Week #54

October 26, 2015

Hello!

Well this past week has been full of adventures! We have been increasing in our work because we are finally getting a bigger teaching pool and we are starting to see so many blessings in the ward where we are serving!!
So like I said our teaching pool is increasing every day and it's getting so much more organized every day! Back in our first few weeks when we got punted from an appointment we would usually just go finding because we didn't have any backups or anything! But now we do!! Anyways our work was amazing this week and we saw a lot of blessings on Sunday! We have really been trying to get a lot of our less actives to start coming to church and there is a particular family that we have been concentrating on these past few weeks called the Perez Family. They are a very kind family and we discovered that no missionaries have been out to their house for almost 2 years!!!!! So we are the first missionaries to have visited them and i guess we have grown on them! And then this past sunday a miracle happened! They went to church! We are currently trying to get home teachers for them since that's something region 8 is terrible at. Hopefully they continue to progress and they return fully to the church. Also our investigators are progressing amazing! Ryan Morfe is truly being blessed with learning powers as we teach him because he remembers more and more every single time! His faith grows every time and we can see the Lord's hand in his life. The Ancheta Family is also progressing well but not as well as we would like. They seem to have the desire but not the drive to follow and keep commitments. Accepting and keeping commitments is the only way their faith will grow. We will keep trying.

My companion and I continue to get along great and every day is something new. He never fails to make me laugh and I don't think I could have asked for a better companion. It's crazy how fast the time is flying with him here in Alang-Alang. His language continues to progress at amazing rates and all the members compliment on how good he is doing!

This week we got to eat Letson Turkey and Letson Baboy (pig). Which pretty means these bad boys were cooked over a fire and they were amazingly delicious! Elder Clark was happy to be able to eat so much meat! And yes the turkey that we ate was the exact same turkey my companion beat with a broom last week!

Well that's it for this week. We continue to see the Lord's hand in our lives and in the work. One thing I learned this week is to never think that you know enough and think that you can do this work by yourself. You can't. We always need to depend on the Lord in all things. No matter what. Thank you all for your love and support!

Elder Child

Note:

*Brett said that there is a new rule that he is not allowed to email chat any more.  It came down from the Twelve Apostles so I assume it is for all missionaries worldwide.  That makes me sad, but I know if I follow that rule Brett will continue to be blessed.  It will be hard to turn my phone notification off next Sunday night!

Week #53

October 19, 2015

Hello!

This week was amazing!! We had such good work and the lessons we taught were all quality lessons! And with narrowly avoiding a typhoon (darn :/) it was a pretty exciting week!

To start off with I would like to talk about our investigators with baptismal dates! The first is Ryan Morfe. Ryan is married to the daughter of the first counselor in the bishopric and he is awesome! The only real problem with him is that he has a fifth grade education and he can't read. But that's ok because he has an incredible desire to learn about the gospel. Every night he will ask his wife to read to him out of the Book of Mormon and he always goes over and over the lessons with his wife until our next visit! The second is the Ancheta Family. It's actually just the wife and the daughter because the father refuses to be taught. We offer eternal salvation, he refuses. Basta, they are awesome also! They are past Iglesia ni Cristo which kind of makes it hard to teach them but they are progressing so much! They go to church every Sunday, as does Ryan, and they love to learn.

So like I said this week was full of quality lessons. But there is one especially I would like to talk about. In the mission right now we are really concentrating on a new way to find new investigators. Its called a 4 minute executive summary of the first lesson, The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Essentially what you do is OYM (open your mouth) to the person/family and ask for 5 minutes to share a short message with them. 1 minute to build a relationship of trust and 4 minutes to teach the restoration of the gospel. Anyways we tried it this week and it is an amazing technique! The spirit is so strong. And because people are accustomed to short, powerful statements they really feel the power and truth of the message. The people are excited for us to come back.

Elder Clark is doing better every single week! He is improving in the language so much and sometimes I even make him lead the lessons because he is getting so good! We are still getting along great and we work great as a companionship!

Well that's pretty much it for this week! I don't have any pictures so you will have to wait till next week! I love you all!

Elder Child

Week #52

October 12, 2015

Hello!! 

Well this week has been a little bit harder than last week! We had no luck with finding and everyone we talked to pretty much told us that they are Catholic and they don't want to listen to us. Kind of disappointing. Oh well! On the bright side we now have 3 investigators with a baptismal date and they are so awesome!

Our first two investigators with a baptismal date are two girls. The mom is the sister of the wife of the first counselor in the bishopric. Before we started teaching them they belonged to Iglesia ni Cristo. But now that they have found the truth they have been coming to church!! Sadly the daughter only speaks Tagalog so I have been practicing my Tagalog skills when we teach them! Talk about a headache! Anyways the third IBD that we have is amazing! His name is Ryan Morfe and he is married to the daughter of the first counselor in the branch presidency! Sadly he only has a 5th grade education so we have had to start helping read the Book of Mormon which is in Tagalog. It's hard being here in the "Tower of Babel" mission!

General Conference was so amazing this time! There were so many amazing messages and I am happy I had the opportunity to watch! I liked the three central themes: discipleship, family, and setting an example. The Second Coming is close. The two talks I think I liked most were President Uchtdorf's talk and Elder Bednar's talk. Are we making discipleship to complicated? This is a good question that we can all ask ourselves. Also I liked what Elder Bednar did at the end when he quoted all the deceased general authorities. The spirit was so strong this General Conference and I know I will be reviewing those talks over and over again. The one thing that was hard though was seeing President Monson so weak. Let's all keep him in our prayers.

Elder Clark is still doing amazing! He is progressing way faster than I did in my training! Probably cause I am just an amazing trainer! haha joke lang. Basta, he is coming along great and I know that if continues to work as hard as he has been he will be great! 

Well that's it for this week! I love you all!

Elder Child

*Pic 1 & 4 - at an ex-branch presidents home.  He is really into planes.

*Pic 3 - a pig that he said was made into "something delicious"

*Pic 6 - hiking through the wilderness to get to the Cuista family home

Week #51

October 4, 2015

Hello!!

So this week has been awesome and we have both worked so hard to actually get a feel for this area! We have been walking so much and one day my companion even brought his ipod with him that has a pedometer and in one day we walked a total of 9 miles and nearly 20,000 steps! It was insane and it was probably our busiest day out of the entire week! We have seen so many blessing from just being obedient and diligent in the work and I am so happy that Elder Clark has the opportunity to experience opening an area!

Sadly the elders before were kinda bad so right now we are really focusing on building up the members trust in the missionaries again! We are starting to get a warmer welcome and members are starting to work with us more and more!

So this past week has been amazing! We have been finding a lot so we can build up our teaching pool a little bit and we were met with success this week! We found two new investigator families and they are pretty awesome! One is the Miralles family and the second is the Cuista family. But I want to talk about the second. We met the father while out finding last week. He is a pedicab driver so we asked him for a ride because we had to get to a pretty far barangay. So naturally as we were riding I struck up a conversation with the guy and he turned out to be really nice! Sadly my companion had no idea what we were saying so I had to explain it to him later on. Basta, the guys name is Benny Cuista and he was super interested and immediately asked what time church started on Sunday! So we gave him a pamphlet (those things are amazing) and wrote down our number  and told him to text us. The very next day he texted us and we set up an appointment for Saturday! So we went and visited them and the were amazing and so receptive. They even invited us over for lunch this week! We are convinced they have been prepared for us!

Well training Elder Clark is still going awesome! He is an amazing missionary and has such a big desire to share the gospel! He is doing amazing in the language and I am actually impressed with the progress he has made!

Well that's it for this week! Thank you for everything you do and I love you all!!

Elder Child

Notes:
*Brett's companion from his previous area that had the seizures has gone home.  He was given the choice to go back into the mission field or go home and he chose the latter.

*Pic 1 - Elders' Child and Clark - two blue eyed American boys

*Pic 2 - Brett standing in a rice field with pathways through them

*Pic 3 - While waiting for the new missionaries to arrive two weeks ago Brett had time to visit some friends that he met while serving in Tolosa.  These are two sisters that Brett had the opportunity to baptize.  They are doing great and progressing.  The older of the two serves in the branch as a Primary teacher.  Brett was so happy to be able to visit them!