Elder Austin Russell Cook Philippines, Legazpi Mission 8-2016 thru 8-2018: This church is true, there's no simpler way to put it!

Hey kids, this week was pretty interesting!

So we've boiled down this area to the core, and we have learned the sad fact that we only have ONE investigator ready for baptism. She's great and 100% ready, but only one nonetheless, so we've gotta start changing something in the way we work.

So anyone who is familiar with the work knows that the best way to find investigators is through referrals from the members. Usually you would go visit the members, share a short message about the Restoration of the Gospel, and then ask who they know who could benefit from our message, and then BOOM you have a referral. Well our problem is this: We have about three active members in our area. All of the other members (which are many) live in the area of the other Elders in the ward, and we aren't allowed to cross area boundaries to visit those members, so we never get referrals! This means that all of our work comes from tracting... And we can see how effective that is, considering we've been straight tracting for 6 weeks and we only have one investigator that is progressing haha. But such is life.

We decided that if the only thing we can do to find is tracting, we must perfect the art of tracting. So we put together a little bundle kit type thing to give to people while we are tracting, or we just straight up give them a copy of the Restoration DVD so they can watch it on their own time. Our bundle kit that we hand out basically consists of "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," "The Living Christ," and a really cool pass along card with our names and information on it. Until thus far we still have yet to see anything great happen from it yet... But we won't give up easy, we will find those who are ready to receive the Gospel.

We also had this idea where we just bring a piano out to the park in Daraga and just sit me down in front of it to play. We don't really know much of a plan past that, but we think having a random white foreigner playing piano in a public place would attract a lot of attention, and maybe get some people to ask us what it is we are up to. At the very least we could just play some hymns in public as like a service thing that the people can enjoy.

Johnathan & his sister Lannie (our only investigator).
Lannie has a scar on her face because she got
in gnarly accident on her motorcycle a month ago

That's pretty much it for our finding ideas though. Our investigator, on the other hand, is doing great! Lannie used to be scared to death of the Mormons, and now she really likes church and reads the Book of Mormon every day, and she's super excited for her baptism on May 5. She even came to a service project that the ward did last Saturday, so she really is getting involved with the church!

Elder Faka'osi and I are doing great! He's really cool and has a great desire to improve the work in the area. Overall, although our numbers are low here, we are happy!

This church is true, there's no simpler way to put it! We tell people about our message so many times in one day (and get rejected every single time) but we can't get tired of it. This is the Lord's work, so we just do efficiently and effectively.