PASKO NA!

Dear Friends and Family, Maligayang Pasko! First I hope you all have an awesome Christmas. I love Christmas here in the Philippines. Filipinos are the nicest people in the world and get even nicer when it's Christmas. Everyone just has this good spirit about htem. This past week has been a great week. We had our christmas zone conference and our branch christmas party. Both awesome. We don't have a lot of plans for Christmas this year. Because we live in a very rural area the people are really poor and humble. There's not a lot of presents at their Christmas but what makes Christmas special for them is being with their families. Because it's planting time right now a lot of people will still be in their fields even on Christmas day. Later today we are going to our branch president's house to cook Biko. I'm excited about that! Tomorrow we will spend most of our time visiting people and sharing messages about Jesus Christ. The simpleness of Christmas here has helped me better understand what Christmas is about. This week our work went a lot better. It's been hard to schedule our work because from 6:00am until 5:00pm everyone and their Kalabaw is in the bukid planting rice or onions. The only people in their houses are babies and older women who take care of the children and cook while their family is in the field. Right now even the elementary school and high school students plant. I was a little bit frustrated at first with this but planting season has been a blessing because after 5pm, everyone is tired and in their houses with their families. This makes for great teaching opportunities. This past week we have found three investigator families! Not indivuals but families. Teaching families is the greatest! Even all the less-actives we are teaching are all families. The spirit has been powerful as we have taught families about the restoration of the Gospel. Yesterday, we went back to a house that we had contacted early this week and the person we contacted wasn't there. However her two children ages 20-21 were. They asked us what was the difference between mormons and Catholic. We then taught them about the restoration. The questoins taht they had were awesome. They have grown up in the Catholic church but are searching for more. They are excited to learn. I feel like the Lord has prepared many people here in Portal. Many people here have never seen or met the missionaries before which makes finding fun. Yesterday there was no sunday School teacher for the youth so I taught them a lesson. To start the lesson I wrote "Pasko" (Christmas) on the chalkboard. I then asked them what they think about when it's christmas. I listed their responses on the board and after about 12 responses a 12 year old young woman said "Jesu Cristo". Then I asked them why Jesus Christ is so low on the list. For our lesson we talked about the true meaning of Christmas and read Luke 2. It ended up being a good lesson and I think all the youth learned from it. It's been a really humbling experience to be in a branch like this. Everyday my love for the area, the people here and for my companion grow. I love it here. I feel so honored to be a missionary. It's hard to think about I only have 1 month left. Elder Soberano and I aren't wasting any time. I love Elder Soberano he is a good, harding working, Humble Elder. He is in the 2nd picture I sent. He is on the left hand side in the Pink and blue tie. Thank you so much for writing him a quick email. It meant a lot to him. I love you all so much! I know that this is the Lord's work. I love my Savior. This is his Church. Maligayang Pasko! Love Elder Leishman the pictures are 1- me in a field walking to an appointment. 2 - my new district here in San Jose. 3- my batch on this side of the mission at our christmas zone conference.