Elder Joseph Espiritu: Birthdays and Such

Well I'm a little disappointed in myself because I freaked out when I held the spider and it crawled up my arm, but hey, my areas still great, and the members were really nice to me last Saturday and Sunday!So we're not sure what or how it happened, but lately we have seen a lot of bigger spiders in our apartment, but we mostly ignore them, because they help by eating all the cockroaches.

On Tuesday we saw a pretty big one (about the size of your thumb and index finger extended) and my companion likes holding them. I'm usually not scared of spiders but the bigger ones kind of intimidate me. The other 3 started holding it and playing around so I decided I needed to too. Slightly nervous, I let it crawl onto my hand, and I lasted about 8 seconds. It was calm when it was on everyone else, but as soon as it was on me it reacted a lot faster and suddenly started crawling up my arm. So I swatted it off. But hey, I still held it, and for now we continue to find big spiders around our apartment and play around with them.

As for the work, it's still great and fun. The slight problem we have started to face is that several of our appointments have to be 5:30 PM or later, because most of them are school kids. We have to start going to switch off appointments so we're working that out! It's amazing to see how smart and willing to learn teenagers are ranging from 12 and up.

We have some other adults we teach too but they also have work in the afternoon so we're working that out! It's still going great and it's always fun to teach.

One really cool "ah ha" moment we had was when we were teaching a nice lady Sister Nelia and her daughter! As we were teaching about the Restoration of the Gospel we came to the subject of the Apostasy. We used the example of the Gospel as a big picture of Christ. When Christ returned to Heavenly Father and the Apostles were killed, the picture of Christ was shattered. So many good people took pieces of the picture and tried to duplicate it but no one could.

When we taught that, Sister Nelia had an "ah ha" moment, and told us she finally understands why there are many churches! We then invited them to read and pray about it, and this week we will track their progress!

So fun little fact this last Saturday was my birthday, (just for the record 19 doesn't feel any different from 18 yet haha) and all I had planned for my birthday was just to have another normal day of work! So for my "birthday cake" I got a little cake bar (similar to a twinkie) and lit an candle, and that's all I had planned for my birthday. We headed to work, and it was pretty good work. We taught a lot of smart students and then in the afternoon visited a couple of other families!

Turns out 3 of my favorite families (the Diza, the Pedronan - Sister Florida is a recent convert - and the Delos Santos family) planned to have a little party with food and such! I was a little surprised because we also were attending a baptism later around 5.

So after the baptism (which was amazing and the Spirit felt when a little 9 year old was baptized was great and very powerful) we returned and they had some food and made a little card and a key chain ship with a bigger ship for me! I really love those families and it was great to feel like I had a family here on my birthday.

I had another surprise on Sunday too. After church I was really hungry and we had a couple of meetings and were told to wait for another meeting. Suddenly they told us the other meeting was canceled and I didn't think anything of it. When we got home I noticed that our front gate was unlocked and was really confused why. Then I saw a little platter of food and a cake-ish thing with a poster was inside, and suddenly lots of our good member friends here came out and surprised me. I was really thankful and it was great to feel support from the people I've come to love!

So that was my adventure for this week, and next week hopefully will be just as fun! I mean it won't be my birthday again for awhile but we're just going to continue in the work of the Lord, and hopefully we'll keep finding more people to teach and helping people find the gospel of Jesus Christ!

I love the mission with all the ups and the downs and I love the people here! Thanks for everyone else who supports me too back at home and I really appreciate it all! Till next week!

Elder Espiritu

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