Great Blessings Pour Down

Elder Celebrado climbing up another hill.

Charity suffereth long and giveth his umbrella to his companion who does not have one.

 Balabag in the rain (for how low quality pictures my camera takes at least it's water proof.)

Coming down a very slippery hill (you can see our tracks) Looking up.

 Looking down at what we still need to descend.

Rain?? What rain??

The road (main highway technically) from Siwahon going back to Colonia.

Hello Family!

Wow, I didn't expect to get so many comments on the pictures of the fish I ate. I guess I'm just getting a little too adjusted here... have I ever mentioned dried fish? Probably not.

The Philippines I think gave me a new set a taste buds.

For this week I feel like all of the non progress we saw last week, we made it all up and then some. We've been blessed to have so many investigators start showing a lot more interest and start to keep commitments, and also we were able to hold a special sacrament in Siwahon, an area that is about an hour walk from Colonia, and had over 20 people attend who were not members of the church that we've taught, among which were 5 potential Melchizedek priesthood and 4 potential Aaronic priesthood. Also since that was the first special sacrament being held in that area, about half the branch came also to support and fellowship the investigators, all of them walking an hour plus there and then back to Colonia afterwards.

Now we have 5 investigators (brother and sister, friend of a recent convert, and two elderly ladies that are the sweetest ladies you'll ever meet) just from that area who are preparing to be baptized in August, with another 10 (3 complete families) that we've taught before that are starting to really show potential to progress now that they have attended a sacrament meeting and met a lot of members.

I'm just so excited for our area and I am half hoping that I will be able to stay here until the end just to be able to see it all come to fruition (and I say half because I know that if I fully hope then I will for sure be transferred... as such is the mission).

And now for story time! I want to tell you all about the two sweet ladies that I mentioned who are preparing to be baptized in August, Sister Lapid and Sister Hemera.

These two women are, again, the sweetest ladies that you'll ever meet, both of them being physically impaired, Sister Lapid having had a stroke and Sister Hemera having fairly developed arthritis in her ankles. They are sisters and live close to each other. We met Sister Lapid first when Elder Peralta and I were going through Siwahon looking for people to teach. We decided to just walk down the walk way their house was on and look for houses where we could give prayer meetings to (a kind of "tracting" you could call it) and as we walked by where Sister Lapid's house was we stopped and looked in the direction where her house was, being in the back a little behind a few houses, and both felt that we should go that way and look there.

We went down and found her in her house having just finished lunch and asked her if we could say a prayer for her home and give a short message, to which she responded very enthusiastically saying she was very willing, and that she had a child in another city in our mission who was also a member of the church.
And thus started the journey of conversion that would involve us meeting her sister, Sister Hemera, and teaching them on a regular basis for 2 months.

We knew right away that it would be hard for them to be baptized, since there was no way that they could make the hour plus walk to Colonia over hills and up the mountain to make it to church, but they were always so happy so see us and just absorbed everything that we taught them, even accepting to be baptized and living the commandments, so eventually I asked our branch president if we could have a special sacrament at their home for them, and also for all of our other investigators in that area, and the result was what I reported earlier in this letter.

There is a lot I could share about these two women and our experiences with them, but that would take way too long to write, so it sufficeth me to say that I believe that the faith and willingness of these two women have been some of the first seeds planted that will start to grow the Siwahon branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In other news, Elder Celebrado and I got completely soaked to the garments by typhoon rain two days in a row this week, the first time climbing up and down very muddy/slippery hills (pictures attached) for about an hour, the second at night coming home from Siwahon. Fun memories.

I hope you all are doing wonderful! And happy birthday to my favorite older sister Kristine! :) One year older and hopefully wiser too.
Save me some cake.

I love you all!

Stay firm in the faith.

~Elder Butler