Week #53 - “Preach the Gospel At All Times and When Necessary, Use Words.” St. Francis of Assisi

August 3, 2015

Hi Mom and Dad!  The house is full of Diamonds that's pretty cool to see! Tell everyone I say hello! I miss those goofball Uncles and Cousins of mine!  So I officially hit my year mark this week. It feels very surreal reading through my journal from moments exactly one year ago. So much has happened in the past year and like we've said before it feels like it has lasted forever *AND* gone by in a flash. It's so weird! One year ago today I was set apart as a missionary, and I remember that day so vividly!

Well, this week was a good one! We had a lot of fun things happen. Our area has really picked up this week and we have 5 new awesome investigators who even came all the way to Roxas yesterday to go to church. My companion and I only attend church in Roxas on every-other Fast Sunday and all the other weeks we attend church in Panay in the bamboo hut chapel that I sent you a picture of last week. Our area is really far away from where we live.  We spend about 50 minutes each way just in travel to Panay. Plus our new investigators live in the outskirts of Panay about another 15 min trike ride from Panay and we have to cross the river to get to them. I'll admit I really like to cross the river, so I'm not complaining, but it does take a lot of time and we spend a lot of money on travel, but you do what you gotta do. Our new investigators are a referral we got from a member--and that's kinda of a funny story. We got a text saying that they had some friends who told them they wanted to "become Mormons" haha  They also said the wanted to meet the white guy (me), so in all honesty I wasn't expecting much from the referral, but surprisingly they were really cool people and very interested in the church, so that was pretty cool. 

 

 

 

Another thing we have been doing is spending a lot of time working with the less active and inactive members. We met a new older guy who is an inactive member. He was a pretty nice guy even though he liked to chat our ear off about conspiracies and corruption in the world. We finally got a word in and asked him to get his scriptures. He got them and I looked inside to see if there were any names of Elders and there were a lot but in the top right corner I saw the name of Elder Steve Weller from West Jordan, Utah.  That is Mr. Weller my 8th grade English teacher from Ephraim Middle School! I was way surprised and couldn't believe what a coincidence that was. I'm pretty sure it was him too because it had a little cartoon face above the name and Mr. Weller was always drawing stuff. I had no idea he served his mission here! That is the coolest coincidence! 

On Friday we did service with the LDS charities that have been here on the Navy ship.  We went to some schools and gave the kids hygiene kits and school supplies. It was really fun and great to be able to do that. The Navy ship left yesterday but all of the LDS people on the ship came to church, so our church was full of "Kanos". It's weird to talk to people who are white and speak English and aren't missionaries. haha

 

We had lots of rain this week. A few times it was just miserably hot, but I really think I am getting used to sweating a ton in my church clothes haha and I thought I sweat a lot back in Utah!

 

Have a great week!

Love, Elder Rasmussen