well this week has been really long! we have been going all over dulag finding inactive members and sharing with them. a lot of the time when we go far out we have to ride on the back of a motorcycle, then when it is time to come back there are no motors coming back! we walked for about an hour one day to get back to our apartment, its not fun and its been raining a lot lately. some people keep getting flooded and we have plans to go see them and then we get ready to go and walk to the terminal to catch a ride and they tell us its flooded and we cant go out there. dang! so we have been spending a lot of time at the church getting even more organized and planning activities. there are none and one problem is when they have an activity it basically just means they are going to eat a huge meal and gossip which is part of the reason why this branch is the way it is. there is no organization and it stinks that I'm not very good at it myself, but I'm more organized than they are. its good because elder ostler is extremely organized and i am learning a lot being his companion.
this week we have been really focusing and helping the members realize the reason why we have commandments in this life. they all seem to think it is so that our life is difficult! but during our study to better understand the reason we found that the lord gives us these commandments because he wants to bless us and they way he blesses us is from our obedience to his commandments. we have really been trying to live by that ourselves and it seems to be going really well. i have really come to love true to the faith (a book) and have decided to read it from cover to cover, and not just when i have a question. it has really been helping me in my life and in helping other people understand deep gospel principles. because we are only teaching members now they have a lot more difficult questions other than who is Joseph Smith and why do you have 2 bibles? its things like, how do i repent and what happens to my baby that died who isn't baptized, and i can now answer those questions with confidence from all of the things that i learn every day. i know this is an amazing time for learning, and the things i think change every day as i learn new things during my personal and during companionship study, they are amazing times for receiving revelation and through them my day goes a lot smoother and i am not worried or frustrated about anything that happens. as long as i know i am doing what i am supposed to.
saturday we got up in the morning and did our normal studies and things then went to the church to clean. i cleaned the inside while elder ostler scraped all the mold and moss off the ground outside that people keep slipping on. but it didn't work to well so if you have any ideas on how to get it off let me know. then we went home and ate lunch, then went to tolosa for a branch presidencies meeting. it was really good. we went over all of new goals for the year here in the Philippines. its going to be a great year i can tell already.
then sunday we ran out of white shirts to wear because we were lazy. so we busted out the long sleeves and it actually wasn't bad. we wore long sleeves all day at church. i ended up having to talk about the atonement because the other 2 speakers were late! so i spoke then the 1st counselor brother Tingzon bore his testimony and then elder ostler spoke for about 20 minutes at the end. it ended up being a really good meeting. i actually spoke for the 10 minutes i was supposed to, i actually went over by a few minutes. i was satisfied. the atonement is an easy thing to talk about. then we had our branch presidency meeting, then branch council, then then we had to do tithing stuff. so we didn't get home until about 5. so we had a lunch slash dinner then went out to a barangay(neighborhood) called luan. its pretty far out but we shared with a lady about tithing to make sure she completely understood the blessings that come from it. and we really feel like she gets it now. then we walked to the road hoping for a ride but no one came so we started walking. then it started raining but we couldn't get wet because our other shoes were already wet from saturday night. so we waited under a little thing then finally a jeep came by and we caught a ride straight home. then we started planning and the mayorga
but that's all for this week i don't have any more pictures to send but i would like to receive some too if that's possible i bout a flash drive to put them on and print so i can fill the photo album i have and its pretty big well i love you all and thank you again for all the love and support and remember commandments are a blessing
