(Hello Family! I love you! I appreciate all you do! Many thanks.)
not a lot of investigators other than Jean and Cheche my first baptisms but a lot of the area and me and the such. Apparantly ill be going on exchanges maybe next week with Elder Quinney who is only one transfer ahead of me, i knew him in the MTC. itll be interesting we're both ok at the language but itll be in his area so easier on me.
the Macasling family is going ok. I guess they had some kind of trouble or something on sat night so they didnt come to church. and so Randolf hadnt come for two weeks in a row which in our mission to be eligible for baptism you have to come 4 times in 5 weeks. so ya we gotta push back his baptism. its not good. We havent seen tatay (dad) for a couple visits so idk how thats working. theyre not the strongest family together its hard to see. but we're trying and i know that nanay (mom) really wants to help her family and change.
Cheche is doing awesome. Her and Jean are awesome and have been to church everyweek since ive been here. We even got to teach Cheche's husband on sat cuz she wasnt home and we taught him about the restoration. He ate it up! Speaking of agency we only had 2 investigators to church yesterday. 2! after 1 last week we're doing terrible. We dont understand why either we're working hard and come saturday night we were really excited, jus boasting in the Lord and all we'd been able to do and how awesome our area was doing. maybe we were being prideful idk we jus felt positive about everyone and the lessons we'd taught to them. We committed Anna, Jean's brothers wife who she lives with to baptism! she knows joseph smith is a prophet and we thought she'd be at church with Jean for sure but she slept in! ughh! i used to think getting ppl to have a testimony in Joseph Smith would be the hard part out here but its not the hardest part. Its getting them to understand that if Joseph smith is a prophet then this is the true church and getting them to act on that! to go to church! its tough because it makes so much sense in my head but not to them. Floretta and Cherry, a mother and daughter we teach, had a testimony of joseph smith too but when we tried to committ them to baptism they said they werent sure. i think we waited to long to committ them, shoulda been right when i was getting that impression but we both kinda waited. Plus they asked if it was bawal (forbidden) to go to other churches after being baptized. Its those Catholic roots man theyre hard to break.
but its been a crazy week this week. we did actual tracting this week, like a lot of it for a couple days and it came with some interesting results aha. at one place this lady told her daughter to tell us she was sleeping but then she came out for something and when she saw us coming towards her she like ran away with her kids it was so funny! haha oh man. we did it like twice and she ran away both times haha. so we did get some new investigators 15 for the week. quite a bit so we dont have a lot of time to see all of them. now its jus the hard part of weeding out the ones who arent reallly interested and the ones who have been prepared for the gospel, ready to do. its reallly the hardest part.
yesterday was a crazy day too ohh man. we went on splits after, me with JR like last week (an elder preparing for a mission) and a deacon and two young women who came with us. we saw a bunch of LA that they knew and it was cool to be theretaking the lead in all the lessons, i dont really do that ever here with Elder Calder haha i jus share a few parts. but they were a ton of help in finding places and teaching, theyre all really cool. But we went to this one LA young man JR knew.
but then after that we went to teach another LA friend of JR and ended up teaching his nonmember parents. i taught him lesson 1, mostly by myself for the time. the problem was i felt i should just share about the restored gospel blessing families and prophets that bless us but one of the young woment took it to Jospeph smith so i taught that too. then as i was closing, a different La member that was sitting kinda away from us asked wat joseph did that made him a prophet. i told him translate the Bof M. but he says then he's jus a translater and where was his scripture. so i told him about D&C and those revelations, prophesies thru Joseph Smith. then he said moses led the children of israel. so i said that other prophets didnt "do" anything for example Nehemiah. it was soo stupid. but the Spirit was long gone from how strong it had been so i jus bore testimony to wrap it up. when ppl want to argue its hard not too and when u do, even a little the Spirit is gone. Idk how some missionaries can bible bash with ppl. it has such a bad result and effect. We need to teach with the Spirit to comfort them. something ive learned this week (D&C 50:14)
i love you alll soo much thanks for all you do, all the prayers.
I love you all again and ur always in my prayers!
Love,
Elder Stover
tell nicole everyone here thinks i look like John Cena! - (We find it very funny, if you know who that is)
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| First baptism - Jean |
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| At the Manila temple with the Macasling children at Christmas time |
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