Transfers! (The rains came down and the floods came up) 8/13

Dear Friends and family, This past week was a very, very busy week. As I mentioned last week this past week was transfers and it was also a wet rainy week with many early early mornings. A lot of parts of Luzon were badly flooded! Manila was hit the worst and even though it's not in our mission, the departing missionaries all had to go through Manila to get home and the floods were so bad that many roads and highways heading into Manila were shut down. The van who was supposed to pick them up couldn't make it up to Angeles and most of the Bus lines stopped their buses to Manila. We thought we weren't going to get them home but thankfully we found one bus line still running and were able to get them on an old rickety bus without aircon and we got them to Manila. It was a little Miracle. That day was a very prayerful day and with the Lords' help everything ended up working out alright. The transfers in the mission and with our trainers also had some bumps in the Road because of the Floods but again it all worked out ok. It was pretty stressful but all in all was a good learning experience. It's funny to look back on it now that it's over. This past week we had 9 new missionaries come in and it was really awesome to be able to get to know them a little bit and to teach a little workshop in the Trainer and Trainees meeting. They are some really solid missionaries and all seem to be out here for the right reason. New missionaries are always fun to be around because they have such and excitement and fire about missionary work, even if they don't have all the language or teaching skills down. It's so important to keep that excitement up throughout your mission and not let up. It has been such a blessing to be around President. We don't have a lot of time with him because of everything he does, but he is such an amazing man. I have learned so much from him in my short time here. He such a spiritual, humble man that does more in a day than I knew was possible. He expects excellence and knows how to help others achieve it. I just feel really blessed Over the past couple of weeks Elder Garcia, President Martino and I have been discussing and praying about what will be our topic for our misison training plan in the month of September and what we are going to do for our workshops. We all agreed and felt like one of things we really need to improve on as a misison is CH. 8 of preach my Gospel about using time wisely and effective goal setting and planning. However President had a concern about making this a spiritual experience. The three of us spent our own personal study time and really prayed about this and we all recieved revelation about how to make this a spiritual experience. For Elder Garcia and I it came in companionship study one day and was amazing. The spirit told us what we needed to do and when we knew everything came together. I don't think I put my pen down for 15 minutes once the ideas and revelation came. Personal Revelation is such a blessing in our lives and can be a part of our lives everyday. One of the important things that I have learned is we are more likely to recieve revelation if we are trying to serve others. It's by following the promptings to help others that the Lord often gives us the answers to our own prayers and questions in life. I am thankful for this opportunity I have right now to serve as a misisonary and to be able to serve my fellow missionaries. Sorry that My email was short again. We have had a really busy day today because we had to finish up a couple projects before we travel. For the next to weeks we will be traveling and will be performing exchanges with all the zone leaders in the mission. It's going to be a great week. I'm excited to do a lot of exchanges this week! I am going to be able to work in my old area in Cabanatuan and in San Jose this week because they are both zone leaders areas! I am really looking forward to that as well! I love this work. It's the Lord's work and his hand is in what happens every minute of everyday. Fight the good fight of faith, mahal ko kayo Love Elder Leishman. ps. Next week I'll send you a couple pictures of the mission office and other things.