Elder Joseph Espiritu: The Gospel Never Stops Blessing Lives!

A couple of fun and interesting things have happened to me this week! Lots of good things though!

First of all, our zone is basically brand new. we got 5 new Elders and 4 new Sisters in our zone. 2 of them are Americans who are just a cycle ahead of us. The new zone leader is a Filipino, born and raised in Manilla until 11, then he moved to California. He is fluent in both languages. Pretty nice for me. Speaking of the language, it's coming along. Sometimes it's harder to understand the different accents here though but I've gotten used to the fact that I am still new.

I've seen some new and weird things this week. I watched my first cockfight! A group of guys were holding two chickens and just let them fight. It didn't last long, but it was sure entertaining.

Another thing that I never thought would happen: We were teaching a new investigator named Jhirley Tacuboy. She is the sister of Jhong (sadly we haven't been able to teach him for a couple weeks. :( ) He had a lot of questions about the church and I was listening to Elder Daclag because I didn't have the vocabulary or enough understanding to answer her. Then it got worse. I got very distracted.

I looked in the corner and saw a big black thing with 6 legs. Turns out it was a crab. It was just chilling in the house with us. I tried to focus but I got distracted a lot by the crab. I figured out though that crabs can walk crazy fast when they feel scared. It's really loud when they scurry too if they are on concrete or tile. Eventually it left the house and I was able to focus more. We get to keep teaching Jhirley, and hopefully we can get her and Jhong to come to church.

Since my Companion is still the district leader, I have an exchange once a week. This time I got to go to the area of Buguey. I actually really like the area. Parts of it are actually what I thought the Philippines would look like, such as lots of palm trees, just dirt roads and bamboo houses. The missionary apartment is right next to the ocean, except the inside of the apartment is less than glamourous. The people there are still way nice. A problem though, lots of them are pure Ilocano. I'm still figuring out Tagalog so that was rough. The day and a half I was in Buguey my Tagalog wasn't very good. Didn't know why, but just wasn't as decent as usual.

I got to teach in English for the first time ever here. Elder Solis and I were teaching an investigator who was 14 and her 92 and 5 month Lola was there too. To our surprise, she told us to speak up because she wanted to hear the message from the messengers of the Lord. Even more surprisingly, she spoke complete English. So I taught my part in English. It was really funny to see the girls in the room too, they had their fingers next to their noses the whole time.

When Filipinos hear English and don't understand it, they call it "nosebleed". We finished the message and the 14 year old agreed to be baptized. I was so happy for her, but sad because it wasn't my area. We ended up teaching a ton more people that day. Elder Solis definitely works hard. The next day we found 5 new investigators just in the morning.

Every third Sunday the missionaries get to talk in Sacrament meeting, and I went first. It's difficult to talk in complete Tagalog, so I went Taglish but mostly English. It ended up going well. I just hope they understood it all!

The 2nd hour the missionaries teach to recent converts and investigators. We had 2 in that class and 1 of our recent converts. We taught about baptism. I am so excited, both of our investigators have baptisimal dates and 1 will be baptized this Saturday! Her name is Nanay Genoveva Patotoy and she's 75. She has been investigating the church for a long time. Finally she decided to set a date for it!

It was fun to hear the topic of baptism during the whole lesson. At the end, the recent converts and missionaries testified about baptism. It was really cool to share and hear everyone’s testimony about it. I felt the Spirit so strong, especially when our recent convert Sister Janeth bore her's. She has really grown and opened up to us.

I say this a lot but I know it is true. The Gospel can change lives. It has definitely changed mine and continues to help me grow. I hope that the Gospel can bless everyone’s life that comes into contact with it! Hope everyone has had a good week!

-Elder Espiritu

Raja (our investigator) Churra and Camille Pajarilo (daughters of Nanay Pajarilo (our relief society president)

Elder Anderson and I at a food court in Gonzaga (he just transferred into our zone)

I spent 35 minutes to try to get Celestine (My relief society president's granddaughter and sister of Aicram) to smile, and that was the best I could get.