12/27/2009

Dear Family,

Well it was great to get to talk to all of you finally and to talk to you about my mission and what has been happening to me and what has been going on at home. I can’t believe that this year has pretty much just come and gone especially the last 5 months! I can’t put it into words what its like to be teaching the gospel, to people I don’t know, in a language that I don’t quite understand. It's simply amazing. Some lessons I worry about what I will say and if I'm even saying it right. Then there are lessons where I have no idea what I even said and my companion tells me that I don’t teach what I know about the gospel, I let the spirit do it. Well if that’s true I don’t know, but I do know now, and will never forget how important the spirit is in our lives. We have a guide, a compass, a friend, and most of all something that we are always conscious about. As a missionary it’s a lot easier to feel when the spirit is in the lesson or if its not, and if its not there is no point in teaching. That’s something that our mission president really stresses to us, is that we have the spirit. So I'm always on the look out for if I have it or not. It's very easy to lose that spirit here. There are so many distractions and things that can take away from the work, but I do my best to stay focused, and the lord makes up for the rest. So this morning I washed a ton of clothes that my finger's actually started to bleed. But soon it will turn into a caulis… I hope lol. So then we went up to our church and the ward was having a sports fest with the youth so I played some basketball, and some table tennis, and then we went and ate at a calinderia which is just a place where you go and choose a ulam for your rice( a topping like chicken) and then you go sit down and eat. I had the chicken curry which is really good! Then we came back to our area and I got a haircut, and now I'm emailing, later we are going to go teach an investigator and then contact a referral, so hopefully we will get a new investigator tonight. Speaking of new investigators there is a few Americans that live here and we ran into one that lives in our area and I started talking to him and he and his wife are from Boston. He told us to come over to his house around Christmas time so we went over last night and got talking about the Philippines and the states. His wife is a Filipino, but is from Boston, I told him that I have a friend serving there and he said that he lives about 40 miles away. I cant remember the name of the city but its close to Boston. Then we talked about his life in the military! He was a general for the Air Force and is about to retire form some school board. He comes and goes but he is planning on moving here for good. So then I asked what his religious background was and what he believed about god. He believes that our heavenly father, Jesus Christ, and the holy ghost are three separate beings and that he is a Lutheran. I shared a little bit about the first lesson and asked if we could come back. He said that would be great and that he wanted a book of Mormon for here. He mentioned that he had one in the states and that he reads it from time to time, so we will go back to him sometime and see if we can get him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, I hope that he will. I feel like he has some potential so we will see. So it wasn’t me trying to call on Christmas, it might have been our land lord who was trying to call, I don’t know what he would want to call for but who knows. So that’s my week and it was great. We had some fun this week and it was a lot better this week then last so I hope that it will get better and better. So it sounds like you all had a great Christmas and that it was fun for Peyton! What did everyone get?? I hope that your not getting to cold over there and your all being safe! I love you all!!! I can’t wait till mothers day! (When is that by the way ha ha) I love you again. Send some pics of Christmas in the next email if you could! :)

Love,
Elder Mulliner