March na in San Jose

Dear friends and family,

This past week has been amazing! First we had our Zone leaders council meeting at the mission home. It was such a spiritual experience. ZLC is definately my favorite meeting in the mission. In this meeting we discuss mission buisness, have zone accountablity, talk about the mission training plan for the month, get trained by the Assistants and by President and Sister Martino and we have a testimony meeting. At this past ZLC the focus was faith. I have always thought that faith was very simple principle of the Gospel but this past week I learned so much about Faith! I don't have enough or the english skills to say everything I want to about faith. However one of the favorite things that I learned is the importance of Faith in connection with obedience. In order to be obedient we need to have faith. Obedience is impossible without faith. However when we are obedient our faith in Jesus Christ grows and we gain spiritual power. Faith really is a principle of power! We also talked about the importance of leading by example. As a leader you can't expect anyone to do anything that you are unable to do or aren't doing. Jesus set the example "Come follow me". He is the perfect leader. One reason is because he led by example. Because of ZLC my faith has increased so much. THe quality of my study, prayers, and all aspects of the work have increased. I feel like this is all because of faith. I still have so much to improve on but I know that with faith and the help of the Lord I can do it. At ZLC it was also fun to have some of my batchmates there like Elder Andrus and Elder Tuitama who were also my roomates in the MTC. I still havn't seen Elder Tomasi yet in the field but it has to happen eventually.

This past week was a good week in the work. We are working with a lot of less-actives with the Rescue program. Here in our area we also have a lot of new investigators and hardly any of them are progressing. Right now we are focusing of basic commitments to help them start their progress towards conversion, but with how big our area is we have having trouble with frequent contact to all of our investigators. It's a challenge but we have some great things happening everyday. Brother and Sister Bade (the new recent converts from the Baptism last week) Are doing great and really want their children to listen to the Gospel. They have 2 children who are ages 17 and 22. They aren't that excited to listen to us but came to church yesterday and we have an appointment with them tonight. I am praying that it will be a good appointment and that they will be receptive to our teaching. Teaching families is one of the best parts of being a misisonary and I know the Bade family can embrace the Gospel as a family. Keep them in your prayers.

Things here in San Jose and doing good. Our zone is awesome! We have some awesome hard working missionaries! Right now we are really trying to help our zone be 100% That is what will allow us to reach our full potential. This transfer is off to a good start. I'm still adjusting to the area but things are going good. I am also really enjoying being companions with Elder Adao. We are on the same page about misisonary work and are having a lot of fun together. Missionary work is fun!

mahal ko kayo

Love Elder Leishman

ps. I took the first picture while walking to an appointment through a rice field. The Second picture is of Elder and Adao with an investigator(the brother in the orange shirt) and with his next door neighbor who has a pretty great bullcut!

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

Well...

Dear Family and Friends,

This past week has been a busy one! One of my highlights of the week was meeting President and Sister Martino! I attached a picture of Elder Martino and I. I honestly couldn't be more excited that President Martino is my mission president. He is awesome. He is humble, very spiritual, is good at Tagalog, has a great Texas accent, and I love his attitude about the work! He has already started to make some changes and I am excited about them all. This week I'll have my first interview with him and I'm really excited for it. Sister Martino is great too! Sister Martino has a said we need to be sparkling missionaries. Meaning that when we teach, we sparkle. When we teach we speak from our hearts with the spirit not just with our mouths. When we are sparkling missionaries we have the Light of Christ in our countenances. I hope that I can be a sparkling missionary! This past week I saw the hand of the Lord in the work in so many ways. I see miracles everyday. This past week I had a feeling to visit a member Sister Macapulay after one of our appointments fell through. We went to her house and it didn't take long to figure out that she has been having a lot of personal struggles. We were able to share a very spiritual message with her and when we were leaving she expressed her gratitude to us and told us that the Lord had sent us to her. Two days later we when to visit the Sister Macapulay again and we were able to teach her husband for the first time. We have been trying to teach him for months but this was the first time that he was wanted to listen. If we wouldn't have followed the promptings of the spirit to visit Sister Macapulay the first time we wouldn't have returned and been able to teach her husband. I know that the spirit prompted us and I am very grateful that we followed that prompting. Also right now we are teaching Johmer Diaz who was a former investigator. He is 19 and is really interested. He stop the lessons because he moved away for a couple months and the missionaries were transfered when he returned. This past week we taught a lesson to him , and everything we said was good but we didn't teach with the spirit and Johmer didn't understand our message. When we taught him again we asked questions, focused on his needs and the experience was completely different. I felt the spirit and I know he did too. This taught me how important the spirit is in teaching. Conversion won't take place without the spirit, no matter how beautiful or convincing your words are.

One thing that I have better learned on my misison is the importance of the family. Family is Central to God's plan for us. This past week I read Jacob chapters 2 and 3 in my personal study and It helped me understand the importance of finding and teaching Families. The Gospel blesses families is so many ways and in the world today there are so many forces in opposition to the family. Through the gospel people can find peace and happiness and strengthen their families. Our efforts in missionary work need to be centered on families.

Well the Work continues in Burgos. I attached a picture of a rather large spider in our appartment. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I love the Work and I LOVE the people here! I'm so grateful to me a missionary. I love you all.

Mahal Kita,

Love Elder Leishman