Fire Cleanup

Not gonna lie, the funnest part of this week was the cleanup at a members house that had burned. We took hammers and crowbars to the house for like 6 hours and completely removed all the roof and anything else in the house that wasn't cement. It was awesome. It was super cool to see all the members show up to help. We also helped a member who was moving up to Baguio. It was kind of sad to see them leave because we were pretty close with them.

But, I think that the best part of this week was on Sunday. We were at the church waiting for President and Sister Oldroyd to show up. They were supposed to be at our sacrament meeting. Then a few minutes later, an older couple came rolling up on this electric bike type thing. It was a couple that we had contacted 3 weeks ago. We taught them twice and felt like we should share a lesson about the importance of the sacrament. We shared it with them and then they actually showed up to church. We haven't had any of our investigators show up to church in a while, so it was awesome to see them there. 

This week was also cool because our district had a lot of success. I got to go out and do 3 different baptismal interviews. It is awesome to see how the gospel has been able to change the lives of those who learn about Christ's church here again on the earth. 

Another awesome experience this week was when I was on exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I was in their area and we really didn't have anywhere to go for an hour or 2. We were finding and we sat down with these 2 young ladies. One of them had a baby, so we starting kind of sharing a thought about the importance of families in God's eternal plan. But, she wasn't really that interested. Then I had the feeling to just talk about Joseph Smith. I shared his experience in just a few sentences and then the other girl started to ask a lot of questions. We found out that she had been studying with the INC (one of the other religions in the area), but she stopped because she had a lot of questions about prophets that weren't answered. We answered a few of her questions and she asked when we could come back to teach here more. That morning, me and Elder Diez had done a study about "teaching people, not lessons." It mentions in PMG that regardless of our initial contact, we should quickly refer to our unique message to the world. The gospel has been restored and a prophet still leads and guides this church.

The gospel is awesome. It has the power to change lives and we are a part of the most important work in the world today. I love you all. Thank you for all the thoughts, prayers, and emails. 

-Elder Thomas