May 5, 2014

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!
We don't even celebrate it here but I thought I should mention it. Elder Belnap and I had a wonderful week! We had another missionary leadership council. Elder Belnap and I counted and we figured out that this was the 11th one! And I will probably have more of them. I love missionary leadership councils and they really help out a ton. This one was a little bit different because President Stucki invited all of the district leaders to come to it as well. I thought it was alright but it just didn't feel the same as a regular MLC. However, we still were able to learn a lot so everyone was able to benefit from it. The main focus of our MLC was to increase out expectations as missionaries. We feel like the missionaries could be ding a lot better as long as we have faith in Jesus Christ and do everything we can to reach the vision our mission president has set. I feel like everyone was able to get a lot from the MLC and now all we have to do is apply the things that were learned. I can't wait to see the mission continue to grow and reach the potential that I know that it can. Our area is starting to get better, we still could use a lot more people to teach, but the people that we are teaching at the moment are really progressing. We had a lesson with Rommel again and he explained that him and his girlfriend now want to get married! That was one thing that was concerning us because you can't get baptized unless you are married first if you are living with someone. So that was great but I don't know how soon they can get married. I guess we'll see. It does comfort me however that they will one day get married and they have the desire to be together forever because they even said that they want to get married in the Temple! We taught Raymond again and he is just doing great. He is getting closer and closer to the decision to be baptized. I feel like he just needs to make the final decision and then he will get a blessed so much! He shared with us a really cool experience. He said that one night he had a dream that he was dressed in white and was baptized! One of this friends in church was the one who baptized him and Elder Belnap and I were both there as well. It was cool because he has been praying so much to find an answer on what he should do and then when he told us that I said, well there's the answer to your prayers! I hope he acts on the answer he got. We also go to work with the youth of the Makati 4th ward this last Saturday. It was cool because we don't get to work with youth a whole lot. They were awesome though and they are preparing for missions of their own. The youth are just getting better and better these days and they continue to surprise me by their faith and commitment to the gospel. They will be great missionaries in the future. I absolutely love this work. I couldn't do it without my Savior.