July in San Jose! July 1

Dear Family and Friends, This past week was another super busy week! It was still an awesome week and things are starting to pick up in our area! We are working really hard, have found some great new investigators and we had lot's a people attend church yesterday. Last week we had all of our big reports, transfer announcements, and Zone Leader Council in Angeles. ZLC was awesome! The only part that wasn't awesome about ZLC was being late. It takes longer to get to the mission home from San Jose than any other zone for ZLC. So we have to get up really early to make it on time. However last week I set my alarm for p.m. instead of a.m. and we woke up late. We still woke up really early but later than we were supposed to. Then nothing went right with bus's we took. However we ended up getting to ZLC just fine and we weren't too late. I just hate being late for things and always try to be early. However I learned I need to double check my Alarm clock! At our ZLC meeting President Martino talked about Sanctification and it was an amazing! I learned so much about sanctification and the importance of be a clean vessel and sanctified. A couple weeks ago I think I told you about Emil. A less-active who we have been teaching who was experienced a mighty change a heart and has completely changed. His family life is better, he is happy and he has a sense of peace and hope in his life that hasn't been present before. It has been a complete joy watching him change! His 6 year old son Hero's current teacher is a member in our ward as well which has been a big help in bringing them back to church. For the past few weeks we have been trying to find his membership record on mls but we havn't been able to find it. Yesterday we taught him about Baptism and Confirmation and we found out that in 2002 he was baptized but was never confirmed because he moved the day after his baptism. He also doesn't remember who baptized him. This means that he needs to be baptized again. He has already meets the requirements for baptism and we are now helping him prepare to be baptized next week! He is so excited to really be confirmed a member of the church. He also really wants us to teach his wife. We have tried to teach her a few times but havn't been successful yet. We are praying that this week we will have an opportunity to teach her the Gospel and that she will be receptive to our message. Yesterday was fast sunday and I had a wonderful fast. We decided to have a zone fast for our baptisms and less-actives who will return this month and yesterday we saw some miracles happen. I know one of the reasons it happened was because of our fast. One of the miracles was having I have really come to love fasting and the spiritual strength it gives us. When I fast I feel so close the Lord and I my faith increases. Yesterday Brother Vergel De Dios ordained his son Ezekiel (our recent convert) to the Aaronic priesthood. It was a really cool experience to see a father exercise his priesthood to bless the life of his son. The spirit was so strong during the short and simple blessing and they were both glowing when the ordination was over. Kiel is way excited to pass the sacrament next week! The work here in San Jose continues! I really love it here. I love my ward. I love Elder Revillo. I love this great and wonderful work! mahal ko kayo Love Elder Leishman 2 of the pictures are from transfer announcements. One of me and the announcements(we made a puzzle for announcements to have some fun with the zone) and one picture of the zone wearing our zone t-shirts. The last picture is of Elder Revillo and I at ZLC.

Transfer Week! June 23

Dear Family, This past week has been another good week... but a hard week as well. I have never been punted (that's the term we use when our apointments and plans fall through) as much as I have this past week. It happened with investigators, recent converts, less-active members, new contacts and just about every one we could think of. However despite of this all we saw the Lord's hand in the work and were had some awesome unexpected opportunities. One of the Success's of the week was having 3 less-active Melchizedek priesthood holders attend church yesterday. All three of these members are good friends and have all been part of a bishopric. We have been working with them for a long time now and they finally came to church!! It has been a long process due to many concerns but they are finally feeling the joy of the Gospel in their lives again. We were able to visit them more times this because of all appointments that fell through and I think that, that is one of the main reasons why they decided to come to church. It's always exciting to see priesthood holders come back from inactivity! Over the past two weeks Elder Revillo and I decided to use the Book of Mormon more in our teaching. We always use the Book of Mormon but usually we only use a few verses about whatever principle we are teaching. We decided that the thing that would help our investigators , recent converts, and less-actives the most would be simply reading the Book of Mormon. What we have been doing is choosing some of our favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon (ex, Nephi, the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's, the strippling warriors, Lehi's dream ect...) and reading them with whoever we are teaching. Because of this we have seen big changes in the people we teach. They are now excited to read the Book of Mormon and are reading on then own. Because they are reading, they are also coming to church. The Book of Mormon combined with the spirit truly is the most powerful tool in conversion and we all need to feast in it's pages everyday. This past week when we were teaching a referral from Mary Grace (the recent convert from Hawaii) we were teaching about baptism. It was a super powerful lesson and both of our investigators commited to baptism this July! However we asked one of them to say the closing prayer and when she was praying she prayed about Joseph Smith, the Church and Baptism. She started crying and had a hard time finishing her prayer. She didn't know why she was crying because she was happy and her sister was able to explain that it was the spirit. It was a powerful spiritual confirmation to everyone in the room of the Truth fullness of the Gospel and how the Lord answers our prayers through the Holy Ghost. As the subject of my email says it's now transfer week... Usually we don't know what transfers are going to take place until tuesday night but we had our Stake Missionary Correlation meeting yesterday with President Martino and our stake president here and President Martino told me drumroll please........ neither of us will be transfered! This means I will be here in San Jose until the second week of August! I get to go 6 months here. I have been blessed in my mission to be able to spend a good amount of time in all of my areas. I really love San Jose so it will be good to spend another 6 weeks here. I love the ward, my investigators and the less-active's I am working with. I'm excited to keep seeing the progression of San Jose ward 1. I love being a missionary! I just really really Love it! I feel so blessed to be here in San Jose. President told us there are going to be a lot of changes in our zone this week and I am excited for what will happen and for the great work we will do this transfer. mahal ko kayo Love Elder Leishman