March 17, 2010

Hey Mom.


What a week. Elder Arbado is gone. He got emergency transferred to Negros Island in Dumaguete Zone to go and rescue two missionaries. So now I have a new companion Elder Nambio who before I met him I heard everything bad about him. So when I met him I decided to look for all the good that there was to find. Pretty great guy. Loves to work hard--which is all I ask for. We tracted a lot yesterday. Its great. He gets SO excited to see clusters of houses and then asks "can we go tract over there?" So we got lots done yesterday. He's a little quiter than Arbado so I've had to use a different side of my personality with him. Interesting.

Interesting story. So we have this investigator Maya that seems really interested in the gospel. We've only taught her twice. So yesterday we're with a ward missionary Rene. He lives behind them. Now, we start to walk up to the house of Maya and he grabs my shoulder and tells me that he'll go first. So I'm like...sure if you want. So he walks up to the gate and yells "AYO!!" (which is like knocking). Mayas neice comes out and sees Rene and instantly she's scared. I can see it on her face. Rene asks if Maya is home and after the girl thinks for a second she says no. So another ward missionary with us turns to me and whispers "I think she's lying". I agreed. But it was weird. Why would Maya have her lie to us if she was so interested before?

So I tell the girl that we'll be back on Friday and then we head out. As we're walking away, Rene grabs my shoulder and tells me "If you come back on Friday and they aren't home, drop them. Don't go back"

So I got thinking as we were walking. Why would Rene say that? Why was the girl scared? Why would she lie to us? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?

Then my lawyer/detective mind started turning and I had a thought. Rene lives relatively close to Maya. Like, they're houses almost touch each other. Back to back. The girl looked like she knew Rene. And she looked like she didnt like him that much either. His comments and desire to go FIRST all started to piece together the puzzle of the situation. So I pulled the other ward missionary aside and explained to him that I thought that Rene's family and Maya's family may not be so friendly to each other (and here in the Philippines if you don't like someone, you really dont like them). So I think that they werent too friendly to each other and Rene would either not like Maya to investigate or just didnt want to teach over there. So I had Romel- our other ward missionary go talk to him. Turns out, the families dont like each other and Rene doesnt want her to go to the same Church as him. So we sent Rene home and went back.

This time Maya was home. (Go figure). We started the lesson about the Book of Mormon when I remembered that last time we had only GIVEN her the Book of Mormon. No reading assignment. But she had all these post it notes sticking out of it. So I asked her what they were. Holy crap...

Turns out that she was really interested in it. She didnt know where to start so she read the Restoration pamphlet over again. But this time, she looked up EVERY scripture in both the Book of Mormon and Bible. She realized that if she didnt recognize the scripture, it was probably in the Book of Mormon. I was so excited I almost cried. Elder Nambio was in shock. Romel was whispering to himself, "Oh my gosh! Yes! Yes!" She was like, "this book is really great! Its got a lot of good things in it." So we continued our lesson.

Pretty cool huh? What if I hadn't listened to the Spirit that told me something was up with Rene? What if we hadnt gone back? What if we had brought Rene with us? I'm just glad that the Lord prepares a way for everything and everyone. Cool thing.

Alright mom, we're going to go do go karts for our district activity. Yeah!!!!

Love you,

Brandon.