Should zone conference and missionaries encourage entrepreneurship development?

Jan. 21-26, 2020

Overall, this week has been okay. We've worked hard and will continue to do so until we can get someone to come to church. The week has consisted of our zone conference in Laoag and then adjusting our everyday work based on what we were taught there. Our focus has been on following up with people more frequently (almost every day) and using the Book of Mormon as quickly as possible when we're teaching. We still haven't had anyone come to church but we'll just keep moving along. 

We did have a couple powerful lessons with people we're teaching though. One of which was with a Brother Ortega and his wife. He's in a picture I have attached below. He's really cool and is in his upper 20s. He's an electrician and has a small family with two kids. Anyways, we gave him a Book of Mormon a while back and he's been reading it regularly which is awesome. This week we were finally able to recontact him and his wife at the same time and we taught them about the restoration of Christ's gospel. He understood the lesson very well and even had questions for clarification (which is awesome since it means he's paying attention). After we told him of Joseph Smith's first vision and he simply said "sana all." This is kind of a Filipino punchline that means "it would be great if it were like that for everyone." It was a good lesson and even though his work schedule for this week didn't really allow him to go to work because he worked through the entire night until 9:00 am we're excited to teach him and his wife again.

Some other things that happened this week included Elder Powell and I fixing the church's computer program again since the branch/district presidency unintentionally messed it up again. Another interesting thing that we did this week was as a necrological (funeral) service. Basically, I stood up and just shared a spiritual message about the plan of salvation to a group of mourning people, many of which were not members. I was flying solo since Elder Powell wasn't feeling it.

Anyways, as I was reading in both of the Book of Mormon and Old Testament this week I found lots of scriptures that I liked but decided to just share one from the Old Testament since I'm sure many of you have heard a lot about the things people learned from their Come Follow Me studies of the Book of Mormon already. Maybe I can share what I learned The verses I liked were in Joshua 22: 5 and 23:10.

Joshua 22:

5 ...the Lord charged you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Joshua 23:

10 One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the Lord your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you.

I liked these two verses and to me they seemed to be connected even though they're in different chapters.The first verse is the commandment and the second is the attached promise. If we cleave unto the Lord and serve him with all our heart and soul, one man of us can chase a thousand men of our enemy and be successful. That's a pretty powerful picture that's painted for us. Especially from the context of this scripture. At this time the people of Israel are fighting hundreds of different groups of people in order to inherit the promised land. The entire book of Joshua seems to be war. When your life is war and the Lord promises you this blessing I'm sure it means a lot to you. I think this symbolism is also applicable for us in our daily lives as well. If we cleave to him he will give us the ability to chase away thousands of our problems, concerns, enemies, fears, etc.

A Week with The Finders

January 14 - 19, 2020

This week of work was pretty fun. The companionship that our mission refers to as "The Finders" came and worked in our area. They are special assignment missionaries that travel to each area and help teach the missionaries how to find better. Their purpose is to help the area progress and help increase the amount of investigators at sacrament meetings. The finders are Elders Wilson and Coontz. Usually both of them go to the same area and do splits with the companionship but our experience was different because Elder Coontz just came and worked with Elder Powell and I the entire week while Elder Wilson went to Bangui and worked with the other companionship in our district. Overall, our week was fun and all but we still had zero investigators that attended sacrament despite having the help from "The Finders." We did learn how to make finding every day a little more enjoyable though which is nice since that's basically all we do now.

Tuesday - 

After our district council we had our first day of work with Elder Coontz. I've met him before and I really like him actually so it was cool to actually work with him and see what type of missionary he really is. The first day I was just watching him to try and identify the difference in his approach of finding people. The only thing I was initially able to find is that he just acted very unnaturally bubbly and excited when we talked to anyone. That in and of itself made people a little more willing to talk with us. We found a couple people that said they'd go to church even though they didn't seem overly enthusiastic about it.

Wednesday - 

The second day I was able to figure out a few more things about the difference in approach of Elder Coontz. Honestly, what he did is exactly the same as what we do but how he acted while doing it seemed to help a lot. After the second day of work I realized that he just acted weird (which is something I think he learned from Elder Wilson since he said that Elder Wilson "acts crazy" when they work) and it was pretty funny. He initially just starts conversation with people by speaking poor english (if it's too grammatically correct they don't seem to get it as well). They are immediately entertained because they think we're just a bunch of white people that only speak english. Over time, we then slowly transition into Tagalog and then start saying strange things. We joke with them and tell them things like "we Americans ONLY eat burgers. We don't eat anything else." We also will say things like "Naimas ti aso!" which is Ilocano for "dog tastes delicious." People will always look at us weird initially but always believe us. We also call old guys "pogi" (handsome) and old women "napintas" (Ilocano for beautiful). You also just comment about anything you see and say anything on your mind. It keeps people engaged since such a weird experience with white people is such a different situation than their normal everyday life. Also it's fun because you have to keep thinking of weird things to say. My favorite is calling all animals dogs. Also, at this point speaking really bad english is more strenuous than just speaking Tagalog so it always keeps you doing something.

Thursday - 

It was just another similar day but this time we talked to slightly less people because we traveled to a further area called Dampig. Here we talked to lots of people in bad english including a little girl you will see in the picture below. She was very entertained by us and pronounced english better than most of the adults we meet.

Friday -

Another thing that I realized can be done to help finding is just by saying small phrases in Ilocano. You can just be speaking in Tagalog or English for a while but then all the sudden say something like "nasinpet ka" (you're nice) or "nabangsit isuna" (he/she smells bad) and people also think it's funny.

Saturday -

Our day of work was simply going back to all the people that said they'd go to church or had at least moderate interest. We also got some more interesting finding in our day as well as we talked with people about hypothetical scenarios or random "what if" type stories.

Sunday -

On Sunday we finally were able to see how effective our finding was at church. Unfortunately we had no investigators at church once again. This is my fourth sunday in the area and the ninth week that there hasn't been any investigators from our area that have attended church. Though we didn't find people to attend church like we hoped, it was at least a fun week and Elder Powell and I were able to learn how to make the experience more enjoyable. I do think that this technique over time could help get people to church though.

Also, this is just a scripture I read and liked -

Deut. 31: 6-8

6 Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.
7 ¶ And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and of a good courage: for thou must go with this people unto the land which the Lord hath sworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it.
8 And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.

Pictures - 

that little girl that kinda spoke English and us taking a shortcut through the bukid

Problema ng Pagudpud

Jan. 6 - 12 

This area has been pretty great and all but as for the missionary work here it's still been pretty slow. After our week of finding and teaching none of our investigators came to church. We have a few perspective people we're teaching though that we think and hope will go to church though.

Tuesday -

As usual we had our district council in the morning. We then did this thing called missionary work later. Instead of just doing lots of finding this entire week like we've been doing for the past couple weeks we tried to do some more teaching as well. We thought that a change in the technique of our work (even though it's a little different than the suggested technique of our AP's) might help. We were wrong since we still had no one at church. It felt better though to teach some lessons and have zero investigators a sacrament than to only do finding and still  have zero people at sacrament meeting. We taught three solid lessons during the day.

Wednesday -

We worked in this area called Agassi and found 11 new people along with teaching three lessons. We also taught of pretty good lesson about the Book of Mormon to a couple people.

Thursday -

I had exchanges with our district leader Elder Mamauag in Bangui. They went well. He was a little shy as a lot of Filipino's are but since I'm American I can get away with awkwardly approaching lots of people. We talked to a decent amount of people and did some basic teaching. We also ate lunch with the sister companionship in Bangui during the day.

Friday -

We went to this barangay in our area called Dampig for the first time. In order to get there you have to walk up this super long steep road over the mountain and then down the other side. It was kind of tiring. While we were there we did some finding and also ate lunch with this member named Carlo. He's the only active member of the three members in the entire barangay. There's a lot of work to be done there. We also talked to one of the two less active members there. 

Saturday -

In the morning we worked in Agassi again. This has kind of been our area of focus recently since it hasn't been worked too much previously by other missionaries. We taught a couple lessons again.

In the afternoon we continued to the centro of Pagudpud to continue our work. We found some more new people but no one that seemed abnormally interested or willing to really  listen. For dinner we headed over to the house of President Baloaloa since it was his birthday. It was fun and we talked to his sons who also served missions. One of them actually served in San Diego.

Also, during my personal study I read from the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon and  this verse in Nephi stood out to me.

1 Nephi 6:4 - 

4 For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved.

So this verse is when Nephi is referring to his purpose for writing on the plates. His purpose in doing so is of course to help other to come unto God. That is why he kept is record. That is the "fulness of [his] intent." As missionaries we often recite our purpose is to "invite others to come unto Christ." As I read this verse though I wondered for myself what my intent really is. I feel like this can be an important point of self reflection for each of us. What is our goal every day? What is the fulness of our intent? What is our desire everyday in our lives? Clearly our purpose regardless of who we are or what our circumstances are should be to help ourselves and others come unto God, but is that really our focus always? No matter what we do everyday we should always strive to do the right thing to achieve that goal. Hopefully we can all eventually align our goal more fully with that of Nephi.

Sunday -

We had church and did more work in Agassi but this time with our fellowship named Rayzan. He's twenty and wants to serve a mission so it's probably good that he works with us occasionally. Also, after church Elder Powell and I had to fix the branch's computer because it had a virus and got everything deleted. We had to fix the church's MLS program so that the branch can save and access records of tithing, baptisms, etc, all of which had been deleted. It took a while but we eventually got it sorted out after working with lots of accounts and ID numbers and even calling some hotline in Salt Lake City. It was good that we were there since the guy on the end of the phone only spoke english and also since the branch members here don't really know how to use computers super well. He was surprised to hear that he was actually speaking to the missionaries. 

Wala pa kaming tao sa simbahan

Dec. 31, 2019 - Jan. 5, 2020

There actually seemed to be more celebrating this week for New Years than for Christmas last week. The rest of the week was pretty typical work though. This week we tried to focus a little more on trying to teach people on our first interaction with them. We always teach anyways but this time we just lengthened our time with them to try and give them a little more incentive to go to church. So far it hasn't been super effective.

Tuesday -

In the morning we had district meeting in Bangui. Our zone leaders Elders Orozco and Rebito (I think that's the spelling) also attended the meeting so it was nice to see my zone leaders here for the first time. After district council we all ran into a bishop from Laoag that my companion Elder Powell met before since he was assigned there before. The bishop bought us lunch which was really cool of him. Once we ate lunch we headed back to Pagudpud and started working. The day went as it usually does and we talked to lot of people. We had to go back to the apartment early though because the entire mission was given an earlier curfew because of New Years / lots of drunk people with fireworks. It was kind of loud at night but we were able to fall asleep.

Wednesday - 

We actually ate a huge breakfast with the Torrado family. They had lots of preparation for New Years. We also ate with the branch president again later for dinner. Also during our work in Agassi we managed to find someone that said they'd consider going to church so we're excited to try and return to her home and family and teach them more. 

Thursday -

The senior sisters did an apartment cleanliness check. They didn't seem abnormally impressed but also said it was pretty clean. They seemed more concerned that we don't have any chairs in our apartment since the office elders never brought any. After that we got out to work pretty quickly and found three people that we're gonna try and recontact.

Friday -

We did more finding and found one new person that might care in Tarrag. After work the branch president asked us to download the Philippines Area Presidency video to be shown in church. The download took around 3 hours or so, so while waiting we watched Other Side of Heaven 2 which my companion had. Fun fact, Elder Powell is also the grandson of Elder Groeber from the movie.

Saturday -

It was a full day of work and we taught a couple people with great hopes that they'd attend church.

Sunday -

They didn't attend church. Haha. Oof. Both us and the sisters companionship had no investigators at sacrament meeting. Aside from that, personal study was pretty good.

Deutronomy 8:6,19-20

6 Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.

19 And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.
20 As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God.

So I really liked these verses because I feel like I understood them slightly differently than I have before. These verses are about being obedient to the Lord and His will for us. It tells us to "walk in his ways... [or] ye shall surely perish." I feel like previously I would have interpreted this verse as almost a threat that's telling us to be obedient or suffer the consequences. I think this is actually just statement of warning and of sincere concern for us. This a plea to try and help us reach our fullest potential. If we "walk in his ways" we're not just being protected from evil but actually taking the steps required to become as God is and that's even more important. We're doing what He has done to become what He is. It's about that spiritual growth and not just comfort and safety. None of this is meant to change our physical environment but simply to put us in the best position to become like God. (D&C 29:34 - all laws of God are spiritual not physical).