Magandang Hapon po!
Kamusta!
Parang kailan lang nagkita tayo! Haha it was fun to see all of
you and be able to have a miniature family reunion for a few minutes (or
hours...). I still can't get over seeing Gracie and Jenna walking and talking.
I leave for a couple months and see what happens! It will also be super weird
to go home and see snow again. Hopefully that will make for some good New Years
fun for all of you. It should be a fun New Years Eve here because we can't be
outside after 6pm. To help time pass by, we have 2 other companionships coming
over for a sleepover and going to watch a few Disney movies. And of course,
there will be plenty of good food involved. At night, we are going to climb to
the roof of our apartment and watch the fireworks. Hopefully we will have a
decent view because our apartment is supposed to be a 3 story house, but it
isn't finished yet so we have a 3rd floor cement platform as our roof. When we
told President Carlos about our plans, he said it was a great idea. He truly is
the best ever. The only hard part will be waking up early and going to District
Meeting in the morning. Everybody here is already going party crazy for New
Years, and random fireworks have been going off for a couple of days and it
seems like everybody and their dog has some sort of annoying horn or noise
maker. Just last night, our neighbor across the street threw an all day party
with karaoke. We know it was an all day party because it was almost impossible
to focus during our studies after lunch, and when we got back at night we could
tell by the way they were singing that the booze had been brought out. At first
it was funny to listen to them try to sing, but it got pretty old when it was
about 1:30am and they were still blasting loud music and we couldn't sleep. We
can only hope there will be more parties like that later tonight...
We had a great breakthrough experience with a less active last
week. He served a mission over 20 years ago and is married to another RM and
has a couple kids, but over the last couple months he has become inactive for
an unknown reason. We went to visit him and his family that live in a very
small cinder block home with no chairs, and didn't really do anything other
than talk to him and build a relationship with him, partially because they only
had one small light bulb and it was being used to help them prepare food and
not in the room where we could sit on the concrete to share a lesson. After
several minutes of talk, we asked him when he had time that he could work with
us and he hesitated for a moment and said he wasn't sure if he was able to
because he wasn't currently active in the church. He further said that when he
went home teaching a few weeks ago, he felt really awkward and that the spirit
couldn't work well with him as he was teaching because he wasn't active
himself. (To ourselves we were thinking, "Duh! There is an easy solution
to that problem..."). Knowing it would be a good experience for him and
help re-kindle his testimony and memories of when he was a missionary, we
encouraged him that it would be okay just as long as he was with us, and he
scheduled a time with us. When we met him, Elder Lasay and I were surprised
when he walked out of his home all dressed in a white shirt, tie, slacks, and
even carrying his set of scriptures. Several times throughout the day while he
was with us, he mentioned how good it felt to be a missionary again. We gave
him a couple opportunities to take part in the lessons, and we could see that
every time he bore testimony it was like he was teaching himself. Before he
went home, he said, "I think I should go to church tomorrow". That is
the power of bearing your own testimony-the more you share it, the more it
grows. There is something ironic about having somebody inactive help us
fellowship and teach to others, but it proved to be effective when he showed up
at church with his family in his Sunday attire. We were also happy because for
the first time ever, we were able to teach to some people we had been wanting
to teach for months now but have not been able to do so due to nobody ever
working with us.
I'm glad Bill enjoyed his Christmas pig, and I noticed lots of
similarities between Bill and the pig based from the picture he sent:)
Thanks for everything you do, you are the best family ever!
Mahal ko kayo,
Elder Nay
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