only true church. I try too hard sometimes to say that not all churches are right. Jesus only taught one faith, one baptism but people tend to think that means whatever you do as long as you had faith and baptism Jesus will be alright with that. I just don't want to lose these investigators like we lost the other one on Saturday. Unfortunately I was a little too bold and less loving than I should have been and the Spirit in consequence was not strong during the lesson.
Well I hope we've learned everything that we need to so we can keep growing and progressing. It's still hard and tiring, but every time a child smiles and someone's life is made a little brighter by the missionaries it's all worth it. I imagine Jesus smiling right alongside the kids every time and I can't help but desire to be more like him and to help others receive his saving grace. Love the mission, every day is the great day.
Mahal ko kayo lahat
-Elder Egan
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