This has been a crazy week! Lots of awesome...things happened!
We got a surprise call last night around seven o'clock that Elder Averion would be transferring the next day. Luckily, we had been put in one of the farthest areas from the mission office haha. We were told to be there at nine in the morning. SOOO he packed, we slept for about 2 or 3 hours and then left in the middle of the night! So now I am really really tired. I'm going to miss Elder Averion. He was fun. I am really excited about my companion right now, though. Elder Sabio is two transfers behind me and we were in the same district during our training. We were way cloase and always joking about being companions eventually and, lo and behold, now we are! I was so surprised because he had already stepped up to senior companion and then he's my junior now. So there is a chance that I could be transferring really soon again because we are getting a new mission president. I don't want to transfer. Pray for me.
About the language, mom; yes my mouth gets really tired sometimes. I try my best to have a good accent and to speak at a normal conversation pace, so sometimes my mouth gets really tired because it's not my natural language. If I were to get lazy with my accent, I wouldn't get worn out as fast, but then I wouldn't be understood as much. I am super quick in the language if I mix English root words a lot, which can work when I am talking to most people, but I still put an accent on my English words for it to flow better. Something interesting earlier, I was in McDonald's (yes!) early this morning and I was listening to a group of people talk behind me. So was Cherryl, one of the members that rode up with us because she had a meeting in Bacolod. I had been listening for a while, not quite able to pick out what they were talking about or even the main idea at all. The sound of the words counded familiar, but I couldn't put them together in my head! I figured it was just a different dialect that I had never hear before, but then Cherryl said, "Oh! I was wondering why I couldn't understand them! They're speaking Chinese!!" I was so shocked! It sounded so similar! I remember how weird Chinese sounded before my mission, but now it sounds so normal. It just couldn't make sense of what they were saying! Super weird. Hard to explain.
You're probably wondering about the special sacrament! It was AWESOME! We had about fifty people all together. I was surprised. We had about 20 investigators too! Awesome. I attached a picture of the place. It's so cool haha. There are actually not a ton of members in the area. We are basing the group on our recent convert family that was just baptized. We have met a few less-active members and we are hoping to help them return to activity. All of the people who attended yesterday were actually investigators that we have been finding and teaching for the past few weeks. And we even had some of the members that came with us go invite some of their friends! A few of them actually came! It was a really cool experience.
My memorable experience from this week was during the Sister's baptism. They asked us to baptize their investigators and they were so funny. They reactivated a less-active family and then baptized the children who had not yet been baptized. Elder Averion baptized the little girl in the family and it was so funny. She was tiny and the water was deep, so she was basically 80% baptized before he even started speaking. It was up to her shoulders, near her neck. After he dunked her (yes, "dunked" because it was rather forceful) she proceeded to "swim to the edge" frog-stroke. I'm not sure if that's a stroke, but that's what it looked like hahaha. It was great. Then they all gave their cute testimonies. Very good baptism.
A quick thought on what you said about Isaiah, mom. A few months ago I read in 3 Nephi where Jesus commands us to read the words of Isaiah. His reason was that his words are "great". "And now, behold, I say unto you, that ye ought to search these things. Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah." I don't know why we need to, because I think it's so hard to understand! We have also been told that the Book of Revelations is the most simple book of scripture we have. If we don't understand it, that means we "lack the spirit of revelation," as stated by Joseph Smith. I imagine that's probably the same with Isaiah. I do remember one missionary said to me at the beginning of my mission, in effect, "you will not understand the book of Isaiah or Revelations if you are simply seeking to know the future or to understand for the sake of simply understanding them. It takes a lot of work and revelation from the Spirit and it won't come all at once." So that's what I have for you, mom. I don't understand it yet. Let's both try to get it!
Thanks for all of the prayers and the support everyone. I see miracles every day and I know it's because of those praying for me.
Elder Welton
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| special sacrament meeting |
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| Hiding under a tarp during storm on the way home from sacrament meeting. Our clothes were super dirty. |
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