March 3, 2014

I am glad you enjoy the mission pictures that I sent. I am sure you are thinking, like finally!! But yes you did finally get them and I'm taking more that are so awesome:) 

As far as dinners, usually my companion and I buy packaged food or food on the go. Or eat at calendarias, (those are like little homemade fast food restaurants where you just pick an ulam and they give it to you on the spot) Ulam- anything that you put on rice, usually like  bicole express or chicken adobo, I like gulay too to stay healthy. So you can look those up on google to find out what we eat here:) 

I am so grateful for being a servant of the Lord. Oh how grateful I am for being here in the Philippines Quezon City Mission serving the Lord. There just really is nothing better than this. This week we went Quezon City4, Sampaloc, Tanay, and Bagong Batay.  Sampaloc and Tanay are so far away haha. It's like going from our house in Surprise all the way in Flagstaff, but oh it is so beautiful out there. They are the raw country or province of the Philippines. I took some .cool pictures. 

But that's not the important part. the important part is that we really found some amazing people to teach out there. We were talking to everyone. It's so so so so important to understand your investigator, that should be your first goal as you begin teaching. We had to teach that  a lot this last week. We taught lessons to less actives and I have found the best success with less actives is simply loving them, like the prodigal son and His Father. Just put aside the fact that they are less active, I tell them "I don't care how long it has been since you have been to church. Sure maybe you should have been coming to church, but that's in the past, you can always start being active right now, and the Lord would love you just as much for it and you will be blessed more than you can imagine, I love you and the Lord loves you and you can do it, I promise:)." I talk about concerns and help them resolve it . You just got to be willing to do whatever it takes to help them know they are important and you are willing to work with them and that they are worth working with, and with their weaknesses and help them overcome them instead of just teaching why we need to go to church.  I find that the same works with correcting missionaries. Instead of treating them like they are broken or disobedient, I just say very similar, "I don't care what you have done in the past, you can obey today and I promise you will feel the difference in your life. It's as simple as that but, with the spirit, whatever you say will be effective. Sometimes we need to do this to ourselves when we are discouraged or whatever, to say, oh well it doesn't matter what went wrong yesterday or however far back and choose to be good this day. And day by day you will be better:) There are just so many good experiences and learning that happened this week and I wish I had time to share them all with you. 

Love,

Elder Blackham