We made it

Well... I am not sure exactly how we did it, but we made it through another week!! I learned a lot this week. I learned that we definitely receive a lot of help from the other side of the veil. There is no way that we could have gotten through the week by ourselves. I also realized that I know a lot more Tagalog than I thought. When I had to be the one to really take the lead in everything with very minimal help, I realized that I could do it. I am still definitely below conversational, but, I almost always understand what people are trying to say and I can generally manage to get my point across.

The highlight this week was the baptism of Chrissel. She was the very first investigator that I taught in the mission field. My very first day here, we went and taught her and in my very, very broken Tagalog, I extended a baptismal date to her. Her original date was Oct 6. She wasn't ready though. So, we changed it to Nov. 10. But she was not quite solid with her testimony and still wasn't quite ready to "not be Catholic." We taught her 2 or 3 times a week. We gave her a list of our favorite scriptures and told her that if she would read every day for 2 weeks that she would know that the church is true. She read everyday and after 2 weeks said that she wanted to be interviewed for baptism. She is technically not in my area, but they called the morning of the baptism and asked if I would baptize her. I was super excited. It was soo cool to see her whole conversion process from start to finish. The gospel really changes lives.

We also spent a lot of time this week out finding new investigators. It is definitely scary sometimes to just start talking to a group of people. I am far from perfect in the language, so it was a little bit hard this week. But, I learned so much this week. We now have a lot of progressing investigators and I am really excited to start working again next week. 

I love the mission. The ups and downs, the good and bad, and all that comes because of the time that I have out here. I am grateful for all of the examples that I have back home and I send lots of prayers your way. 

Love Elder Thomas