Thank you Mom and Dad

Hello Family and Friends!

Today is TRANSFER DAY!! Except neither of us transferred, so that's pretty cool! I get another transfer with Elder Monzalez!

We are looking forward to some baptisms in February. We have just recently started teaching a new family that seem like really strong investigators! They speak Tagalog, but they understand Hiligaynon. So I am currently trying to learn Tagalog so I can at least begin to understand them a little better. It's interesting in lessons because I can really only grab a very generic idea of what they are saying, but I can see that they are searching for something in their lives. The father of the family started talking about the creation and how he realized that God is talking to someone during the whole process, because it says "we", so it can't just be God by himself. When he said this, my companion and I just kind of looked at each other and smiled. Hopefully he will continue to progress!

This has been a week of a lot of growth. I have started to realize all of the things leading up to my mission and the wonderful guidance of my parents. Thank you mom and dad, you did a good job! There are so many things that I didn't understand before I came, things like going to mutual and stuff like that that seemed to have no effect whether I went or not. But I have been reading talks lately and pondering about everything the prophets have advised to the youth of the church. Everything just kind of "clicked." I am sure my parents are happy to hear this because I am essentially saying, "You were right." But, hey... they were right.

I wish I had realized earlier how much of an influence we can be in the lives of others. I realized how important it is for youth to attend mutual, even if it seems pointless sometimes. I probably wouldn't be where I am today had I not been involved in mutual. So I am very grateful for all of my youth leaders and church leaders and for the examples they set.

I am very sorry to hear about Christina Murray... That was so sudden... The entire Murray family will for sure be in my prayers. We are so fortunate to have a knowledge of the Plan of Salvation. There's really nothing more comforting than that. And thank you for sending that message about President Lopez, mom! (Tanner's mission president suddenly left last week due to cancer diagnosis) We were all wondering what was going on! Nobody has told us anything yet. Hopefully he is doing well and that he can overcome this trial. If anyone will, it's that man. In the mean time, I guess we will see what happens. I'm not sure if the new Mission President will come early, or what... But it will probably be a weird transition.

I am so happy that Google Earth was able to capture our beautiful masterpiece. Dan McCay will never lose another campaign. (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152669810959537&set=a.52427719536.52925.589099536&type=1&theater)

I saw my MTC group today at the transfer, (we had to get our fingerprints taken for something, so we were all there) and it was so nice to talk to them. A lot of them are starting to step up and everything and everyone is still talking about how they don't know the language and what people are saying. So we are still in the same boat! It's always nice to hear that I am not alone in my trials. My goal for this transfer is to memorize a ton of vocabulary. Let's do it!

I loved seeing all of those pictures from Uncle Steve! I bet Grandma loved that date with him. Steve looked very handsome.

Hope you are all doing well!

-Elder Welton

Last Week of the Transfer

Hi :)

So it's been another good week in Handumanan!

We just barely learned today in our emails that President Lopez went back to America for medical treatment on Sunday. It sounds like he will not be returning for the rest of his mission... So that's really surprising. It will be weird to see what happens in the mean time... Hopefully he is doing alright! They said they will be sending a couple to watch over the work for now.  Keep President Lopez and his family in your prayers.

I shared this to a friend in an email today, and I liked it, so I figured I would share it with you all!

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Something I learned just barely the other day was about how important it is to BEAR your testimony. Your testimony won't grow unless you are sharing what you know to be true. Sometimes I forgot how deep my testimony is too. On my mission right now, I'm often bearing a very simple testimony of the most basic gospel principles. But even when I bear such a "simple" testimony, I feel how deeply set inside me it is. We need to be constantly reminding OURSELVES that we actually have a testimony. And our testimonies are absolutely useless if we don't have the desire to share it with others. But above all, the most important way we can show our testimonies is the way we live, the way we act, and the way we represent our commitment to living the gospel standards. I can't remember who said it, maybe just google it, but they said something to the effect of, "At all times preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And when necessary -- use words." Our actions should always represent our testimony of the gospel. Nobody likes the "Sunday Mormons" -- those people who disobey the standards of the gospel the first 6 days of the week and then bear their testimony on beliefs that they are not personally applying in their lives. It's much like what Jesus Christ said to Joseph Smith: "They draw near to me with their mouths, but their hearts are far from me." So let's not be that person. Let's be better.

Faith is the beginning of our testimonies. In Alma 32, we read about faith being like a seed. He explains how our faith will start from almost nothing. Sometimes we don't have a testimony of gospel principles. But that's okay! Alma tells us that even if we only have a desire to believe that something is true -- he's not even saying that we believe in it already -- but if we have DESIRE to know something is true, that's all the God is asking of us. With that very small beginning of a testimony, Christ will help us grow that belief. But we need to exercise faith. I have been told by my mission president to "bear your testimony of the principles of gospel, even if you don't yet have a testimony of that particular principle." I thought this was ridiculous. But I realized that as we do this, it helps our faith to grow. It builds our own personal testimony, and eventually, if we look back on where we were before, we see the difference in our behavior and actions.

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Here is a picture Mom :) (hopefully it will get through)

This is us in our apartment. We tried on our normal clothes because it had been months since the last time. That was fun. This is a nice apartment. (companion is next to me, Elder Monzalez)

Missionary Work

Hello family and friends!

We just barely heard about all of the Mission Presidents being called! (change will be effective July 2015) We heard our next mission president is originally from our mission but is now living somewhere by Manila or something. It will be really interesting to see how the transition is handled between presidents. I really like President Lopez and the way he runs the mission. It will be big shoes to fill. Interested to see the way the mission changes. Many of the missionaries speak of possible "Casual Fridays" and alternate missionary attire, but it's all just speculation at this point haha.

I have had a few people asking me about mission advice lately, so I will include this message I sent to someone recently:

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My recommendation is of course to read the Book of Mormon all the time. It's really not the advice people want to hear, I think they want "easy" things to do. People even told me that I should be reading everyday and I still didn't do it. But try to do it. And my most important advice would be to legitimately study chapter 3 of PMG. The other chapters are really good too, but if I were to give one recommendation, the most important would be to read that chapter. Something I though before I left was, "I know all the things in chapter three, it's so basic. I don't need to study that, I've grown up learning this." I realized when I got here that, yes, I really do understand the principles and doctrines behind the lessons, but I don't know how to teach them. Teaching the very basics of the gospel is HARD, especially when you don't even know what you would say in English. You have to take everything you know about the gospel and get rid of it. Because most of us were raised in the church, we think different than everybody else; the knowledge we have about the plan of salvation and all of that is simply part of our understanding. The people I am teaching don't even know the very basics of our doctrine. I realized that I am much better teaching the more in depth things than the basic things. So my advice is to memorize the order of the principles in chapter three. If you are called on a foreign language mission and you already know what you want to say in English, it's really just a matter of translating your thoughts. Sometimes I find myself stumbling for things to say and my companion will say "use a little English if you don't know and I will translate." The thing is, I actually don't even know what I would be saying in English because I don't know the principles well enough. So study up!

Also, learn how to write really small because that's a skill nobody can teach you haha. The planners they give us are so tiny. Get a super thin pen, like .3 or even smaller if they have it, and practice. I'm not even kidding. Good penmanship in a mission still using the old school paper area books and planners is a must have skill. For those who will be using iPads, I recommend practicing your speed typing I guess.

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To your question, mom, the sisters were pulled out of our area because our mission is actually getting a little smaller in terms of missionaries. In December we had something like 35 missionaries go home and then only 12 replaced them. And then that's also going to happen again next week, I think. We have a lot going home and then less than half of them are being replaced. So we have a lot of areas being combined and realigned and everything. It's pretty weird to see everything that's happening lately! Seems crazy right now.

This week was really good. I realized how hard it is to be working with people's agency every day, but that it is also so fulfilling when you can be a source of help in teaching people to use their agency for good.

Glad to hear that everyone is doing well!

Elder Welton

2015

First off, I would like to publicly chastise my family for not telling me they went to Cancun, Mexico for Christmas.  It makes me wonder if you've been planning this since before I left, or if it was spur of the moment. But, I would love to hear about your adventures there! ;)

This was a good week! A crazy one, too! New Years here is something else, that's for sure. It's probably more similar to World War 3 than to New Years in the US. We had to be in our houses before six on New Years Eve and then again on New Years Day. So, as we huddled together in our bomb shelter (apartment), we endured the relentless bombings that were happening just outside our house. These bombs were actually just fireworks, but they were borderline "incendiary devices" if you ask me. Everything eventually quieted down sometime past midnight. It was so fun trying to sleep through it. I remember seeing the news the next day as we were passing by a shop and, from what I could understand (it was Tagalog), I think they were reporting about all the destruction in other parts of the Philippines that resulted from New Years celebrations. I love this place <3

I had an interesting experience just last night that changed my outlook a bit. After the Sister's were pulled out of our area, we were then put in charge of all of their recent convert's re-teachings. We have been meeting with one sister for a few weeks now, reteaching the lessons and trying to help her continue even now that the sisters are gone. I had always kind of figured that she probably preferred the sisters from before since they were the ones who baptized her, and that we probably didn't have a very big effect on her life. But last night as we were teaching her -- in a small house, dirt floor, made of bamboo and sheet metal -- something on the back of the door caught my eye. Normally you can't see behind the back of the door because it's always open wide. But I was sitting back far enough that I could see it today. On the back of this old door was this giant heart drawn in chalk that covered about half the door. Inside this heart were four names: the first two names were the Sisters who had taught her. But in the next two names was written my own name along with Elder Monzalez's name. Then followed the statement, at the bottom, "part of my life". I just kind of stared at this for a while, somewhat speechless. When one of the members who was with us started to share an experience, I then signaled to Elder Monzalez to look at what I had seen. He just kind of stared for a while too. I think we both had the same experience with that.

What I learned from this is that we never know the influence we are having on someone's life. We can be influencing the lives of others even if we don't see the fruits of our labors. Even when we aren't paying attention, we are still being watched, still being looked at, especially being members of the church. And we all have the power to be an influence for good in the lives of others IF we choose to be so. We can become a bad example much more easily than we can be a good one. That's why we need to constantly be trying to improve.

That's just about it for this week! I love hearing from people back home and more specifically, about what my family is doing when I am not home ;) Just kidding haha. Hope everyone had a great New Years! 

Elder Welton