MAPAYAPA WARD - FAIRVIEW STAKE - WEEK 14

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 need to worry too much about her. The baptism is held an hour before our Christmas party is so we will have many member there to support their baptism, and as it is my first baptism, Elder Connnell gave me the privilege to baptize them so how exciting!  On the bad side, I was given a talk for this week! So now I have to prepare that in Tagalog, yeah how fun, thank goodness Elder Connell will help me out for that. On Saturday, Sister Hughes texted us and invited us to dinner at their house, man they are living in luxury! Such a beautiful house, air con, pool, comfy as seats, and it was huge man it was beautiful! There were four companionship there including ours, was meant to be 5 but one couldn't make it, as they already had a appointment scheduled. We had chicken adobo and some curry, of course with rice on the side and coleslaw, and for dessert brownies, ice-cream and mangoes. Man it was a good night, had some deep doctrinal talk, normal talk, and then mission talk. We are hoping to see two different families come to church this Sunday, a family of three and a family of 5 but only 2 of them will be coming, but hopefully later down the track more of them will come. When Elder Connell first got here in the Mapayapa ward there wasn't much going for it, but through his 6 previous months here its really starting to change, hopefully when we both leave the area will still be hard working and keep progressing. Also had zone interviews today of Friday so we did quite a lot of travelling this week. Interviews went really good and I was able to walk out with 9 packets of Oreos which was good as I was starving haha. President Hughes said that its very likely that Connell will be transferring at the end of this transfer and I should get good at knowing the area. He's also very happy with the amount of work that I have done. Since 8 weeks being out we have found 143 NI obviously there not all progressing but that's how many people we have taught and had a chance to accept the gospel, and he said if I keep it up I'ill be seeing some amazing things happen. I'm just worried when Connell leaves, my new companion wont be as hard working.. but also that I will then have to lead the area and I'm not confident with myself right now to be able to lead it, so hopefully I will be able to learn more about this week. I cant wait for my package to come, it looked pretty big, hopefully it wont be too much of a pain for me to carry it back to the house haha.

That's it from me, have a good week.

Oh and here's some photos, it's a little project that's going down in one of the streets, to celebrate Christmas, it looks a lot cooler in person then in the picture!

Cheers

Elder Herrick