Six Months

I hope you had a great Christmas.  Elder Paano and I did the best we could to comfort each other.  Just kidding!  I honestly thought after seeing the family, I would have a hard time focusing on the work and getting rid of the homesick feelings I had about them and my grandma.  However, the Spirit is a wonderful thing and it did just the opposite.  Seeing them actually made me want to go out and work harder.  I saw how good they were doing and how much the Lord has continued to bless them throughout the time I have been here on my mission.  As I reflected on my first six months of my mission, and just my life in general, all I could think of was how luck I am and how much the Lord has blessed me.  I cannot think of anything else I could be doing right now to show my thanks to Him than this.  Even though I am trying to "get even" with my Father in Heaven, I never even seem to get close!!

Elder Paano and I had an even better week than last week as far as tracting hours and teaching appointments go.  We also had three new investigators at church!  However, we didn't find any new investigators this week.  those new ones at church were from last week.  That is for sure something that we need to focus on for this week.  For the next transfer, I want to try and broaden our teaching pool so that we don't continue going to the same less active members or investigators who aren't really progressing.  That was also one of our companion goals.  We are going to continue to try increasing our numbers, but more importantly the quality of our lessons.  I think I may have gotten a little number crazy one day this week and lost sight of making sure we taught good lessons.  Elder Paano and I talked about it and made sure it would be fixed.

Saturday night and Sunday morning were a little tough because I knew Grandma's funeral was going on and that was tough, but I am doing better with it all now.  I know that she is with me whenever she can be.  I will go to my grave proclaiming to be her favorite grandson, so I know if she has to pick who to spend time with, she will pick me!!!!  Sorry to all the other grandkids!!!!!!

I celebrated my six month mark!  Happy 6 Months to you all--we made it!!!! Also, I tried a couple new foods this week.  Eel (yes, the snakey fish thing), frog, and rat (a rice field rat that is clean and very delicious).  I still haven't tried dog, but from what I hear it is the best of all meats!  

It was great to see the family on Christmas.  It seriously gave me the strength I needed to continue going strong.  You are all a great and driving inspiration for me.  I love you all so much!

Cole ate Christmas dinner with the Barrogo family.  One of their sons posted these photos on Facebook.

Tribute to Grandma

Cole was asked to write something about his grandma that could be read at her funeral.  Here is what he wrote:

God saw you getting tired, and a cure was not to be
So He put his arms around you and whispered, "Come to me"
With tearful eyes we watched you and saw you pass away
And although we love you dearly, we could not make you stay.
A golden heart stopped beating, hard working hands at rest
God broke our hearts to prove to us, He only takes the best!

I don't know if any poem would better describe our current situation.  God has taken the best.  And because we have a loving Heavenly Father, we know about His great plan for us.  I know that my grandmother is in that "state of peace and happiness" described in Alma 40:12

"And then it shall come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow."

I am also sure she is resting from all her troubles and labors . . . just kidding.  The Grandma I know couldn't "rest".  I am sure she is very busy teaching the gospel, in her loving but forceful way to all those in the spirit world.  I know this because she is one of those "choice spirits" mentioned in Doctrine & Covenants 138:53, who are called to continue the preaching of the gospel in the next life.

Words cannot express how I feel about my Grandma, so I won't try.  But the Grandma I am choosing to remember is the one who would threaten my football coaches if I didn't get the ball enough!  The one who never missed one of my sporting events, and the one that would give up anything to protect the ones she loved.  I hope and pray that we can all learn from the example of the Angel that our Heavenly Father blessed us with.  I love you Grandma.

Merry Christmas-Almost!

Merry Christmas!  What a week!  This week by far was the best week of my mission! We went out and we worked hard!  Despite our lack of tracting hours (because of studies), we still went and got the most work I have ever done in a week!  As you can see by my use of exclamation points, I am still pretty excited about it.  We also got to see the fruits of our labors as we had six investigators at Sacrament Meeting yesterday. We also had 16 less active members.  I know that it may be because everyone seems to be a little more religious during this time of year, but I can hope that it continues!  However, we only had 2/17 recent converts at church.  That continues to frustrate me pretty bad, but o-well.  Our only job is to invite and do all we can to help them grow in faith.  The choice still resides with them. To be completely honest, and I am not sure if this is good to say, but the most frustrating thing to me now is agency.  I know it is a great gift, but right now it sure is frustrating how some people use it.  Which helps me see how my Heavenly Father feels about me when I don't do what I know is right.

We found a new family to teach.  They have nine people in their family and are all pretty strong Catholics.  The only reason we were able to teach them is because they have a special needs child.  Her name is Mary France, and every time I would pass she would get so excited and yell, "Elder, Elder."  We would then wave to each other.  One day I decided to stop and talk to her mother and some of the others who were hanging out.  We scheduled an appointment for last Saturday night at 8. and didn't get out of there until 9:30. They have tons of questions about all sorts of stuff.  I have a great feeling about this family.  I pray every single prayer for them.  I really want to baptize a family.  I am kinda getting tired of baptizing little kids who won't come to church.  I don't think it will be very easy, because they are very firm Catholics, but I am determined and I know it is the Lord's will for them to get baptized.  I will do anything I can to help them get there.

I just received an email from dad that told me grandma passed away this morning.  I figured it would happen at some time in my mission, but even though I expected it, I wasn't ready for it.  I don't quite know how to describe my feelings right now except how thankful I am for the Plan of Salvation.  I know I am very lucky because it wasn't one of my immediate family members, but I was extremely close to my grandma and I am scared this will make me very homesick.  I am even more scared of how Satan will use this to discourage me.  It seems that as a missionary, Satan uses the littlest things to try and discourage me.

I am very excited to talk to the family tomorrow.  I love you guys and I love Grandma.  She was an unbelievable woman and I know that right now she is with our Heavenly Father.  She is experiencing EXACTLY what is described in Alma 40:11-12.

Zone Conference

We had Zone Conference this week and it was very fun. We got to sleep at the mission home and it was good to be with a bunch of other missionaries. I learned a lot that I will do my best to apply as a trainer, and as a missionary in general.  We had a good week despite only being able to get a little amount of work done because of the studies and conference.

We were able to get our investigator baptized and confirmed this week. It was a great experience and he has a lot of faith. Earlier this week, his brother-in-law (who he is really close to, and who had asked that we start teaching him and his family, was murdered in a hit and run. From what we know, he was hit by a truck while riding his motorcycle home from work. The people in the truck got out and stabbed him until he was dead.  The men in the truck were drunk and they aren't sure if it was purposeful or not. However, I feel so bad.  He had a wife (the sister of our recent convert) and a 2-year old daughter. My heart was broken for the family when I found out. The night before he was killed, he gave us food to take home and eat so we didn't have to cook. They were so interested in eternal families and I know he would have been a great leader in the church. I can only hope and pray that the same desire went with him in the spirit world. This shook up our investigator and his whole family pretty bad. However, he said he never doubted or second-guessed his decision to be baptized.  He said he knows that is what Heavenly Father wants for him and now he has a lot of questions about baptism for the dead, so he can be baptized for his brother-in-law. As for the rest of his family, we are going to try and teach them. We are waiting until the end of this week so things calm down with the funeral and everything.  But it is my hope and prayer that they will still want to listen to our message.

Death seems a little more real to me now.  Just the night before we were talking to this investigator and the next day we found out that he had been murdered.  It was a shock and it made me seriously ponder about the Plan of Salvation.  It made me think about my testimony and if I truly believe what I tell these people I know about the next life.  So, I have studied a lot about the Plan of Salvation in Preach My Gospel and D&C, and prayed a lot to know that it is true.  I don't want to be put in the situation where it has an extra special meaning to an investigator and have any doubts.  The "line upon line and precept upon precept" way of gaining knowledge and a testimony is coming to me right now, so I feel like I am heading in the right direction to get that rock solid testimony of it.  I believe it, but its not good enough for me right now.  I need to know it, so I will be able to testify with power to the people I am teaching.

We had a baptism on  Saturday and a confirmation on Sunday, so that was the highlight of the week.  However, there were only eight people at the baptism--including us and the convert.  Nobody from the bishopric or the ward council was there.  I wasn't too happy and yesterday during our ward council meeting I let them know.  I pretty much told them that we will need more support from the ward if they want us to continue to work as hard as we can to bring new and less active members to church.  I just told them, they will be held responsible for the less active members and recent converts that fall away after the missionaries leave, because we will leave and they will still be here.  I am pretty sure they got the idea.  Elder Paano was pretty shocked at how "forceful" I was.  I wasn't too happy, but the bishop apologized afterwards and told me thank you.  He said he has been trying to explain it to them, but they needed someone else to tell it to them to get the point across.  I am hoping they got  it!

One more week and then we get to talk!  I am so excited.  I need to make sure to work hard, so this week will go by fast.  I am trying my best to become the best missionary I can.  However, there are a lot of areas where I can still improve.  But as promised in Ether 12:27, the Lord will make them strong!  I love you guys!  Take care and be safe!


Here are some pictures that President Lopez posted on Facebook of the Zone Conference:

More Photos

The week started off with Typhoon Pablo.  Yep, I went tracting in a typhoon--beat that!  We went out and worked, but we didn't get a whole lot done.  The people were all preparing for the typhoon, so not too many of them had time to listen to us.  We taught four lessons in eight hours!

We had a good week and were able to get a lot of work done.  Elder Paano and I are doing our best to work as hard as possible and to adopt and adapt to the new rules.  We were a little discouraged when we found out we couldn't attend the Christmas Devotional or the ward Christmas party, but we will obey.  We know that, just as it says in Preach My Gospel, sometimes we won't understand the reasons for the rules until we test them and see the reward.  That is what we will do.

We weren't able to have our baptism this week.  He got sick with a fever all week, so we had to postpone it until this Saturday.  He is very excited to be baptized and even more excited when we told him he would receive the priesthood after he turned 12 at the end of the month.  We taught a great lesson on the priesthood and then we gave him a blessing.  He said he was extremely excited to receive that power from God.

We taught a new family yesterday and they agreed to be baptized.  The mom and dad are both my age, married, and have a baby girl.  It is crazy seeing so many people my age with families already, but that is not uncommon here.

We continue to try finding new people to teach.  OYM-ing (not sure what this is--I will have to ask Cole) is not one of my strongest abilities.  I get really nervous and it is even harder for me to speak Illongo.  However, we will keep practicing and try to become better at it.

This week we have our zone conference on Wednesday.  We get to sleep at the mission home, so that may be fun.  I am kinda expecting a solid helping of new rules, but it is to the point now that I just laugh.  I figure there aren't many more things President Lopez can make "bawal" or forbidden for us.  He is starting to get creative, so I guess we will see!  We have received about 13 pages of new rules in the last couple of weeks.

I love you all as much as ever!

I was worried Cole wouldn't get his Birthday package in time,
but he sent this picture showing he had received it.

The Bandoy family bought him cupcakes.

The Borogo family baked him a cake.

Cole and his new companion, Elder Paano

They celebrated Thanksgiving in the mission home.

Another photo on Thanksgiving that President Lopez posted
on his Facebook page.  It is great to have a "techy" President.