2 May 2011

Oh man. I know I say this every week but time just needs to take a break!!!!


Well another busy week has come and gone. We had 2 investigators get interviewed yesterday for baptism and they both passed so on Wednesday they will be baptized and it will be great!!! Brother Alberto, will be going abroad on Saturday or Sunday and he really wants to get baptized before he goes abroad. His family will be baptized within the next couple weeks. The Lord is so great!!! He always works in ways that we don't understand, or uses people that we don't think he would use in order to accomplish his purposes.

ZLC is always a great place to receive revelation! Its neat to see all the new ideas or revelation that the Zone Leaders receive when we are trying to make the mission more effective. I feel kind of inadequate sometimes in those meetings but I guess the Lord has a reason that I was called. We learned that in July they will be changing the curriculum of the MTC. So all you new/future missionaries: Master the concepts of chapter 10 That's your assignment for this week.

Then we had an investigator, Elena, she is single, takes care of her niece, and lives with her aunts that are members. We started teaching her a few months ago. She is coming to church every week, reading the scriptures, praying, doing everything that we are asking her to do. Even that sometimes has not seemed to be enough, she has not recognized an answer of confirmation from the Spirit saying that we are teaching her is true or that the Book of Mormon is true. It has been of a trial trying to figure out what she is not doing or what is making it so she can't recognize the Spirit. Well Saturday we had a lesson with her. We were coming off of a spiritual high because we had just come from ZLC and she started to ask inspired questions. That is one of the signs that her understanding is growing. We have faith that she is really close now. With a little more work and help and inspiration from the Lord we will have her and she will be able to feel the full love of the Savior's atonement in her life.

Yesterday we had Area Conference, thru satellite they had Sister Beck, Elder Christofferson, and Elder Packer speak to us, they told some great stories, about their past experiences in the Philippines. It was nice. Saturday night we had a Jubilee Celebration in Maynila that was broadcast thruout the Philippines. They did a lot of dancing and singing and stuff. Its cool to see the native dances of the people here in the Phils. Come to think of it, it was a lot like what we saw when they did the Temple Dedication of the Cebu temple. The Philippine Islands have over 630,000 members I think they said. In 50 years only that is amazing and it is growing every year. If we could just get the gospel culture to override the Philippine culture we would be in good shape and this place would flourish.

Oh some sad news, one of the members, that we had met in Floridablanca, the 1st councilor in the District Presidency of Dinalupihan, President Suyam, well we can just say like the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's, he was ready to do his calling in the next life. He was such a great man, probably one of the few that I knew that actually lived every part of his life in accordance with the gospel. He is a father of 2 little kids and a Major in the Philippine Air Force. He was training someone as the story goes, they had experienced some problem with the aircraft when the plane exploded over Bagac, a little town in the mountains of Bataan. One of the sisters said that he gave his talk last week in church about the resurrection, and they even said that his countenance was different. We just feel bad for his wife and kids that he left behind, it will be hard for them but they are lucky because they have the gospel in their lives. Like mom said, when my Great grandma died, "Don't cry because they have passed, cry because they are not physically with us anymore." But their memories and achievements will live on.

That's All I've got for this week

Love you

Elder Chase