Week 3

Dear Family,

 

I am so excited for you Jarom!  I can't wait to see Emma! 

 

Let's see, what has happened this week?  We taught one of our "investigators" yesterday and failed miserably.  He hadn't followed up on the commitment to read the Book of Mormon, so we spent the majority of our time reading with him and he looked so bored the whole time.  Then when we started our lesson about how to pray, he kept interupting us telling us that he already knew everything we were saying.  We didn't know how to change our lesson in the moment though because... we still don't really know this language all that well.  Then, we ran out of time and had to leave before we could extend a new commitment or share our testimonies or anything.  There are a lot of things we need to work on, but I think one of our biggest problems is that we aren't very unified as a companionship.  We've already tried so many things to help with that, but our ideas are just so different.  I don't know what else to do.  I am now the senior companion and being the least opinionated person in the trio am trying my best to keep the peace.  Nothing any of us say is going to change the other's opinions of certain things.  If any of you have any good ideas, please let me know.

 

Last Tuesday, Elder D. Todd Christofferson came and spoke to us for devotional.  They never tell us who is going to be speaking before we get there, so I had no idea why we all stood up in the middle of our prelude singing.  It was pretty exciting.  And I also noticed that everyone sang louder than normal with him there.  Later on in the meeting though, I felt a little bad for President Brown and also embarrased at the image we were giving ourselves. He was treating the meeting as a Q&A type meeting and one time he asked who could quote our purpose.  Several people raised their hands and had the microphone brought to them and tried, and failed.  I felt bad that I wasn't even confident enough in it to raise my hand.  President Brown is always stressing for us to have our purpose memorized... I have it memorized now though! (:  Other than that, the meeting was really good.  His wife talked about love and how we should love our investigators and think of them as though they could be our brother, or daughter, or aunt.  They really are part of our family.  Elder Christofferson talked about the Doctrine of Christ, which is something I have been studying up on a lot more lately. 

 

So, kind of funny... but not really... the MTC is starting an Illongo Program in July, just after we leave.  So... we will be the last group of missionaries going to Iloilo that learns Tagalog at the MTC.  I know that learning Tagalog will be so helpful though, even though we will have to learn different dialects when we get out there.  We just lost most of the people in our Zone to the Philippines, so as of right now, there are only 2 districts still here that are going to the Philippines. But, there is a new group of missionaries coming tomorrow that will take their place. 7 new sisters and 9 new elders. Crazy! Only our district is going to Iloilo. 

 

FYI, I am scheduled to go to the Philippines on June 25th, so you guys can notify the bank.

Oh! And I have an awesome bruise on my arm from volleyball (:

 

Ah, that time really goes down super fast! Bummer! Have a good week everyone!

Thanks for your letters!

 

Heidi