Welcome Back to the Philippines!‏

• Pamilya at mga kaibigan! Ano sa taas? This week was a nice "Welcome Back to the Philippines" where it's a million degrees and everyone tells you how malaki you are. Summer is on the horizon. I hope I survive. Anyways, this week was... a struggle. Training is going okay, I know more than I thought I did. But there's certainly still a lot that I don't know and I've been feeling a little inadequate and homesick for some reason this week. One of our struggles is that our teaching pool is soooo small! It's like a kiddie pool. So we've just been trying to find new investigators this week. Yay for tracting! We do have a couple of promising new investigators.
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  Brother Owen works as a social worker and one of the hospitals here and he was very impressed that the church was willing to help one of our members, Eva, pay for the expenses of her very premature baby. So he wanted to know more. He has a million and one questions but I like that. It makes the lessons more interesting. When we extended a baptismal invitation to him he told us he never had any doubts that it was all true from the first time he met us, he just wants to learn more. So that's Owen. He's awesome. Then there's Marvin. He is Sister Eva's boyfriend. He's been taught before but he promised that if his baby was okay that he would listen to the lessons again. The worry with him is I think he just wants to get baptized because he feels like he owes God, but he doesn't really understand what it means to make the covenant of baptism. They are a super cute little family though and I really hope that they will understand how much the gospel can bless their family!

  And finally, we have Michael. The light of the week. So last week I told you I was worried about our recent converts with Sister Banzali being gone and all. Well, we taught Michael last night. I'm not worried about him. We watched a video, "I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go." (It's on LDS.org and if you haven't watched it, do it!) We use it to help members fulfill their responsibility to share the gospel. When we asked Michael what he had noticed he told us that he'd teared up a little and he just really had the desire to help people like those missionaries did. He told us that when he sees the little kids going to school with no shoes, he just wants to give them shoes. And he really wants to serve a mission so he can help people like the missionaries in the video did. He's only 19! Who says things like that? We then explained that the people in the video actually weren't all missionaries. In fact, they were just regular members like him. His face was just like, "Really? I can do that?" And he told us all about his twin brother and how he wants to go on a mission but he feels like first he needs to help his brother find the gospel, because 2 missionaries will be better than 2 right? He's the best and he's going to be a great missionary :)

  Thank you for your love and support and prayers. Have an awesome week!

  
  

  XOXO, Sister Brown

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  Sister Rhea
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  District 3 at our cute little restaurant in San Jose