Mawwiage

Hello Family!!!

It was so great to be able to talk to you all on Christmas! It was really exactly what I needed to keep me going. I realized that my group of Sisters is going home this week and that I really don't have a whole lot of time left here. It's sad, but it has given me some added desire to work more diligently!

So, surprise -- Elder Cicon transferred! He was put in as one of the new AP's and will be whitewashing an area! I have a new companion, Elder Wade, and he is ALSO from my MTC group! Who would have thought?! Two in a row. It is going to be a good companionship. He is fresh from being a Zone Leader and is super diligent and ready to work and I'm excited! We will do some great things, I'm sure. It will be interesting training another Supply Elder.

We had a WEDDING earlier! It was so awesome! Radney and Celeste looked so happy! They were all dressed up in a suit and dress and just looked wonderful. We were so blessed to have had the Relief Society help organize a lot of it and take care of the decorations. I didn't think us Elders could do a very solid decorating job, so we were sure grateful! I hope that they will be able to go to the temple a year after Radney gets baptized and be sealed! 

It was interesting listening to Bishop Jayme solemnize the wedding and give his advice to the couple. He talked a lot about how in order for relationships to be successful, we must be willing to drop our pride and say, "I'm sorry" sometimes. Even when we are not in the wrong, we must be willing to sacrifice our pride if we want things to succeed. Relationships take constant maintenance and selfless service if we want them to become fruitful. I realized how much the Savior serves us and how little we actually notice Him trying to strengthen the relationship between Him and us. No matter how many times we reject Him, He keeps reaching out with the same love and affection, perhaps even more and more love, every single time. Why would someone fight so hard for someone who gives so little back? He loves us. There's nothing else to it. There's no way we could repay that kind of kindness to others or even to Him. But our Savior wants us to learn that very same love He has for us; the same love that our Father in Heaven has for us. It's hard. It requires us to drop our pride and to see people for what our Father in Heaven sees in them, not just what we see them do.

I hope everyone had an AWESOME Christmas!

Elder Welton

Who, What, When, Where, and WHY

lo Family!

I am so excited to Skype you next week! That was quick... We have the options of calling you any time from December 24-26, and so I think I will plan on calling you on the 26th there so it'll be Christmas for you all. That's not sure yet, I will let you know next week, but I will be Skyping and make sure you're prepared. :) I realized that I will have a LOT to talk to you all about. I think the most EXCITING parts of my mission have happened just within those few months since Mother's Day. I have to include Sipalay and the crazy things that have happened in the office since then. WOW. And also, just something to ponder, because of the changes made to the MTC programs, I will actually be coming home a week LATER than I expected - June 22. So plans such as schooling will either have to change or I will have to come home just a little bit early, which President Barredo understands and will review with me after we have come to a decision as a family. So we can talk about that next week, but think about what you would recommend before then! It's honestly so weird to be making plans like this already. I just barely left!

This week was AWESOME, though! We had to go up north to Sagay and Cadiz to do deliveries and to "procure" a house that will be used in the next transfer (good word, right? thanks mom). The owner of the house is a member and actually one of the wealthiest members in all of Negros. They started "Grace Pharmacy" and own a lot of stuff. They love the missionaries and said, "We have a house in Cadiz that we haven't lived in in years! We will let the missionaries stay there if you need it!" We actually did, so we went and looked at it. We decided with President beforehand that we should probably just give them like 2,000 pesos ($50 per month), even though she said it was free, just so that we were paying them something at least! We got to the apartment and it was MASSIVE. It had two floors and this one little chandelier and bedrooms galore and air-conditioning and it was bigger than the mission home! The whole time I was thinking, "Did Elder Cicon really say that this place was only $2000 pesos? Maybe he was talking about, like, just TWO of the rooms..?" Then I asked him and he said, "That's what I was thinking! This TOTALLY isn't 2,000 pesos..." We decided that we needed to pay her close to the maximum we are allowed to pay for a house, because it was SO nice. I'm pretty sure what we are paying is still thousands of pesos off of what it is actually worth, but I am so excited for those next missionaries that will stay there. They will love it. Maybe a little frightened, actually...

We will be travelling to the entire island this week to give everyone their packages. Basically, we get to play Santa Claus for the next few weeks. It's so cool! I will get to go back down to Sipalay and see all the beautiful views down there again. Yes! We are gonna be so tired doing all that driving though, man. It'll be worth it, though!

I have been thinking a lot lately about questions and answers and Elder Cicon and I have been having some interesting discussions about it as well. We had a deep discussion about answers to prayers and how God actually answers our prayers while still fulfilling HIS plan for us. It's hard for our human minds to understand the idea of a perfect plan that allows for requests from imperfect humans. Elder Cicon shared how he felt that EVERY prayer is answered, just not always how or WHEN we may want the answer. We talked more about it and thought about how hard that must be for Heavenly Father; wanting to give everything to us, yet knowing that we need to learn and be patient sometimes. Sometimes our requests come immediately, but sometimes we must wait a LONG time. Elder Fraire popped into the conversation mid-way through and contributed to the conversation. The topic eventually came up regarding the interrogative, "Why?" and how important it is for our Heavenly Father. I think God has provided the answers to EVERY SINGLE interrogative (Who, What, When, Where) except for WHY. And I think that's why we are all here on Earth! We need to figure out WHY God has done all things. We need to understand WHY following the commandments are important. And we need to understand WHY Jesus atoned for our sins. I think this single question is what separates a lot of people from living the gospel or from continuing on with their lives in the midst of trials - we just don't understand the "why" of all things. I've come to know a lot of the basic doctrines and principles and concepts contained in the gospel, but I find them deepened every time I seek to understand why we need these things. I know WHAT faith is, I know HOW our salvation is possible, yet I don't fully understand WHY these are so necessary... I know what Jesus did for us, but I don't know if I will ever completely understand WHY he would do that for such a person like me. We can learn all of the who's, what's, where's, and when's at church and by reading the scriptures and all of those things, but ONLY through the Spirit can we understand why. All of those things mentioned are FANTASTIC ways to invite the Spirit and we should always strive to do them, but if we only have him with us when we are doing those things, we will miss out on a lot of learning experiences. Whenever we have difficult trials we will always understand, through our own observation and deductive reasoning skills, what happened, how it happened, when it happened, and where it happened, but we will never understand the reason or the why if we don't have the Spirit next to our side, teaching us every step of the way. We probably didn't understand why we were going to be sent to Earth when we were in the Pre-mortal Life, we just knew that the Lord promised us exactly what he promised Joseph Smith; "Be patient in afflictions, for thou shalt have many; but endure them, for, lo, I am with thee, even unto the end of thy days." "All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." What a comforting promise to remember when we don't understand why.

I hope everyone is having a a WONDERFUL Christmas season!

Elder Welton

God's Eyes

Hello Everyone!

Sorry mother and father for not emailing you last week... I was quite busy! Hopefully everyone is doing well!

We had a lot of things these last few weeks! We welcomed a new couple to the mission, moved them into the awesome house that we made a deal on for them, had Mission Leadership Council, and had the FIRST EVER activity in my whole mission. It was so fun! The day before MLC, P-day, President approved us to hold a lunch and activity for all the Zone Leaders and STLs in the mission. We made all these fun games that were designed to teach principles. The activity Elder Cicon and I did was SO fun. We took rubber bands and tied the ends of 5-6 pieces of string to it, going around the outside in the shape of a sun. Then, all of the teammates were required to put the loose end of the string in there mouth in order to stretch or shrink the rubber band. They then used that little setup to take plastic cups stacked in a pyramid form and move them a meter over, restacking them into another pyramid. It was SO funny to watch them crawling all over the floor with a little string in their mouth, trying to move these cups with 5 other people tugging on the other strings. It taught a lot of teamwork and showed how hard it is to do things when you aren't communicating. Real fun.

We have been able to proselyte a little more lately and we finally got to start teaching Radnay again! He's so great. He finally came back from Cadiz after a few weeks of being there and came right back to church. We have been working for a few months on trying to get him married with so many trials that have come up that have just made it so hard. I don't want to ruin the story by telling to much right now, but the pieces seem to be falling into place right now. All I can say is that miracles are real and that God's hand can most definitely be seen in the lives of all his children. I will update you all on that as time goes forward, but we are SO excited for him. We just want to see him baptized so bad.

At MLC, Elder Cicon and I had the opportunity to give a training on something other than our assignments, for the first time! It was wonderful. I honestly didn't know what else to say about Baptismal Records... "Hey you guys, turn those BR's in... And make sure they're accurate. Please." We decided to train about LOVE and seeing with God's eyes. It was AWESOME. It was Elder Cicon's idea to begin with, and we just grew it from there. It really set the tone for the entire meeting and I think the missionaries really understood that there was just a LACK of love in the mission; love for investigators, love for the missionaries we are serving as leaders, and just an overall love for Jesus Christ and his work. We prepared a nice PowerPoint with all the stuff we wanted to talk to them about, but right up until I trained, and even while my companion was speaking when we were up front, I was writing down impressions in my notebook as they came. People probably thought I was weird just scribbling things in my notebook while I was in front of them giving a training, but I knew I needed to include them in my part of the training. One that came to my mind to include while I was up there was something our President said just a few days prior. He said, "When somebody makes a mistake, we, as leaders, need to separate the person from the mistake. We dislike the mistake, but we always love the person. Our view on them should never change." This obviously comes from what Jesus Christ taught about being merciful if we ourselves want mercy. As I have continued to study about mercy and how it applies to us, I have come to realize how loving our Heavenly Father is. God himself cannot be merciful in ANY way, otherwise he would cease to be God. But by offering Jesus Christ, he made it possible to offer us mercy at the expense of his Son. Of course, we need to be constantly trying to change and become better if we want access to this NECESSARY power from our Savior. The most sure way to receive that redemptive offering is for us ourselves to become MERCIFUL. It's easy to love the lovable, but in order to follow Christ we must learn to love the unlovable.

Before this experience at MLC, I was actually on a breakfast run with Elder Fraire for everyone while we were all working at the office one morning. Outside the fast food places, especially McDonalds, there are a few people that ALWAYS swarm our car as we enter the drive-thru to ask us to buy them food. We know that some of them just hang around all day to ask for money and smoke and drink, and so it's always been really hard to see them as someone who is truly in need of help. Elder Fraire is so great. Even when we were companions, he would always buy them something no matter how many times they had asked him. I know he doesn't really ever want to do it, but he does it anyway. My thoughts are always like, "I probably shouldn't give them something every time because they will just keep asking for stuff EVERY TIME. And they don't even really need it! They just sit around all day!" This particular day, when it happened, I was just thinking some very judgmental things about one young man who approaches us every time. He had piercings all over and tattoos and everything. After Elder Fraire gave him something (after having given something to like THREE other people as well), I just turned to him, somewhat frustrated, and said, "Why is it SO hard to see people like God does?? Why is it that I can't just look at that person and honestly think, 'Oh this poor, unfortunate child of God. I should help him,'??" I wanted so badly to think that of this person, but that judgement was just so stuck in my head. What I wanted most was to see through God's eyes, just long enough to even want to desire to help this person out! In response to my vocalized frustration, Elder Fraire, after a few seconds, maybe minutes, replied, "It's a gift. It really is a gift to be able to do that." As I thought about that, I realized how true that was. We most definitely CAN see through God's eyes, having the love of our Savior only if: 1) we are worthy of the Spirit and 2) we are praying and asking for it. It truly is a gift of the Spirit to see with those spiritual eyes; and we must seek it daily. I hope for myself to be able to see through those eyes even more. But I now know that I must first ACT mercifully and DO merciful things if I want Christ to help me become MERCIFUL by nature.

I hope everyone has a WONDERFUL week.

Elder Welton

Here's an awesome picture of many of my MTC group erving as Zone Leaders and STLs at MLC

Here's a little peak into the joy that is Sunday night! We are up so late every sunday getting numbers in from missionaries... I figured you would like to see some of the real part of missionary work. And our cute office Christmas tree.

 I got my package mother! The advent calendar got a little shaken up on the way over here, though. I was surprised to open a little door and find no chocolate inside, followed by another door with the same surprise. I took a knife to it and made this discovery. I re-situated them and taped it all back together!