Mission Tour with Elder Teh

Dear Family and friends,

This week has been an amazing one! One of the big highlights of this past week was our mission tour with Elder Teh. Elder Teh is the area president for the Philippines. The tour was on Wednesday morning but we set the chaple up with the Assistants of Tuesday night. Elder Pioquinto showed me the program and I saw that I would be conducting. I was a little nervous to be conducting a meeting with a general authority... On the morning of hte mission tour we had a leadership meeting with the zone leaders and district leaders. It was an amazing meeting. Elder Teh talked about John 10 and the Good Shepard. He compared all of us to good shepards and the need to know our sheep, gain our sheep trust and protect them from wolfs of the world. Every has their own wolves and it's a leader job to know those wolfs and protect their sheep. I was so inspired and uplifted from the leadership meeting. For our main meeting with everyone I was conducting. Not all of the program was announced so I sat next to Elder Teh who told me who out of the missionaries would be giving talks. It was really cool to watch him choose what missionaries would give talks. I think my conducting went ok. The mission tour was a spiritual feast to say the least. Sister Martino talked about looking up, no sideways, President Martino talked about the vision of our mission and President Teh talked about the "Puwede na current". Puwede na means good enough. This is current that many missionaries fall into where they kind of sit back and cruise through the mission, and stop striving everyday to improve. This talk was an answer to my prayers and taught me the importance of being happy of where we are but never being satisfied enough to stop seeking for improvement. Lately I have felt like I have become a little to comfortable with my calling and might have gone through the motions a little bit. This was a wonderful spiritually reminder to serve with my all my heart, might, mind and strength everyday. After our meeting Elder Teh interviewed 9 missionaries and I was one of them. It was a very powerful interview. I was surprised by the questions he asked but I left the interview with greater hope because of the greatness of the Gospel and our calling as a missionary. After the inverview President Martino informed me that President Teh would be checking our appartment. President Martino smiled and said "I hope your house is clean" with a wink. We usually keep our very clean and had tried to get it extremely clean because we knew there was a chance that Elder Teh would be checking some houses. However the night before the mission tour we had 14 Elders from distant zones sleeping at our house in order to make it to the conference on time. We left the house at 5:45 to get the church open and when we left our house it wasn't looking to pretty..... When President Martino told me our house would be checked I prayed that the Elders had cleaned up their mess that morning! Thankfully they did. The house looked great and it was good house check. One of the my favorite parts meeting the Teh's was hearing them talk about Dad and Grandpa Lolo. They only had the best things to say!

Besides the mission tour we had a very busy week with exchanges and with progress in our area. The work is really starting to flourish here in our area. We have seen the spirit touch the lives of many people this past week, especially with our investigators and less-active members. Seeing the Gospel change lives if such an amazing thing. This Saturday Marcelino, Vivian and Brian will be baptized. I am so excited for their baptisms. They are very ready to make these important covenants with the Lord. This past week we went to contact a less-active referral from the ward and we ended up teaching the family. The Father of their family and the 5 children aren't members but they excitedly welcomed us in and we had a wonderful lesson about eternal families. We taught them the restoration on Saturday and all of the family was touched by the spirit. This is an example of the miracles happening everyday. We are working on returning families to the fold and completing part-member families. This is such a great way to do the work.

This past week I was able to go on an exchange with Elder Tating in his area. It was such a joy to work with Elder Tating again. It was like being back with an old best friend. Elder Tating is an amazing misisonary and is great example to other missionaries. I learned a lot from that exchange. This week I have realized how blessed I have been to have some great companions on my mission. Elder Casilac being one of them. Missionary work really starts in the companionship.

This past week one of my favorite things I have learned from the scriptures came from Mosiah 2:41."I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God..." One of the things I have learned on my mission is that obedient missionaries are happy missionaries. It make me really sad to see disobedient missionaries. They don't know how blessed they could be if they would just be obedient. I know that Obedience is key to becoming a successful missionary. God wants to give us blessing and for us to be happy, but for us to receive happiness and blessings from the Lord we need to be obedient.

I feel so blessed everyday to be a missionary. I love this work sooo much! I love my Savior. I love the Philippines and the wonderful people here.

mahal ko kayo

Love Elder Leishman