Success!

Dear friends and Family,

This week was awesome! We have been working so hard for the past 2 transfers and we are starting to see some of the fruits of our work. It's hard to chose a highlight of the week because so many good things happened. One of the best was our sacrament meeting yesterday. Every week this whole transfer we have set a goal having 6 investigators in sacrament meeting and yesterday we finally achieved goal. The best part was that most of our investigators are members of part-member less-active families. Yesterday not only the investigators came to church, but their less active families came too! One of the families who attended is the Patiag family whom I love so much. I have been teaching them since my first week here and they came to church for the first time yesterday. They are a young family and the husband is a non-member. The mother is less active and hasn't been to church for years. Yesterday they attended church with their two children and loved it! We also had 2 other part member families come. The tatay in one of the families hasn't been to church in over 10 years and yesterday he attended all classes and taught his children how to read the hymn book. Yesterday we had almost 2 whole rows full of just investigators and less actives. It was just great. One of the things that made such a big difference this week was teaching the importance of temples and eternal families. When we have the temple as our goal, everything changes. When we are focusing on the temple we are more willing to do the things it takes to be worthy of a temple recommend, and as we are worthy of a temple recommend we are strengthened are our lives are improved. This week I saw this change in a many people. It's amazing how the Spirit and the Gospel change lives. One of the great things we did in our teaching this week was we used music in teaching. This was a challenge that Sister Martino Gave us. My favorite experience was singing "Families Can be Together Forever" with the Patiag family. When we told them that we were going to sing this hymn sister Patiag excitedly turned to her husband and exclaimed"This is what I used to sing to A.J. and Kate to get them to sleep!" (but she said it in Tagalog of course. ha) The spirit was so strong and I thing that, that was the moment when the spirit helped them decided to go to church and the read the Book of Mormon. It just was a good week!

This past week we started playing basketball in the mornings since there is a court pretty close to our house. In the Philippines there are basketball courts everywhere! Every Barangay has at least 1 basketball court. We wake up at 5:30am and go play for about 45 min. One day as we were walking over Elder Casilac saw a tricycle drive that we had talked to and invited him to play with us. He played with us and it was really fun. We havn't taught him yet but I think the day is coming. Since then some of the other tricycle drivers have asked us when we play because they want to play as well. I think this week we might be able to get a little 5 on 5 game with all the tricycle drivers who want to play!

Things are going great with Elder Casilac. He is awesome. We teach well together and get along really well. This week is transfers and I hope and pray that I still have another transfer here with Elder Casilac.

As far as the pictures go. One is at a family home evening we had with a less active family who also has started coming to church! the second one is of a Rotary sign I saw on the side of the road! I think brother simonsen would be proud! The third is of a rat I killed in our house with a broom!

I love being a missionary. I love this work! I love the Philippines

Mahal ko kayo

Love Elder Leishman