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.
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