1 Nov 2010

Hey everyone,


Well I got one more week done and we saw some great things happen, where we were in the right place at the right time. One time, was on Friday, I thought I was just hungry, we had missed lunch and I was really craving this thing called "Fish bowl" they are really good and I sweet talked a member into making the sauce for me. I would just buy it on the street but they just bawal-ed it, or ban it. it really blows! Anyways, so we thought we were going to buy fish bowl and we found squid bowl too! so a double bonus. Then as I was standing in the check-out line, I had this lady start talking to me, come to find out that she was a member, that had been excommunicated. I don't know why she got excommunicated but her husband committed adultery. I only know half the story but she expressed her desire to be baptized and go to church again for her children, then she told me she was an RM.  To make a long story short, I told her that there was still hope, and not to lose hope, she has been told 10 different things from 10 different people, but I gave her the number to the Mission President, and I'll follow-up tomorrow if she called him or not.

In another one, Saturday, we went to get haircuts, the place we usually get our haircuts from was still closed so we were just kind of roaming around.  We walked by this barber-shop in the market and had one of the barbers run after us and asked us if we were Mormons. We replied "yes" then he gave us a Book of mormon that someone had left in the CR across from their little shop. It was cool. We are looking for its owner right now, but it opened a door for us to be able to share and meet those men, and we got good looking haircuts as well! (double bonus again) ha ha.

Well I'm writing you guys from a little place called Mariveles today, it is beautiful. It's just a small little place surrounded by ocean/sea and its all green and mountainous, and stuff, I love it! We are going up to a monument after we get done emailing and stuff so that should be fun. The Elders are getting ready to move apartments and so president sent me and my comp. as well as the ZL's down to clean the apartment, and fix the stuff, it was fun. I let a little blood, sweat, but luckily no swear words. I even got invitations for marriage to 4 different girls ha ha.

Yesterday in church I got assigned to talk. The bishop came up to me and asked, Elder I have something to ask of you, I was like whats up? He said is there anyway you can speak today, I replied, "yeah no problem, how long? 5-10 minutes," he kind of looked away for a second, then was like can you speak for 15 minutes? I was like, hmmm, I'll try, I actually only ended up speaking for 10 minutes but it went by really quickly. Its probably a good thing he didn't tell me sooner, I tried preparing a talk a week before I was supposed to give it, it was soooo BORING! I lost everyone's attention. From that I learned, its easier to just get up and start talking, then let the Spirit take the wheel. ha ha. I talked about missionary work and how we needed to members help. I was bold but not overbearing...I think.

Last week I mentioned an old lady that we had given a blessing to because we were in the right place at the right time, well, I'm happy to report that she is okay now, but she is still in the hospital because her family can't pay the bill yet. I asked her son-in-law yesterday how much it was and he said 100,000 plus! I was like holy cow that's a lot of money, even in US dollars that's expensive, so hopefully they can find a way to pay it or come up with the money soon.

Well thats all I can think about this week, We opened up a new area for proselyting this week and we found a bunch of inactive members so hopefully we can give some projects to the Elders Quorum and the Relief Society.

Until next week

Elder Westwood.