Baptisms

Nanay!!! And family!! Kumusta!!! I'm so sorry that you didn't get an email yesterday because Pday got switched to Tuesday as today was temple day. And just as a little side-note, can I just say how much I love the temple. It's like a breathe of fresh air and a rebooster. I highly recommend it :)

The baptisms went really great. I have pictures for you!! After I finish sending this email, I'll send you a few little pic-pics for your viewing pleasure :) Jeyer's baptism was great. His testimony is still small, of course, but he'll be stellar. No Elder Holland, sad day. But, he did give a fireside for the young adults preparing to go on missions. It was combined with the Quezon City stake and the Quezon City south stake and there were about 900 people there. Ah, so jealous, but how astig is that! All young adults. And he basically committed every single one of them to go on a mission and also said, and you sisters, don't you dare marry a young man that has not served a mission. Haha. Totally doesn't even surprise me. I love it though. That's what they really need here in the Philippines....strong youth, who will become strong leaders and build strong families. It starts with them right now. And missions are definitely the way to build that. I honestly have still not figured out how someone can go on a mission and NOT have a more firm testimony of the gospel. Blows my mind. Elder Callister's talk was incredible at our mission fireside. He gave 2 actually. One was on the blue print of the church...what the original organization was like, the doctrines, and ordinances and scriptures that correspond with each from the New Testament. It was awesome and will definitely come in handy when we run into those hard core Catholics, which by the way, I had my first encounter with one this week. Lets just say, I'm not a huge fan of Bible bashing, I don't mind the discussion, but I don't like the "prove it" part, ESPECIALLY when it is in a different language and I'm just trying to figure out what the question actually is, let alone how to answer in a clear and concise manner.  Anyway, his talk was awesome. Sheesh, if people would just actually read the Bible, a lot of this whole mess would be cleared up. Instead they go, you know actually, I'm just going to believe the nicien crede which was in fact written by man who had no idea what they were talking about and has now been ingrained into religious thoughts for the past 1500 years, even if you do show me proof from the Bible otherwise. Man, I hate Satan. He messes with everything. Then he also talked about being a consecrated missionary. He talked about the difference between water that is at 99.5 degrees and water that is at 100 degrees. At 99.5 degrees, it’s just hot water, but at 100 degrees, that's when it starts to boil and give off steam and with the steam it's 1000 times more powerful. That's the difference between being a consecrated missionary.

Also, I almost forgot! President Nielson talked about the Sabbath day here in the Philippines. It is seriously a problem. In the last 5 years, there have been 75,000 baptisms here in the Philippines, but only 10,000 are still active. That means 65,000 are now not active. Insane, I know. So he talked about how the culture in the Philippines has been trained to think that it's ok to not keep the Sabbath day holy. It comes from the Spanish conquering and the ideas from Catholicism. And it's so true. People think it's totally acceptable to go to church on Christmas, Easter, and your birthday, and that's ok. So he talked about how we have to change their perspective on what it means to keep the Sabbath day holy. We need to change their culture and make them realize that in God's culture, Sundays are holy, not a holiday. And then he talked about Somoa and how in Somoa it's illegal to have anything open on the Sabbath and he talked about the economic benefits that country has because they keep the Sabbath day holy. And then one elder asked, "What do we tell them though if they have to work on Sunday just to pay for food for their family?"  And he goes, "How much faith do you have in the Lord? You tell them if they will keep the Sabbath day holy, they will have more food on their table than they did before". And it is so true. I was thinking about it, and that's one of the reasons that I think our business always has business when others don't...we keep the Sabbath day holy. God can't work with short cuts. He wants to give us the blessings, but he can't if we don't hold up our end of the deal. In the end it comes down to, how much do we trust our Heavenly Father? He's never going to withhold those blessings from us if we are faithful and exact in following his commandments. It was such a great talk. And, lets me honest, I was eating it up because it was all about culture and perspective lens. I hadn't really thought of Sabbath day attendance in that light before (I just usually go, duh, don't you get it?:), but it totally makes sense and it's totally true. I felt like I was back in my strategic culture class. I've decided I'm totally going to break down this culture and figure out what principles I need to focus on teaching so that habits, perspectives, and behavior can be changed. First one is faith. Man, it's like pulling off people's toenails here to get them to be responsible for something. It's gonna happen though. I'm stoked about it.

Yes, they gave a filtering water bottle in the MTC. So prepared sila, they think of everything. So don't worry about it. And my goodness with Gadhafi. Ha, we didn't even have to take him out. The people took care of that for us, and HOLY HANNAH, weddings galore! When did all of this happen?  So so crazy. Both Jessi and Shalee. I can't say I'm too surprised though. I knew it had to be happening sometime soon.

Ok, I am WAY out of time. I'll still try to send the pics though. Love you all so much and hope you have a fantastic week. Oh yeah! And big shout out to Ry and Mush....HHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPYYYYYYYYYY BBBBBBBBBBIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTHHHHHHHHHHDDDDDDDDDAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!! Mahal na mahal ko kayo!!!