Stoked about Doing the Work

Elder Teh (General Authority over Asia) and his wife, President Pagaduan and his wife and our zone.

Hey, what’s up everyone? This week was a pretty normal week as far as the work goes, but at the same time we had a bad Sunday yesterday! We had like 8 people commit to go to church and when we got to church we waited and waited and not a single investigator showed up! Zero! It sucked haha. You work all week to get people to church so when they don’t show up it hurts! But whatever, it will all work out. We still have three people right now with baptismal dates. Myra Nerval (18) will be baptized the 30 of July...It should have been the 23rd but since she missed church this week (she was out of town with family) we have to move it back a week. Another story we have from this week is that we are getting people married! We have an investigator named John ray Fernando who is like 27 and has three kids with a returned missionary (less-active), but hasn't been baptized or married. He wants to be baptized but has to get married first. The problem is they have no money. So Elder Key and I just paid for them to get a birth certificate, then marriage license. Now all we have to do is correlate to get a bishop to marry them since ours doesn't have a license to marry people. Our third baptismal date is to a woman named Lola Pilante (71)...lola means grandma haha I don’t know her first name! She has family that are members, but has never listened to missionaries until about five or six months ago, then her husband died from a disease and she stopped listening for some reason. We started teaching her and it took her a long time She kept saying she wasn't ready for baptism but she has finally realized that it is something she has to do in order to get back with her husband someday. She will be baptized in August, Right now she still has a problem with drinking coffee so we are working on that. Elder Key and I are doing awesome. I love our apartment and all the roommates so I have no complaints. My health is good and I am stoked about doing the work. I am glad you all had fun at the family reunion and thanks for the pictures. Another thing that happened this week was that we had a general authority come visit us. His name is Elder Teh. He is our area president of Asia. He was awesome and I will send a photo of our zone with him and his wife, and President Pagaduan and his wife. They talked a lot about lifting where you stand. Just do your job in the church and the church will grow so much. It is when we start worrying about things out of our hands when we have stumbling blocks. It was really awesome. I am loving my area. We have lots of good things going on here. I am also happy about your business mom. I always wished you would move it to St. George now you did it! Tell Dallen I love him and am way proud of him. This week he will start his journey of a lifetime and he is way lucky. Tell him to be patient with himself at the MTC and try to enjoy it and the food haha. I know he will be fine. I love you all and thanks for all your support to me and your sacrifices so I can be here. Palangga ko kamo, Elder Garrett Christensen Hey dad. How is your week going? I am having a really good time right now and no complaints. I bet you had a blast with all you family this last weekend. I know I miss stuff like that. You look like a stud playing horse shoes in the photo mom sent me. Are you excited that we are getting close to hunting season? Which also means that the weather will get better for you. I am healthy and happy with everything here. I hope all is well with work and everything. Thanks for everything Dad I Love you and miss you lots! Elder Garrett Britt, That is so awesome you made the soccer team, I am so proud of you! You are my hero! I loved getting pictures of you! You are so gwapa, maganda...or beautiful :) Keep being a good girl to mom and dad. Love ya! To answer Dad's question about how the mission works....So how it works is the mission president lives in the mission home and has an office which is in a church in Iloilo. He and his wife have two kids. The highest missionaries are called AP's or assistants to President. There are two of them in our mission. Next is the zone leaders, we have six zones in our mission so there are twelve zone leaders. They are experienced elders who help the zone and also do interviews for baptisms, then the district leader. They also do baptismal interviews and they teach a training every Tuesday morning on subjects like teaching form Book of Mormon, how to begin teaching, finding, etc. There are three districts in our zone so each district has like 5-10 missionaries. Then you have just your normal senior and junior companions. I hope that answered. Love you dad!