Elder Herrick's Filipino Adventures

We have had a pretty good week this week. On the 16th of Dec we are going to be having 3 baptisms, 8,9,10 yr old. the 9 year old is the son of the grandmother and the 8,10 year old is son and daughter of the grandmothers daughter, so the 9 year old is the 10 and 8 year old uncle if that makes sense. They all passed their baptismal interviews so now we are really excited. The mum is actually a less active and she has been coming to church every week for the passed 5 weeks now so we just need to make sure that we keep her coming. As we were teaching the lessons to the kids, after the lesson finishes she would ask us some questions about the lesson. One time it was about tithing and how she doesn't pay it. she said 'I haven't paid tithing for a while what do I have to do to make up for it' or something along the lines of that, and this Sunday I saw her looking at the tithing slips so it really looks like she is starting to change. The grandma is a member so we don't ...

The lessons that we taught yesterday I felt so good about. Our first lesson was actually during church. We were asked by the investigator and her boyfriend who is a member to teach them so we did. We firstly asked what she remembered about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and Joseph smith. But our real lesson was on faith. She has been praying and she hasn't received an answer yet. So we talked how not all prayers are answered straight away, and I gave an example of myself and how I didn't receive it straight away, but applying my faith and believing that it will be answered and by reading, being worthy and praying daily I was able to receive this answer. I also added it felt that the longer that i waited for, the better feeling i got when i received this answer. I also led my first lesson today, it was about faith again but i shared the story of Nephi and him retrieving the plates from Laban, i gave a bit of a background story and then we read from 1 Nephi 4...

So my companion is Elder Connell, he is from Melbourne and he knows the people that I hung out with and I know some people who he hung out with. We are both similar in our personality and our humour. So not too much culture shock just yet. I'm living with two other Americans Elder Morris, who has 6 transfers left, and Elder Monk, who has 16 transfers left. My Companion is just about to reach the half way mark and he is currently a district leader. So your ten dot points were pretty easy for me to complete. I miss the aircon in the MTC, all we have the apartment is fans and even at night I'm still pretty hot.  My first day at church was so exhausting but the people all like me so that is good :) If I was at home and I was that tired I would of slept through every single class haha.  I introduced myself to the ward yesterday and the ward got to know me after church as well. It was weird as they didn't use their piano as no one can play it. When they came up...

Yes General Conference is a lot different here then it was at home. I had to stay awake although I'm incredibly tired and instead of watching just two videos I had to watch 5 so 10 hours of conference, it wasn't too bad though as the talks were interesting. I was expected the Priesthood session to be a spiritual slap in the  face like it always is but it was not so aggressive like previous years. This will be my last P day here at the MTC as I leave for the field next Wednesday in the morning. I'm so excited to get out of here but at the same time there is still so much more Tagalog that I can learn. I'll just have to keep stretching myself to learn new words. Although my grammar is decent i  just struggle to understand.  These are my teachers although one of them are missing. Some of the Filipinos here are incredibly small...

We will be listening to GC this week looking forward to it and forcing myself to stay awake due to the lack of sleep that I get here... We went proselyting on Thursday and it was such a great experience. The people here are so nice and funny ha ha. I'm so glad they can speak English. Don't get me wrong I try to speak Tagalog first and when I get stuck I speak English so I pretty much speak Taglish. We were able to teach 3 lessons. One was in the squatters which is hard to explain just search up Philippines Squatters and that's what I had to walk through to get to someones house who lives in a tiny home made of complete cement and above is wood for his neighbors house. It's hard to have a strong presence of the spirit due to me not understand a lot of what is being said but also the noise that comes from all the neighbors. With one of the lessons the Elder asked me to say a prayer and then he just chucked me the pamphlet and said " Magtuturo po Inyo ni Elder Her...