Philippines Mission--Week 40

Maajong palis kamong tanan! This letter will be small, but I hope you all still enjoy it!

January 4th, Monday, Sister Dayhop and I visited an inactive that had stopped coming to church because she was offended by some of the members a while ago. When I was companions with Sister Herdegen, we would visit her and she is the most hard-headed, stubborn member ever! haha. She doesn't believe in Joseph Smith, the church, or the Book of Mormon anymore so it's really hard to try and share with her when she's against the church now. It was Sister Dayhop's first time to teach her and she wanted to see if she was hard to teach. So we went and visited her and I let Sister Dayhop lead the lesson to try and get to know her a little better. She doesn't mind if people come over and share with her, but if they ever try to give her assignments in the Book of Mormon, she won't read it because "Catholics don't believe in the Book of Mormon;" and if we ever try inviting her to the church, she just won't commit. We then started teaching her and she was very strong when talking to us, she just sounded really mad. And we just did not feel the Spirit when she kept talking. Sister Dayhop tried her hardest to try and teach her but Filomina just kept interrupting her when she tried to teach.

January 5th, Tuesday, Sister Dayhop and I hiked to Ilaya to teach Sister Marisel. When we got to her house she was busy cleaning the outside/inside and told us to return, but then we told her it would just take about 20 minutes so she let us teach! We did an overview of Christ's church before, and Joseph Smith. And then we taught her about the Book of Mormon. We introduced it and taught her about where it came from and what she needs to do to gain a testimony. Sister Marisel loves listening to our messages, but she doesn't want to be baptized. We gave her the book and then committed her to read/ponder and pray about it. She was very into the lesson and whenever her kids start acting up, she's always telling them to be quiet because there's guests haha. She's so cute!

January 7th, Thursday, we had a zone training meeting and instead of the usual meeting, where the zone leaders do all of the talking, they let the missionaries talk more. We talked about how we can involve members a lot more, especially since a lot of missionaries have trouble getting members involved in lessons. We kept talking about our problems but never really figured out a good strategy to try and get the members more involved haha.

After the meeting Sister Dayhop and I went and visited a member to teach her but the moment we showed up she looked pretty upset that we were there. She usually greets us with a smile and "How are you?" but this time she looked upset and before we could talk, she said, "I'm busy washing clothes." We entered her home and then told her we wanted to teach her but she kept coming up with excuses as to why we couldn't teach her. It was so funny because Sister Dayhop and I were determined to teach her without just leaving, so we just sat down and started talking to her. She then grabbed a chair, sat down and started having a conversation with us. A little while later, her countenance just changed and she seemed a lot happier that we were there. We then shared about prayer and how important it is in our lives. She really changed a lot after we talked with her and taught her. She seemed a lot more relaxed and happy.

After teaching her, we went and taught Sister Paz, another member in our area, and taught her about prayer as well. She seemed pretty stressed out because she's so busy every day selling fish. She let us teach her and afterwards she kept thanking us for coming over. I love being able to visit members and teach them!

January 10th, Sunday, It was such an awesome day! A lot of our less actives came to church and two of our investigators! One of the investigators actually lives in Tagbilaran (about 1 1/2 hours away) but was staying in Valencia for a while until she returned. But she and her husband came back Saturday so they could go to church with his family in Valencia! It was so awesome seeing that they were coming back just to go to church. She's so awesome. And then we had two less active families, Tagud and Cordova, that always promise to go to church but never do, come also. They looked pretty happy that they came to church. Sister Dayhop and I pretty much jumped for joy when we saw them come to church after so long.

After Sacrament, we decided to join the single adult's class and see what they were discussing. It was a pretty good lesson because it was about the Book of Mormon. I loved it! There was a returned missionary in the class that had mentioned a time that someone told her, "Before you fall in love with someone, fall in love with the Book of Mormon." I've really grown to love the Book of Mormon. All I want to do is just read it. Even if I can't quite understand everything I read at the moment, I can't put down the book after starting. We then watched a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland about the Book of Mormon and I loved watching it. He was very bold and strong when explaining that there is no way that Joseph and Hyrum Smith would give up not only their lives, but others' lives, if the Book of Mormon, let alone The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not true. I guarantee you, for those that are members and especially those that are not members, if you take the time to read, ponder, and pray to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ if the Book of Mormon is true, by the power of the Holy Ghost you will know that it is a true Testament of Jesus Christ.

Amping mo kanunay!! Love you and miss you all!

Love,

Sister Johnson