3-19-12 milestone

A year ago today Elder Williams received his mission call.  It has been a year full of bitter sweet emotions.  Looking back we would not want him anywhere else and we are thankful for his success and growth.  I have joked many times I prayed for him to go to Arizona. (I still would have liked that!)

 

This week was a lot better. Elder Basilan and i just needed a break from each other, and we were able to do that this week. On Wednesday we had zone conference and i got to see a ton of other missionaries plus President and Sister Martino, it was so much fun. 

We played basketball with the Bamban elders, that helped a lot because Elder Basilan loves basketball. As of today, I only have 17 days left in San Clemente before transfer announcements, and this week will be just as busy as last week.

At zone conference they taught about faith and shared tons of examples from the scriptures about regular people who moved mountains and rivers and destroyed prisons because of their faith, and President Martino explained there's no reason any of us could not reach that point with our faith. I didn’t really talk to him very much, just shook his hand and said hi.

Church yesterday was pretty good, right before our branch president started the meeting, he told me I was one of the speakers, and it was up to me to choose what i wanted. it was my last opportunity, I wish I would have had more time to prepare to make it better, but it wasn’t too terrible.

Friday and Saturday our work sucked. Generally speaking, the Filipino people are very united with each other, and we noticed that in a bad way this weekend. Friday we went to Casilagan, which is an area that we can teach up to 7 lessons in two hours because there are so many less actives and part members there. This Friday, they had some sort of event at the school, and the former branch president (who usually works with us twice a week and is a huge help in that area) went to manila. so we only taught one lesson in the time we were there. Saturday was opening night for the area basketball tournament, and they had a parade that went through every barangay in the area. Every basketball team had a parade float, and all the sponsors did as well. So we didn’t get a lot of work done on Saturday, we saw almost no people.  

Zone conference sounds great.  What did you talk about at church?  Do they use the Elders often as speakers?   I bet that was frustrating to go somewhere and not get any work done.  They are really into basketball aren't they?  

I talked about prayer. Mostly because I’ve prayed more in these last two or three weeks than I ever have in my entire life.  In our branch, we speak every 3rd Sunday of the month, but they always tell us at least a day in advance what our topic will be. Me and our branch president, President Tabelisma were the only speakers yesterday.

 I thought when I got here everyone would be into soccer, but almost nobody plays soccer. I have heard the reason they play basketball is because in places like Baguio or Manila they don’t have any space to put a lot of soccer fields, but you can play basketball in an alley way. So basketball has become a huge thing all over the country