July 28, 2014

This last week was amazing:) Things are clicking really well in Mindoro:) We have too many people to teach and so little time.So we are so happy with that, its a good problem to have. They all are so great. I love to teach them and feel the spirit. There is nothing better than feeling the spirit as you teach them. 

This week there was a ton of experiences but I will only be able to share a few. Our new investigators are really interested and reading and asking all the right questions. There is one new family we found and while we were teaching them the Dad came home and got in a fight with the Land Lord and His wife. It was scary! But when it was over we promised them blessings and prayed with them and then we went to find the father and did the same with Him and it helped a lot to pray with them and to be there for them at that moment of hardships.  We were inspired to teach about how the gospel blesses families and I know it will bless them so much. We are teaching them now and I am so excited to see the way their lives change from the gospel. It is impossible to get trunky when you just love the people where you are serving, you just cant stop thinking about them and its really hard for me to be in Manila for another week and not get to see them.

There are a lot of people progressing in our area and I am so happy to be able to be teaching them. It is so interesting how the people that we teach have been so prepared by the Lord and I am so grateful the Lord allowed us to cross paths and go from complete strangers to life changing friends and servants:) It is so wonderful. That is the spirit of Missionary work. 

As far as my flight plans I get to Arizona August 27th at 3:45 pm. So yea I finally got them. 

Love,

Elder Blackham

July 21, 2014

My  companion right now is Elder Hart, we just had transfers and this last week and then we were stranded in our apartments for 2 days when the storm hit. (Note from Mom:  they had a typhoon hit in Bret's mission area of Quezon City but because he is on the island off the main island it was not as severe where he is currently living).  The storm wasn't even that bad! I was frustrated to be stuck inside. I disobeyed a little bit to go OYM people when we were told to stay inside but I couldn't help it, you only have so long to be in a specific area serving the Lord. But I eventually went inside and waited out the storm. I kept calling and asking if we could go out and work and the office got mad and said, "Just stay inside and enjoy your extra p-day!" But that is more like torture though haha. Oh well so it was super hard to not see the people we were teaching very much but I was happy on the up side to have some quality bonding time with my comp and kabahays. We will be able to do a lot more this week;) 

SO that is good. Our investigators actually texted us questions about the Book of Mormon so that's great it means that they are reading:) If only they knew how much this would bless them. I wish I could just plug in my brain to theirs and they could just absorb it all and get it, get what I see them becoming, get God's love for them and just get it:) But we learn precept by precept. That cursed p word... Patience haha. I love you mom.

Love Elder Blackham 

July 14, 2014

This last week was great:) I was so happy to be able to be here and not in Manila for this week. It was a hard week though trying to go through the week after having been gone for such a long time. But I am so happy because it helped us recognize those who will really progress and who would not.

This week we recognized some great investigators that are progressing and one is this family that just loves to be taught and every time we teach the spirit is so strong and they just ask all the right questions. After two lessons he was already sharing everything we taught with others. I realize that the spirit really knows who is ready and as we follow promptings we will be led to do what is best all the time. I mean if that's what the Lord wants then that's what can happen if we have faith to do so. I have been finding so much more things that I am grateful for in my prayers:) It makes me feel so happy:) 

One thing I learned in my study was about the plan of Salvation and Faith in Jesus Christ:) I was reading about our life on earth in preach my gospel and I wondered or questions popped up in my head like.. " Why did we choose to come here and others didn't?  What made it so we were okay with how hard it was going to be?" "What made it so others didn't come"?   Then the answer came to my mind clearly that it was faith in Jesus Christ:) We had faith in Jesus Christ that we could come here even though we made mistakes, we trusted Him and it made us excited to come to earth even understanding the hardships we would have to endure and the reason others didn't is because they did not have faith in Him and were scared because their faith was in themselves and they knew they could not do it on their own. This helped me understand how powerful faith in Christ is and how necessary it is:) Also it helped me realize that without a broken heart and a contrite spirit our faith is in vain. Because if we have pride it means part of our faith is in ourselves and not completely in Christ. When we fear to do things like open our mouth to share the gospel after receiving a prompting it is because our faith is not completely in Christ but partially in ourselves, but when we have complete faith in Christ we fear nothing, only disobedience do we fear. But we know that through Him we can be made whole and repent:) So that was something I learned this week that was so cool;)

 

Love, 

Elder Blackham

July 7, 2014

This week I have been in Manila for the entire week, haha. I just got back to Mindoro today which was like the hardest thing ever! To be out of your area for 7 days when your teaching pool has reached 40 souls was really hard.  Well the Lord has his hand in all things and as we do cheerfully all in our power we can stand still with the utmost assurance that His hand will be revealed in our lives:) (D&C 123:17). 

I was able to go on exchanges. We were there for Mission Leader Conference but because the airport is under construction there are only three flights that go to Mindoro the whole week. Mon. Sun. and Fri. MLC was on Thursday, so we got there Monday.  We were supposed to leave on Friday, but as we were in the plane and about to take off, they decided to cancel the flight. So we were not able to leave until Monday.  We did have cool experiences on exchanges with missionaries. Finding and teaching the gospel; It just blows my mind how many people are willing to accept the gospel:) As we were on the plane to go to Mindoro before they announced it was canceled I was trying to talk to a couple about the gospel and as I was doing this a person on my right tapped me on the shoulder and just asked for a Book of Mormon and asked me to explain about it:) I just got so happy and he was from Arizona which its really weird to see people that are not from the Philippines that want to talk to you. 

We also were able to do finding with missionaries in Quezon City. They said they were having a hard time finding people to teach especially in the middle class people of their area and they pointed to a place on the map and then I said, "Let's go finding there today!" So we went and every one we spoke to accepted the message. Even people you never would have thought would. It was simply amazing. I believe it was because of Jesus Christ:)

 Well mom, I am excited to work here this next week. We just got done with playing volleyball on the beach for a zone activity, it was awesome:) 

Love, Elder Blackham 

July 29, 2013

Man, goodness gracious I feel like singing  all the time!!  I love working my tail off and showing the Lord that I love Him. I love you mom and thanks so much for your love.  It has been raining a ton here and its been awesome, I love it when it floods it just makes life more exciting, haha. 

This week was a great learning week as far as the natural man. In the talk about being chaste by Elder Bednar it is one of the greatest talks about the plan of salvation and why we came to earth ever! I love it so much and I find many treasures of Knowledge as I read it again and again. I love the part where it explains if we never felt human passions, or hunger we could not learn self control. If we never got a head ache from waiting we could not learn patience. We really needed a body, I can't imagine all the knowledge we would have missed out on without a body. We really needed to come here and prepare and learn to control it all. 

All of the attributes of our spirit are amplified through a mortal body, relationships, ability to choose, and tons and tons more. It is just so cool. Every single day I am trying to memorize more scripture about overcoming the Natural man, for example right now I am memorizing Doctrine and Covenants 121:34-46. And every single night I ask myself "did I put off the natural man today and how can I do better tomorrow?" If the purpose of life is to gain a mortal body and to put off the natural man and obtain Godlike qualities in order to prepare ourselves to dwell with God again; then I feel it is definitely worth asking myself everyday that question and following up and using my agency to stay close to the Lord and put it off a little more at a time through the atonement every day.  If we do not learn and grow everyday then that is such a waste of a day that God has given us in order to learn and grow and prepare to live with Him again.

As far as the work its going pretty darn amazing, I feel absolute peace and joy when I ponder whether or not I am giving my all to the Lord. I am learning so much about how to get people to want to know or to find people who are ready and willing to accept the message. In the movie Alice and Wonderland, Alice comes to a fork in the road or something like that and she asks the cat which road she should take. The cat asks, "where do you want to go?" Alice responded with, "I don't know." Then the cat said, "Then it doesn't matter which path you take." That scene from the movie is definitely summarized and not at all word for word but that's the basic jist of it. So, as far as people we teach,  they won't care what we have to say until they have somewhere they want us to take them, or that they think we could help them get to. So I took the list from Preach My Gospel the Book of Mormon section called "questions of the soul" and wrote them down on a piece of paper and took it to people who were not progressing. I allowed them to read the list and pick the question that stood out to them most and was a question of their soul. Instantly they gain much more interest and willingness after finding their question and this has helped absolutely everyone I brought it to.

I am going to use it to find more investigators.  For example, I would walk up to someone and ask for a favor, the natural human response would be to ask what they could do to help (especially filipino) and then I would ask them to read the list and see if a question stood out to them as something they have often asked themselves. Then when they chose their question I would explain that we have the answer and would love to teach them. Thus we are fulfilling their own desire to know and not just our desire to teach. We will see how it goes, we haven't had to find much lately because our schedules are full but if we do this week I will let you know how it goes. It totally helps people open up and ask the questions that they have just been too shy or afraid to ask and help them start their journey to find truth. 

Love, Elder Blackham

July 22, 2013

Thank you for the Happy Birthday things and all of the love and support you give.  It's cool how the Philippines celebrates birthdays; it is the exact opposite of the United States. In the U.S. you receive gifts and are treated kindly but in the Philippines you are supposed to give everyone else gifts and a good time and be nice to them. To be honest I prefer the Philippines way because it is a celebration of what makes life great; and that is the people around you and your family and such. I will be taking my zone out to eat later today because it's only 8 people in my zone, and I want to celebrate the Philippines way!  But, I am not going to lie the other way is pretty awesome. I think in all the best is the Phil-am way haha. The mix of both. Any ways as far as this week things continue to be great and growth and learning blossoms all around. Thank you so much for the music I have been longing for that for so so so long. Oh my goodness thank you. 

The work in our area continues to progress and I am excited to see what the future holds. Lots of people that were not progressing are now making progress and it is really amazing to see the blessings of the gospel in the lives of others. I am learning so much more about how to be a better teacher and to allow people to seek learning by faith. I am learning so much more about the power of the atonement. We know that it is infinite and that so is its power, but we have no idea what that entails. I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon that helps give me a better understanding of what that means. It really is changing my life here and I had an undeniable witness and experience of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon as I read the chapter when Christ comes to the ancient inhabitants of the Americas. The spirit was so strong and I felt like I was there and great peace entered my heart with a feeling that was saying to my heart.. yes this really did happen. It was a quiet, peaceful,  but powerful feeling. The stories of the Lamanites who actually delighted in bloodshed, then through the atonement, were willing to die before they would shed the blood of their brothers. It helps give you strength and understanding, by saying to ourselves.. if the atonement could help these people in this way and turn away from their sins and they were a terrible people, then maybe it can work for me... and then the seed is planted and as we exercise our faith it will grow and we will come to know that it does work for us and that we can change and come unto Christ:)  I know that the Old and New testaments are true too. The whole gospel is so amazing, its not just a part its the whole thing:)  I love to teach repentance so much. This week we taught repentance to a woman and it was just incredible. She was so happy to know how to repent and experience the healing of repentance. If I ever feel a gap between me and God or I am ever sad, or anything at all I find the best solution is repentance. I know that seems weird but it is what heals and makes every thing better it allows us to access the atonement and humble ourselves before God and see the world through a whole new view. We come to know how important we are, and that true joy and freedom and peace and that we fulfill our purpose here on earth by repenting and changing and becoming what God wants us to become. Anyways this Sister that we were teaching was so so so excited to repent and to feel the blessings of the atonement in her life. It is so cool when an investigator says things like ... SO if I do this.. then I will get this. In her case she said "so if I repent sincerely and this way then I will feel peace and joy and be given strength to overcome the trials in my life?" and then we could promise her yes:) It was so great. So yeah,  this week has been amazing:)

Love Elder Blackham,

July 15, 2013

I am doing so great and I am so happy and I am learning so much. I have been having so many amazing, sacred, special experiences in which I learned lessons that I know I could never learn any other way than by being here serving the Lord with my all. I am glad I wrote it down in my journal. I am mostly learning about accepting the Lord's will and being accepted by Him and how His ways are definitely not our ways. I learned that we as people have expectations for everything, Expectations for ourselves and for what's going to happen to us or what we will be doing at this or that point of our lives.  If things do not turn out as you expected, we need to submit and try to find out what the Lord's will is and why, instead of thinking that we failed or didn't do what we needed. Because we definitely do not see things the way He does, we don't understand the big picture that God has for us. Our failures may not even be failures in the big picture.  

I really like the article by Elder Uchtdorf about light and how darkness exists but we need to stay in the light. But sometimes things we see as a mess up or mistake we view as dark when it was a great learning experience and a way we have learned to rise up and do the Lords will. Even if you gave it your all the Lord has different plans for us, and we need to be willing to see it and say to ourselves "Ohhh so this is what the Lord wants for me, or Ohhh  this was His plan for me" instead of tearing ourselves down. The reason  for the Atonement is so that we would be allowed to make mistakes and instead of demanding immediate perfection, the atonement pays for the immediate demand for perfection to justice and sets steps(the gospel of Jesus Christ)   along with mercy and agency to allow us to choose and develop and mess up and learn and repent as we learn and eventually gain perfection and eternal life. Wow how simple and amazing that is. 

That does not give us an excuse for not trying with our all because some people use the atonement as a way of saying they don't need to try so hard or give it all their effort because they are supposed to mess up, but that is not how it works that is abusing the sacred gift of our time here on earth and not a true gratitude for what the Lord has done.  As long as we give it our all, the atonement will take full effect on our lives according to what we give and we will have no regrets but a symphony of joy and learning and understanding.  It is so amazing being able to bring the atonement into the lives of others. I know that God has power to forgive and to save, and as we trust in Him we will receive those blessings and joys that we so long for.

As far as the work we are having tons of success and we can hardly reach everyone in one day. Hopefully we can get going on splits this week and every week in order to reach everyone we need to teach in one week. It is going to take serious revelation to discern who is serious and who we should drop and make sure we keep the people who really want to change their life. We are helping one family and it's going amazing. The mom is an alcoholic and we are helping her quit and pray and she just loves the gospel so much.  She and her husband were about to split up before we started teaching them.  But, because we taught her at that day on that moment her husband and her did not split up and she humbled herself and stopped drinking.  So far it has been a week and she usually doesn't go 2 days  without drinking and so its so amazing.  We just loving teaching people who want to know, who ask questions and are seeking to learn and to change:) Her eyes are so filled with light now.  Before she looked so sad and now she is constantly smiling and there is no way to describe how that feels as a missionary; to actually help the Lord to become a part of their lives. All I want to do is give something to the Lord, that is my pursuit and goal is to somehow every day be a benefit to the Lord for having breathed and lived another day. I feel so indebted to Him for His sacrifice that He willingly and lovingly gave for me and for everyone. I truly do stand all amazed as I ponder it.

(This is a reply to a question from Mom about if they were getting ipads or laptops to help with their teaching)

As far as the new technology I cant imagine that ever getting to the Philippines and I talked to the area president over the Philippines, Elder Teh (who turns out to be the uncle of one of my friends from EFY).   He lives in my ward and he said they are going to do the technology upgrades one mission at a time, and I might be home before that happens to us. I can't of myself imagine how that would fly walking into a house with an i-pad, where they can't afford chairs to sit on.  So for our mission it might be different, there will be a for sure advancement of technology but the amount of it and who gets to hold it and use it, I think will depend.

Love, 

Elder Blackham

Random Picture

This picture was sent without any details with it so it gets it's own post :)

Elder Blackham and his companion with a family.

July 8, 2013

Mahal na mahal kita. I am so happy right now. 

Yesterday 8 of our investigators gained a real desire to know if this is true. That sounds strange but many people here will listen to anyone who claims to teach of Christ and let them in their home but it's more of a cultural thing. The hard part is to get them do something, anything about finding out what is truth. Most people here get taught so many different things that they become numb to religion or just no matter what they hear just stick to what they are born in as a tradition. But when we share about Joseph Smith, every single person that actually wants to know relates to His story and they begin to  ask why are there so many churches, why this, why that, which is absolutely perfect because we have the answer but they must gain that testimony for themselves first. 

It doesn't matter what we say,  for they must know that God supports what we say first for it to mean something. We also explain about the atonement and how Christ atoned for us and we at least owe him the simple desire to know how to use his atonement and be freed from sin. So then they started to ask questions and ask for us to come back every day and they said they will do whatever it takes to know.   That is probably the greatest thing a missionary can hear, because if someone really wants to know they will really get an answer. Its just as simple and as amazing as that. 

There is a term in tagalog that is Kung gusto, maraming paraan, kung ayaw maraming dahilan. which translates- if you want to there will be many ways to get what you want, if you don't want to you will find many reasons not to. That's the exact translation but a better translation is, "He who has the desire will find a way and He who has not will find an excuse" That is absolutely true haha. We could tell that the people we were teaching at first didn't have the greatest desire to know.  But now, because the spirit and the countenance of the people we taught changed; they started asking question after question and asking us to come back every single day and they said that they will do whatever it takes to get an answer. 

One of the most exciting experiences  was when a sister, after us explaining why its so important to know if its true (we explain that by explaining about  the atonement and talking about Joseph Smith's story) explained that she felt the same way and also that her desire is to know what we just explained to her is true. As she began to understand when we expounded about the redeeming power of the atonement she said that if this is true, then this is how she could become clean and be free of the burdens she carries and that she can partake of every blessing God has prepared for His children.  She then started to cry and said that that is her greatest desire. The spirit was so strong and there is no greater joy than being an instrument in bringing the understanding and knowledge of the Atonement about in the lives of others. 

I testify that it is true and that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer and he took the pains and punishment of all our sins upon Himself so that if we repent we would not have to suffer as He did:) That's how valuable we are, we are worth atoning for, I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

Love, Elder Blackham

July 1, 2013

So we just had transfer announcements and I will be follow up training my trainee which I was hoping because I love that kid so much, and we are having such a blast and lots of success so we will probably see some baptisms this transfer. I am so excited to keep things going and show to the Lord that I will serve Him with my all:) 

I want to share about a sister and her family that we found. I saw her standing outside her house with her kids and so I asked if we could introduce ourselves to her and at first she seemed hesitant and didn't seem to want to listen and said she is busy (which is the most often heard excuse ever). I then asked her about her family and how important they were to her and she got really emotional and was really worried about how to help them come close to God as a family.  When Elder Gako and I testified of the promised blessings of the gospel to families she decided she wanted us to come back and teach. So we did and she is progressing so well, the things like family prayer and F.H,E. and current revelations from prophets are so amazing to her and it is so amazing to see how it is blessing her life:) Wow I love waking up in the morning to have experiences like this every day. This is just so amazing!!:) 

This past week I have just been learning about Repentance and the power of the Atonement to forgive and to heal. One of my favorite sayings in preach my gospel is "to be clean from sin is to be spiritually healed."  I love this saying so much. No matter what we are feeling I find I feel a lot better when I just take whatever I got and try to change and become more in line with His will. Aligning our life with the Lord's will is a central purpose to our lives and allows us to take hold upon His mercy and love and strength to become a constant part of our life:) 

I am also learning a lot about being consistent and how amazing it is to be constant in righteousness. Bad people can do good things but they cannot be consistent and have integrity in the good things they do, so all of our good attributes our only as strong as our integrity to them:) 

As far as the answers to your questions, I have not met my new mission president, I also have seen a ton new sisters just now they are coming into the mission in large numbers. None of the boundaries are changing yet either.

Share the gospel, don't be afraid just smile and do it:)

Love, ELder BLackham