Letter Dec 2, 2013

Hello Everyone! Happy Thanksgiving, I hoped you all had a great day eating lots of great food! Mine consisted of 5 peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches and rice and adobo. I think My body just knew it was Thanksgiving time cause I was eating like crazy this week haha. 

This week was really great, we walked a lot and got to see some really beautiful places of our area. We have been teaching the same people and not having much success getting return appointments, or we will get them and they aren't there or interested, but yesterday we taught 8 people and a few of them are bound to keep listening!

The coolest thing was teaching two investigators who have a baptismal date in 2 weeks, and their cousin, a boy, was home and we taught him too, about the plan of salvation. At the end, he said this is awesome, It makes so much sense, I didn't realize that there was a full plan for all of us. I really liked that and have been thinking about that a lot this week. We all have a plan, and I think sometimes of members knowing of where exactly we came from, why we are here, and where we will go after we die and how we get to the celestial kingdom, we take that for granted. We are going to continue teach him.

We also had an open house of the renovation for the new chapel here in the Branch, and a lot of members came, but hardly any investigators came. I just thought if they put a sign or something that said open house more would come, but oh well. We had 3 people come, who came because their teacher is the district president and would get extra credit, but they seemed interested. The actual dedication of the church was really cool, that happened yesterday, and Elder Ardurn of the quorum of the 70 spoke to us. He talked about how like this church is being rededicated, we need to rededicate our selves. He said we need to rededicate our hearts to the lord, and look in the mirror and see what we can change, where can we improve. And he said we need to search and learn about the lord's ministry more, and become more like him, and as we do that we will receive an increase in happiness.

President Revillo spoke there as well, and talked about the storm in Tacloban, and how we need to prepare not only physically for disasters, but spiritually as well, cause that is a lot more difficult than making a 72 hour kit, it takes more time. There are going to be spiritual storms coming our way and we need to make sure we are ready for them.

I have been enjoying my time here, and have eaten some really good food, Adobo is the so good! I love rice too haha, it goes with anything and everything. We had a couple of cockroaches in our apartment this week, they looked like the fake ones they sell at the 99 cent store, they were so big! The language is bugging me cause I can't speak how I would like but I am picking up new words everyday, and can understand people for the most part, unless it is about everyday life, I only know gospel terms really well. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and got to think about things you are grateful for. They don't have Thanksgiving here which I was bummed about, but I realized that everyday is a day to give thanks here, they are so humble and awesome!

Have a great week!

-Elder Rock