President Nelson

Hello sa akong mga kaibigan!

This week was so great! So much is being done in the Lord's Work here in Bacolod. We were able to finish up the house contract at the beginning of the week and will be moving up at the beginning of March! This should help us to be able to work better and to teach more families all together. It should also help us to be able to actually work on a normal missionary schedule, rather than the crazy one we have right now trying to make things work with the travel schedule. Despite the difficulties with travel, I really enjoy it a lot. We get to travel up there early every morning and then we get to catch the sunset on the way back most of the time. I have been increasingly grateful everyday for the awesome chance I have to be a missionary here. Great place.

The work here has been progressing well! We were blessed to have 8 investigators at church this Sunday! That's up from zero the week before I arrived, up to two the next week, and then eight this week. So we are really, really excited for the work to continue. We are praying for these investigators to continue to progress and to be baptized within the next few months. Please pray for us to keep finding more people these next few weeks. That's our focus!

We had the awesome experience of having President Nelson visit our mission this week! I was part of the choir and we were able to perform a lovely rendition of "I'll go where you want me to go"; one verse being the Ilonggo translation and the rest in Engish. It was so good! We got to sit on the front row and see him real close. I shook his hand!! I'll make sure to include a picture of the entire mission. It was also really awesome because I prepared the booklet with program, the Mission Vision that I sent to you, conversion stories, and other stuff which we gave to them. They ended up using parts of the vision I designed as points in their talks! I was so happy! So now the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has seen my design work. Awesome!

They talked a lot about exact obedience and how it will truly form us in our lives. It was so great to listen to Sister Nelson.  She had such a strong presence and spoke so plainly that you could really see how she has supported her husband in his sacred calling. It was just as interesting to observe President Nelson and see how reverent and closely he seemed to observe us and listen to the Spirit. It was so powerful to hear from someone who has obviously been seeking truth for his entire life. As he spoke, you could feel that the spiritual, intangible things that he spoke of had become clear and simple facts to him in his search for the truth. He gave his entire sermon based on a single question that caused an outpouring of life experience and spiritual confirmation that this Gospel is true. It was so interesting to listen to him speak. He said a lot of things, taught a lot of amazing principles, but what I really remember most was just the power that came from him as he spoke. One thought that specifically came to my mind was, "God's glory is knowledge." The knowledge that backed President Nelson's words seemed glorious. His carefully picked words and sentences, his transition from principle to principle -- all of it seemed rehearsed! But you can see that he really has just spent a lifetime of study and pondering. The Spirit has continued to refine the knowledge that has been given him to the point where he is simply sharing what comes natural to him. Although I felt all of these things, it was so comforting of a feeling to feel that "he is an ordinary man, just like me." It made me realize that this type of power and humility is NOT out of reach. Although he spoke greatly, I could feel that he once came from something as unrefined as all of us are. It's frustrating to know that we can't achieve perfection in this life, but it's more comforting to know that there are people leading us that have gotten closer and closer to it than most others have as their lives go on. Amazing experience.

Things are just gonna keep going forward here in Bacolod! Hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Welton

President Nelson's visit!  I am two rows behind him - right behind the sister in white who is behind President Nelson.

                                      A picture of our pretty area.  This is what we call the "bukid"

This is a picture of our little meetinghouse. It's a work in progress, that's for sure... We area actually gonna look for another one. Attendance has gone up, though! we had 29 yesterday! Slowly, but surely!

Here's a wonderful picture of a guy with a cigarette in his ear. I was hoping to get the mountain, but that's a nice addition!