Day 320 Allen, Philippines Conferences galore!

We hardly had any work again this week, but it was super spiritual! Tons of conferences, trainings, etc. Love it. And I saw the Priesthood session of General Conference! Super powerful and inspiring! Probably my favorite session. We still watch General Conference on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, we went to Catarman to watch it on the big sceen (It was weird to see myself during the World Report thingy. . .), but Sunday we stayed with the ward to watch it on a tiny tv with failing speakers, haha. So i'd be grateful for a ensign sooner or later. :) The mission tour isn't til next week. :)

Soooo for everyone that's waiting for a letter, sorry there's no postage on this silly island. . . maybe next month??? (Sorry Jared, your birthday thing is going to be really late. Did Alex ever get his??) Also, turns out the typhoon hit the south part of the mission because it was mainly heading towards Mindanao, southern Philippines. But we still got plenty of rain. Hopefully the shelters people are living in in Tacloban are holding up ok. . .

For our Zone Training meeting, our ZLs trained from a talk by Ted Callister called Becoming a Consecrated Missionary. Awesome stuff. Go read it! Basically we discussed the difference between changing our nature versus merely our behavior. Do we wake up on time because our companion does or do we wake up on time regardless of our circumstances? Are we reverent in sacrament meeting because the leaders are presiding or because we want to feel the Spirit? They also talked about how we are not perfect, but that is no excuse for not striving to be perfect.

Also this week we traveled to the other side of Allen, to Calbayog for our combined Zone Conference with Catbalogan Zone. It was the first time we got to see people from another zone since we returned to our mission in February! We were sooooo excited to see old friends and companions--- I got to catch up a little bit with Sister Henshaw. :) (Also, Sister Zamora says thank you soooo much for writing her often. She really appreciates it, even if she sometimes doesn't respond. Please keep it up!)

Three kids/youth we have been teaching from part-member families were interview for baptism this week! They will be baptized this coming Saturday! I was hoping for an oceanside baptism, but Filipinos think it's cooler in the chapel. I'm really excited to see the changes in these youth, especially in Resabel. When we first started teaching her, it was hard for her to say much or read the BOM, but now she diligently reads and excitedly shares her insights and questions. Awesome to see youth getting exited about scripture study. ;)

I noticed for General Conference that one of the themes was being a light to the world. It is not enough for us to silently live our lives as members of the ONLY true church of Jesus Christ. We have too much happiness and truth to selfishly keep it to ourselves. We cannot be saved without helping our brothers and sisters---including our ancestors! We need to courage to boldly proclaim our faith and let our faith show, as we were urged by Russell M. Nelson. We hold in our hands the happiness of OTHERS, as said by Henry B. Eyring I also really loved how Neil L. Anderson said, "Families are the treasures of heaven!" I think my two favorite talks were by Dieter F. Uchtdorf and David A. Bednar. What were your thoughts about the conference?

Hope all is well! LOVE YOU GUYS! :D ;D :D Send me some pics ;)

This was P-Day with the zone. We had several activities and then ate Filipino style where we just put the food on banana leaves and ate with our hands.