Week 71

Hello Family!

Things are good, as usual, here on my side of the world.  This week sure seemed to fly by fast... it could be do to the fat that I always felt behind and any spare moment I had to myself I am fighting to keep my eyes open.  The city life is tons of fun, but so much more busy!  Then I have a couple more things I have to do every week as a district leader and I am fighting just to keep up.  I guess it is better than being bored, eh?  I have to laugh because whenever there is a storm or something in the Philippines I get all the emails checking if I was OK... but I never even know about it.  This week was probably the close I have come to having a natural disaster happen to me and no one knew about it.  In one area over from mine an electric fire started in the squatters region in Iloilo... took out over 300  houses and blazed for about 5 hrs in downtown.  Squatters are people who live on land they don't own because they are way poor.  It is a place tucked away in the city and due to the small alley ways no firetrucks could get to the fire in order to stop it.  With no way to stop it they just had to prevent it from spreading to other places.  It was far from where we live and I never saw the fire.. just the smoke.  Crazy, no?

My first full week as a district leader was fun.  I got a nice surprise right when we started our district meeting when Pres and Sis Pagaduan came and sat in... I was only a LITTLE nervous.  I got to choose what to teach so we talked about helping our investigators and members always be striving for lasting conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Both Pres and Sis said they really enjoyed it and I feel like it was not too shabby.  The lesson tomorrow is "Receiving Revelation through Church Attendance."  I am excited for this lesson because I feel like I have done an ample amount of research on this over the past couple weeks.  I think it will be a good lesson.  I don't now if President will be there again but I know the Zone Leaders will.  I feel well prepared and the first time teaching jitters are gone now. 

This week of work was pretty slow due to a big festival that happened in Iloilo called Dinagyang Festival.  It is Iloilo's version of the Ati-atihan that happens in the Aklan.  Lots of street dancing and tribal representation.  I didn't get to see any of it though.  It ended on Sunday and killed all chances of having investigators at church.  We still had two... but we were hoping for about six.  Ah well, good thing there is another Sunday this weekend.  We gave out some more baptismal dates and we are really trying to help them progress towards that goal.  I think the trend is to get the commitment and then do nothing to achieve it... so we are trying to correct that logic and get more people excited about changing their lives.  We had 5 people with dates in the middle of the week, but because they weren't at church we only ended the week with three.  We will follow up the others this week and try to get them back on track.  Work in the city is really quite fast paced and tough to keep on top of.  It requires alot more organization and concentration just because your teaching pools are substantially bigger than other areas I have been to.

I have been doing really good on my goal this year to read the Book of Mormon all the way through every month.  I am on Mormon and on track to finish before February rolls around... only to start right back up again.  It has been awesome for my teaching as I can usually use something I read in one or two of my lessons that day.  It definitely gives me more freedom on which scriptures to use just because I am more familiar with them.  I have also really enjoyed studying with Elder Faran.  He really is just a smart guy and has lots of insights.  I have really enjoyed this companionship with him so far.  He is a way cool guy!  

This week is looking to be a nice week of hard work.  I don't have anything extra to do except District meeting and I might go on some splits.  It looks like another nice week of eating, sleeping, and teaching! Thank you all for all the love and support you send my way every week.  It really does help alot to know I have a family and all my friends cheering me on at home.  I got to talk to my MTC companion Elder Christensen this morning and we were just talking about how quickly the time has gone by.  The sisters in our MTC district only have one more transfer left (after this one)... then they go home.  I'm not being trunky by the way... just accurate.  I really do feel like I am working harder than I ever have in the mission and now that the language is not an issue at all I can really focus on just getting missionary work done and as much of it as possible.  I feel like this is really my time to shine as one of the more senior missionaries in the mission.  Bring it on!

Halong kamo!

Elder Lowry