Paalam Goodbye

President and Sister Dahle

Happy Monday po,

This week was nice, we had our last zone conference with President and Sister Dahle, they go home in 7 days! It was a great zone conference. We sang "God be with you til we meet again" for the closing hymn and everyone stood up. Everyone was crying!! I'm going to miss them so much.

President Dahle came to our branch in San Narciso for his last Sunday in the mission and gave a great talk. He used the word "conviviality" which I actually just looked up and it pretty much means "friendliness". President has the biggest vocabulary, I almost have to take a dictionary to our interviews. Anyways he talked about one of the Elders that gave him so much grief in the mission, and how he had to pray for charity to not send him home. He said "There were times when I just wanted to punch that Elder! And I hope to meet up with him again, share stories and deliver one good last blow." It was hard to hold in the laughter after he said that.The Elder he was talking about served here in San Narciso and all the members loved him. He wasn't the most obedient Elder though. President Dahle said right when he was about to send him home, he had the revelation to send him to San Narciso. President said "Elder, San Narciso needs a party. Go throw them a party." So the Elder came here and organized a fiesta in the town square, there were over 500 people there and 3 mayors in attendance from surrounding towns. President Dahle said "even though that Elder was disobedient and a headache to me, he put his talents to work. And look at the outcome!" President then talked about us needing to use our talents if we want to make this branch grow.

Update on our investigator Carolina (the one that had the awesome story about knowing the book of Mormon is true): We went by her house on Friday and we saw her smoking a cigarette, so that was pretty disappointing. She said she didn't have any more problems with the Word of Wisdom, and I didn't think she had or ever would smoke in her life. So we're going to have to help her overcome this. It's sad when you have to push baptismal dates back when you thought they were so ready to be baptized.

We visited families all day on Saturday inviting them to church, but no one showed up. We didn't have a single investigator at church, not even our awesome investigator Hendrix that comes every week! At least Nanay Lolita was there :)

We sang the EFY medley of "sisters in Zion" and "Army of Helamen" yesterday in sacrament meeting and it was awesome! Not gonna lie I almost passed out trying to hit the high notes. (we didn't really have enough sisters).

One of the recent converts that we had never met here called us yesterday asking if we could come visit him. So we went to his house to see how he was doing. He said his dad died a week ago, he lost his job and his girlfriend left him. I felt pretty bad for him. We talked about the "iron rod" and how the "mists of darkness" are like the trials in his life right now. We taught him that God gives us trials so that we can grow, and come closer to him. We invited him to start reading the book of Mormon again, come back to church, and pray.

Well I hope you all have a great week! I can't believe I hit 11 months in the mission tomorrow! Time flies like lightning when you're serving the Lord!

Ingat po kayo palagi!

Elder Furniss
Ps. we had a boodle fight at our branch President's house.​

Another successful revolution around that glorious ball of hydrogen

D&C 6:33
Fear not to do good, my sons, for whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap; therefore, if ye sow good ye shall also reap good for your reward.

I had a good week this week. Today is my birthday and it is also "ang araw ng kalayaan" (independence day). I guess I really am a true Filipino!

We cleaned up a good chunk of Nanay Lolita's yard, but it started down pouring so we had to go home. Her yard looks a lot better though. It's going to be really hard to leave her!

We also found a really awesome family! The Pagunsan family. They were super kind and are very receptive. We taught them the restoration, when we asked if they had any questions, they asked if members in our church had to pay tithing. They didn't quite understand tithing, so we gave them a brief overview of it, and we are going back this week to clear things up. They are a great family!

I hope you all had a good week! Thank you for all your prayers. You are great!

Nanay Lolita

All Good in the Philippines

This week was good, our investigators Nick and Novi finally came to church for the first time, and we've been teaching them since March! It was honestly a miracle. We showed up to their door at 8:30 am to remind them to come to church, we were sure that it would be a failed attempt and that there was no possible way that they would come to church with us but when we knocked, they opened the door and were all dressed up in church clothes! I couldn't believe it! Their daughter looked so cute in her dress and shoes, I wish I could have taken a picture. After sacrament meeting I asked how they liked the meeting and the sister said "We'll be back next week." I was so happy for them!

There is an old man in our branch named Brother Bactad and he is great! He has lived in California for the past 16 years working at Walmart. He has had a ton of health issues throughout his life; such as having to get open heart surgery, eye surgery, and now he has prostate cancer. He originally came back to the Philippines just for a vacation and to visit and was only planning to be here for a month, but his health is so bad that his wife and son had to fly back to California without him while he resolves some more of his medical issues out here and gets healthy enough to fly back. So last week Elder Hall and I were walking out in La Paz where he lives. We both thought "ya know what, let's go see how Brother Bactad is doing." We can clearly see now that it was the Spirit guiding us to him. We went and visited him and just listened to him tell us about his life stories. I saw countless bottles of prescription medication on his table that had such high dosages, I couldn't believe how his body could take that kind of treatment. He told us that he was in a lot of pain. I could tell that it obviously hurt to walk. He said the blood can't really circulate throughout his body and especially his legs. His ankles were so swollen! He asked if we could give him a blessing, and we did. The Spirit was so strong as Elder Hall and I laid our hands on his head and gave him a blessing of healing and comfort. The next day at church, Brother Bactad was outside the gate. We went down and helped him walk up the stairs to the chapel. Then to our surprise, Brother Bactad got up and bore his testimony and said how thankful he was for all the blessings and help that he has received from the members. Yesterday and this week were just full of blessings.

We also helped Nanay Lolita clean up her yard that is full of weeds. We weren't able to get all of it done, but we did quite a bit. We're going back this Wednesday to finish and to build her a rail for her stairs down to her house. Her house is so steep and it is way dangerous that she doesn't have a hand rail there! I honestly don't know how she climbs up and down that. She's like a little monkey :) I also asked her what her favorite soft drinks are (that's what we call soda or pop in the pines) and she said it's RC cola, so I told her we would bring her some soft drinks. Man I love Nanay Lolita!

Well thank you all for your love and support. Keep following the commandments and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and everything else will work out.

Elder Furniss