Elder Joseph Espiritu: Chastising and Patience

You know, one thing that can be a great learning experience is being chastised, especially by a general authority of the church. But don't worry, it was to the whole mission, and it wasn't too bad. Just a reminder of the little things that count! Which can also count towards gaining patience!

So like I said last week we had this thing called a mission tour. Elder Yranon and I traveled to Claveria first from Laoag on Friday, and found ourselves back in Laoag Tuesday night. That Wednesday morning, we were privileged to hear from Elder Bowen, who is one of the Area Presidency of the Philippines. It was of course a great meeting, but it did have a little bit of chastising.

The chastising was about obedience. I was expecting that he would chastise about a lot of big disobedient things but he focused on 2 basic things of obedience: Arising at 6:30 and planning every day. He asked all of us who has followed these 2 things every day for the past month without fail. It was interesting to see that only a few raised their hands.

It shows that sometimes we don't really think that not doing the simple things make a difference. Then Elder Bowen told us that they do, and we are actually sinning. The definition of sinning that he gave is knowingly doing something wrong. Therefore waking up at 6:45 knowing you need to wake up at 6:30 is sinning. It did hit me and several of us on how much the little things count.

So now my invitation for you is to think about all the little things that we don't think much of, but I promise you that they make a difference! We always need to pay attention to all the commandments or rules to follow, not just the bigger ones. It was a good chastisement, and I know that was a way to help us improve.

So now we go to Elder Yranon and I's first full week as a companionship. I'll be straight up it wasn't the best week, but we were still hardworking. Of course our work and progression will be a little slower due to Elder Yranon being new, and all of the people that were progressing have been baptized now, so we are basically starting again from scratch.

Our main focus was finding. It is nice that Elder Yranon speaks Tagalog and Ilocano so he doesn't have to worry about the language barrier, but he is still learning how to just talk to people and build a relationship. The finding actually went pretty well and we did help out one another.

The biggest challenge for me this week was our last appointment on Sunday. We have been teaching 3 really young kids, one 12 year old boy, one 12 and 13 year old girl. It was definitely a test to my patience. They are all really nice, but the problem is they are all extremely shy. When I say shy I mean it takes about 5 minutes to pry a yes or no out of them, and the whole time they just look at the ground.

It tested my patience a lot just cause I felt like it was going nowhere. Though I don't know what will happen next week, I know it will definitely take a lot of time for them to come out of their shell. The one boy Mike I have been talking to since I got here in March and he is still very shy. I just did my best to understand and I know they are really young. I don't know what will happen in the future, but maybe some day they'll open up!

Sometimes we are like this in our lives, as in bundled up in a shell and afraid to come out. It may take some time for others to really open up to anything, and some fast. But we just need to be patient with each other, because we are all not the same. All we can do is reach out with love and never lose hope, even though it may take a very long time, there is always hope for everyone!

The challenge I have for all that are reading is do your best to always reach out with love, and hope for the best, even when it seems all is lost! You're never too far off the path to come back!

Elder Espiritu

**you can email Elder Espiritu at joseph.espiritu@myldsmail.net