Feb 5 Wow a Crazy Week!

Dear Friends and Family,

This past week flew by. It was a very busy and successful week.

This past week we had a zone leader/ District leader conference with President and Sister Martino. They talked about the importance of the temple in our purpose as missionary work. It was a wonderful reminder to be a what this is really about. It's not about baptism, or just coming back to church. It's about covenants, especially those we make in Temples. We are really trying to get individuals and more importantly families to the temple. Families can be together forever. I love my family and am thankful for them more every single day.

Speaking of Families, we have a less-active family that we have been working with for over 4 months now. We have slowly been coming back to church one by one and yesterday they finally attended church as a family! It filled me with joy as I saw them sitting i the church together as a family. The thing that really made the difference for them was us teaching about the importance of the temples and eternal families. Their youngest son (Marcelino) is an 11 year old part member who will be baptized this upcoming Feb. 18. Marcelino is awesome and is so excited to be baptized, he is even more excited about one day going to the temple with his family. Vivian and Brian will be baptized on February 18th as well. Yesterday while we were teaching them Vivian talked about all the changes and blesses that have happened in her life since she started to listen to us, keep the word of wisdom, read the Book of Mormon and attend church. She talked about how she feels peace, happiness and feels better about life. Because of the Holy Ghost and by the Gospel she knows that this is the true church. What a joy. The worth of every soul is great in the sight of God. God loves and knows all his children. I know this is true because of I have seen how personal God is with his children.

This past week we helped Elder Tating and his companion move houses and the assistants helped us because they have a pick up truck. One of the assistants is Elder Pioquinto. It was so fun to spend a couple hours with some of my old companions who I love so much. Moving the house was a task but we had a great time doing it. You wouldn't believe the way we packed that truck Dad would have even been impressed!

This week we have a mission tour with Elder Teh, the area president here in the Philippines. I am so excited for the spiritual feast it will be. One important thing I have learned is that everyday can be a spiritual feast as we study the scriptures, pray to our Father in Heaven and follow the promptings of the spirit. We don't have to have an apostle speaking in front of us to have great spiritual learning... our course I won't complain if I do have the opportunity to listen to an apostle.

I have attached two pictures. One is of the son of less-active member we have been working with. p.s. make sure you read the words on the Basketball he is holding! I couldn't stop laughing when I saw it! The other picture is of a csp we did with our district. We cleaned up the property around a new meeting house for a new group and had a good time with all the tools we had to do it.

I love this work! I love being missionary!

Fight the Good Fight of Faith

MTC Week 2

Preface by mamalar:
I am amused watching Joe's spelling decline as he focuses on Tagolog. Will it ever come back? doubtful..... thank goodness for word processing.


I have to say that the second week at the mtc has definately been better than the first. The first week wasn't bad, but once you get into the flow of things they days fly by, you have fun, and class is a little easier. I'll take you through my week at the mtc: Monday is P day and what a wonderful day it is. The first thing we do is go to the temple for the 7 or 7:20 am session. I am so glad we get to start our p day off with the temple. It's amazing being in the temple with 30 or 40 missionaries in a session. After the temple we come back and do laundry. The laundry room if quite the happening place. When you show up you hope that there is an empty machine for you. There are computers in the laundry room so while we wait, we get to check and write our email. After we're done with laundry we go back to our residence hall to study and to write letters. After dinner we go back to class and p day is over. Tuesday-Saturday are about the same every day just with times mixed up. Every day we have two 2-3 hour classes, an hour of personal study, an hour of companionship study, and hour or two of MDT (missionary directed time), an hour of MDLS (missionary directed language study) and an hour of gym. The best way to describe gym time is glorified recess! (sorry if recess is spelled wrong... the lack of spell check is cleary shown in my writing) During gym time you can play vollyball, 4 square, basketball, run of hte track or lift weights on machines. My personal favorite activity is vollyball. We have a lot of Tongan and Samoan missionaries going to the Philippines and they are incredible at vollyball and not going to lie, I've got a mean jump serve! Tuesday is the only day that is a little different. We have a tuesday night devotional. The Tuesday night devotional is a big deal at hte mtc. Missionaries start lining up an hour early to get a good seat just in case an apostle is speaking. My zone was at the front of the line this past week and when they opened the doors I was reminded of disneyland at opening time. Missionaries literally run (despite the usher's efforts to keep elder's at a walking pace) to get seats in the front. The devotionals and firesides here are incredible. The spirit is incredibly strong while the speaker's speak but especially while we sing. Sunday's are probablly my favorite day of the week. We have personal study before breakfast, and then we have priesthood meeting. Following priesthood meeting we have district meeting and lunch. After lunch we have sacrament meeting. Our sacrament meeting is just for our branch of 3 districts of 31 missionaries. During our sacrament meeting we pray in Tagalog, sing hymns in Tagalog and 2 lucky Elder's or Sisters get to give a short talk in tagalog. We don't find out who is speaking untill the branch president announces it at the beginning of the meeting! Because of this every missinoary prepares a talk every week. After sacrament we have study time and then a fireside. Sunday's really are amazing.

I don't have very much time but I would ilke to share a quick story with you. Elder Tomasi and I taught the first lesson all the way through for the first time on monday. Despite lack of experience and Elder Tomasi's poor English the spirit was so strong while we taught. I felt guided by the holy ghost as we taught and tesified. I have never felt this way before. I could tell the two sister's we were teaching felt the spirit too. It was amazing! It taught me that you don't have to be perfect in your words, but if you have a prayer in your heart, are worthy of hte holy ghost and are in unity with your companion the spirit can be the true teacher.


Mahal Kita
Elder Leishman