Dear Family and Friends,
Today there is now brown-out! We had one all last friday instead! This past week has been another great one! We have had some great successes! This past week we have had more oym's (open your mouth) than I have ever experienced before in my mission. We are working hard and are starting to see some of the fruits of our labors. The greatest joy of being a missionary is seeing people change and become happy because of the Gospel like Alma talks about in Alma 29. This week I went on exchanges with the assistants which was great as usual. I learned so much from the assistants and have a lot of new ideas to help the Zone! We also had a zone conference about Faith. It's still amazing how much to understand about a principle like faith.
Last week I felt prompted to talk to man who was building a tindahan and it turns out he is a less-active member who was the old Ward mission leader before we went and worked in Saudi Arabia for 8 years. We taught Ricardo a quick lesson on the spot and while we taught I felt his love for the Gospel. He just got lost for a little while. When we came back to teach him a second time he had referrals and he even came with us to teach some of our investigators. He kind of got lost for a few years but the Gospel flame has been rekindled in him. I love the rescue program here in the Philippines and I love all of the Less-actives! They are so wonderful.
Things are still going great with the Bade Family that I have talked about in Previous emails. Their 17 year old daughter who used to want nothing to do with us or the Church, has had a mighty change of heart. One day over night everything changed. You could see it in her face. When we followed up her commitments she told us that she decided to pray about Jospeh Smith and she received an answer. She is now attending church and has made a few friends in the young womens. Brother and Sister's Bade's oldest son still isn't interested but It's so great to see them grown as a family in the Gospel!
This week I have better come to understand how the spirit works. Every day I seek the spirits guidance many times for many different reasons. I seek the guidance of the spirit to know what to say to the people we teach, to know what scriptures to use, who to talk to, to find answers to my personal questions and in other ways as well. I have learned that the Lord will guide me as I'm worthy and seek guidance for a righteous purpose. The answer will always come. But more important than recieving an answer is acting upon the revelation you receive. If you have a prompting and brush it aside, the Lord won't be as fast to answer you the next time. We need to show him we value the revelation he gives us by acting with courage on the promptings we receive. We need to have courage like Nephi did when he was led by the spirit into Jerusalem, not know before had what he should do. This past week there were a couple times where I brushed off little promptings for valid reasons, but because I did so it was harder to receive revelation afterwords. I am thankful for this lesson I learned, and the patience the Lord has with each of us as we strive to learn and grow.
The pictures are of a zone activity we had last week on P-day! We went to a waterful. One is a picture of the zone the other is a picture of Elder Adao and I. The third picture is of my new favorite tricycle! It's the tricycle of our bishop and everytime I see it I smile!
I really, really, really love being a missionary! I love the wonderful Philipino people. I love my Savior. I love you all too!
mahal ko kayo
Love Elder Leishman
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