Elder Joseph Espiritu: Busy life, happy life

I remember once when I was at the MTC that while you're on the mission, the days are slow but the weeks are fast. I testify that that is true. As for this week it wasn't neccessarily long as in boring, it was long because we had so many things to do.

We're still very busy here in Allacapan carrying out all our duties and all of our work and such. But it's all enjoyable. We had another long trip to Laoag for a meeting, lots of splitting up for work, more exchanges, and teaching at a school!

Right after emailing Monday morning we hopped on a bus and headed to Laoag. It went fast, tried to sleep through most of it but that didn't really work, but we made it. The following day we had our Mission Leadership Council.

Like always it was a great meeting, we talked about seeking knowledge and divine light. It was physically (they always feed us breakfast and lunch) and spiritually filling. Afterwards we got on a bus at 8 and headed back. We got back to Allacapan around 12:30, but didn't get to the apartment until 1 since we had to carry 4 boxes of copies of the Book of Mormon in Tagalog, and someone's package. We are super happy since we finally got Tagalog copies after giving out English for several months, we're happy that we're able to give out the language that they can better understand (sometimes the Ilocano version is also too deep for them).

Those boxes were heavy though. Fun fact: for the most part Tagalog words are a lot longer than English. The English book of Mormon is a total of 531 pages. The Tagalog is 777. So yes, they're bigger.

Anyways as for other things that happened, on Thursday I went on companionship exchanges, and this time I went with Elder Dollano who is a Filipino from Quezon province. The work went well and we had a couple of other members work with us too. What I really like about Elder Dollano is how well he can connect with people. His strength is definitely making people laugh. He's really good at that, and I respect it. We had a great exchange and a lot of fun.

This week we have an exchanges with the District leader in Ballesteros, so that should be fun!

Whoever gets assigned to Allacapan branched is really blessed, because here the member missionary work is very strong. On Wednesday we went on splits, and even though almost all of our appointments fell through, we still had a couple of good lessons.

Every Sunday we also go on splits and I had 7 members come along with me. They're really helpful, all good at teaching, and fun to talk to. I'm starting to create some friendships here.

Another highlight of this week was on Friday morning we were given permission to teach at a school! It's a small private school and the head over the school is actually one of our investigators.

A couple weeks ago Elder Nichols and his last companion along with Elder Dollano and his last companion were able to teach the 8th grade class. It turned out to be very successful and we have a lot of progressing investigators because of it.

This time we were able to teach 10th grade. Although a little quiet, it was fun to teach them. They were all respectful and it was a cool experience. Hopefully we'll have some success from that. We're still contacting all of the ones we taught.

Church on Sunday was of course great. We were happy to see 6 of our investigators come to church. It's only half of what we had last week but we were still happy because almost all of our progressing investigators came. All of our investigators are awesome and if they're able to come next week we will probably have some baptisms here in Allacapan very soon.

The challenge for this coming Sunday is we have district conference in the neighboring town of Ballesteros, and it might be harder for them to come to church. We'll pray for the best!

Life continues to be busy but that's the way I like it. It's not boring. It can be tiring but it's all worth it.

God's work is still hastening and I'm glad to be a part of it. I know this church is true and I can't deny it. That's all for this week! Hope for another exciting week! Love you all!

Elder Espiritu

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