Philippin' Awesome: STILL WORKING HARD IN THE P.I.

Week 22

Monday, November 14, 2016

Hello Everyone, I hope you all have had a great week!

This week's crazy story:

The best part of this week was yesterday when we got to attend a special conference where we were able to hear from President and Sister Cruz, Elder and Sister Hainey, and Elder and Sister Cook. It was great and was super spiritual!! Before Elder Cook talked, Elder Hainey bore a great testimony and testified that Elder Cook is an Apostle of God. He has been called by God and helps to lead this church. It was awesome to be able to hear him speak. Another awesome part of yesterday was the opportunity to see every missionary in the mission..It was so good to see Elder Infante again.

On to the week...

This week's teaching was not the best... we were only able to teach a few lessons, but we still did a lot and worked hard. A big focus in our mission right now is "OYM" or open your mouth. This is where we talk to random people and share a little message about the gospel and maybe give them a Book of Mormon, and ask if we can come back to teach them. We "OYM"ed a ton this week and there are a few people I am really excited to go back and teach. Other than that, it was a pretty slow week.

Investigator update:

Brother "M" is progressing very slowly and is unfortunately still smoking 1 cigarette a day but he still really wants to be baptized. We have had to push his baptism date beck to December.

"R" is great. One cool experience we had with him this week was him testifying of the Book of Mormon. He mined gold in his last job. we were talking to him and he pointed right at the Book of Mormon and said, "This right here is my gold." It was way cool!

This week was great and the work here is great. I love the Philippines.

Have a great week all,

Elder Andersen

Some additional questions answered from our personal letters:

Q: How are things with your new companion? Is he speaking much Ilonggo yet?

A: This week was great! Things are great with Elder Salamatin. We get along really well and are able to communicate really well. A big thing here is for the Pinoy missionaries to learn English. We have study time each day where I teach him English. I'm picking up a lot of Tagalog too. I use some tagalog words instead of ilonggo words now.

Q: How is the weather now?

A: Right now is the Bhurrrr months. The hot months are coming soon. It is going to be soooooo hot. We'll get through it though!