what a cool week

hello everyone so many cool things happened this week and im not sure where to start so i guess ill just start with the coolest.


we had a special training with elder nielson... the first president of the area presidency and a member of the first qurrom of the seventy. it was pretty sweet to be able to be taught by someone like that on such a well pretty personal level! he and his wife both spoke to us and i enjoyed both a lot ( i have a confession to make thats not good but ive repented dont worry... most of the time while watching general conference or things like that when the girls speak i get this idea that its a perfect time to sleep and wait till its a guy speaking again... ) ha but ive had a change of heart there. hope its long lasting but anyways. she talked about our relationships with our companions. she told a story about her kida growing up and there family was super close and all liked the same things and then when they got married ( her kids ) they had all these weird people starting to join their family that had different traditions and different hobbies and thing they liked doing. the moral of the story is you need to learn to love your companions and not just accept their differences. there is a difference she said between loving your comp and dealing with him. it was a great talk and then elder nielson got up and man was it good. he talked about what they want us to be doing as missionaries in the philippines and said that in the cauayan mission alone there are about 28 000 members and only around 7 000 are going to church right now. and he said that less actives should be our priority right now. he said something that is pretty bold and pretty true. he said anyone can baptise people in the philippines. but theres no point of that if they dont stay active. so now weve got the joys of all these people that have all sorts of reasons that theyre not going. from they dont have money if they dont work on sundays to offended in every way pollible to just got out of the habbit to they were baptised when they were 12 with no support so they just forgot about it. we have to find a way to solve that concern. and he told us that we do that by teaching them and helping them understand the doctrine. he said the reason they arent going to church is because they dont understand the doctrine. so thats what ill be doing the rest of my mission and hopefully teaching the families of these people too that arent yet members.


then he let us do a question answer where we ask any question and he will answer it which was pretty dang cool. i asked him what is the difference between the power of prayer and the power of the preisthood because i had someone tell me once that they dont believe in priesthood blessing and all we need to do is pray and god will give it to us and i didnt know how to answer or address that. and his answer was pretty cool. he said because we follow christ. he said thats what christ told his appostles to do and thats what he said in doctrine and covenants that if there are any sick among the saints call upon the elders to bless them. and then he went on to share and experience when he was a new returned missionary and his dad had pancreatic cancer, and he was asked to give him a blessing and he wanted to heal him so bad or he didnt want him to die but two weeks later his did died. he said we have to have faith in the savior that if its right it will happpen. he said he used to be confused about his dad about why didnt he get healed was it his fault or was it because he didnt have enough faith to do it? he said the answer was no when you give a priesthood blessing you have faith that the savior has the power to heal them or whatever is according to his will will happen and is possible. so you follow the spirit when you are blessing the person and believe that all things are possible through the savior. then he bore a crazy testimony about how in the church today miracles happen all around the world that would rival anything in the new testiment through the priesthood and he believes without a doubt if it were according to gods will he could do anything in the name of christ. pretty intense faith ha i hope to be able to get to that level of faith at some point down the line!


yesterday tatay llaneta ( one of our investigators baptised noon sa december 11 ) worked with me me and elder garcia went on splits. cant even explain how cool that is to see someone go from zero spiritual knowledge and afraid to pray, hiding from missionaries and change into going on splits with the missionaries to bear testimony of the truth and how the gospel has changes his like. what a miracle.


well i think thats about it for me not too much mor happened that i can think of. mahal ko kayo and talk to you next wekk. elder landeen