Conference with Elder Hayne of the 70

Last week was great! On Tuesday we traveled to get to a Conference with Elder Hayne of the 70, and it was really a great conference! He talked about the gathering of scattered Israel, and how it is our job and calling as missionaries to find this "scattered Israel." As of now, he said, our mission is doing a pretty bad job at finding, but he gave us some great ways to find the elect in each of our areas. One of the problems that this mission is having is that all of the missionaries are wasting a lot of time teaching people that will NEVER progress, and we are just trying to force them to change. Elder Hayne made the point that, "when you find scattered Israel, everything is easy." Meaning that they accept all of our invitations to read the book of mormon, go to church, and to be baptized, because they were already prepared before we even met them. He told us that simply FINDING these types of people is the hardest part, so we need to commit ourselves to finding through the members of the church and finding through referrals.

To be honest, if you're not a member of this church, the above paragraph probably made ABSOLUTELY no sense, and even if you ARE a member, it's probably confusing, but hey, I'm just giving updates on what I'm learning. Elder Del Pilar is really getting stronger desires to be obedient and work hard all day, and for that I am very proud of him. He has changed so drastically in just these past two months that I've been companions with him, and I really look up to him for that. We got home from the conference really ready to go out and start finding those who are prepared to receive us, but literally that whole day was just met with pure rejection. We actually thought it was really funny because we were SO pumped from the conference and had such a fire in our hearts to just get out and teach everyone, but we just fell HARD on our faces. But we aren't even a little discouraged, we are working just the same and will continue to work just the same until our last day.

Saturday there was a huge tropical storm that came through our island of Masbate, so we were kind of on lockdown that night and weren't allowed to leave our apartments. There were a lot of areas that flooded, but everyone was safe for the most part, nothing to dramatic happened. Oh and I'm sorry because I actually got some really good pictures this last week, but I LEFT MY SD CARD AT THE APARTMENT AGAIN. Oh well, ya'll will get those next week. But until then, take care and have a merry Christmas!!