January 15, 2012

Hi Family -
I am doing good. So, church was good, we had 4 investigators there. 3 strong investigators and a newer one. Sundays are busy, our church is from 1:30-4:30. We have studies in the morning then PEC at 12. Before church we go encourage our investigators to come. We leave church at 5ish. Then we go teach two or three people and then go eat somewhere.

Last Friday we had an area meeting. We got to hear from President Teh, Elder Ardern and Elder Nielson. It was really good. The whole entire Philippines is now focusing on the less actives. Do you remember Jacob 5? The tree where the branches overcome the roots. Yes, that is the Philippines. We currently have 22% of our members attending. Our attendance stays about the same but we are good at baptizing. We need to make our branches stronger and get our members back to church. Once that happens wonders will happen in the Philippines. We need more active priesthood holders, adult members with temple recommends, more active young single adults, and more full tithe payers. One cool goal that was set is that every member should bring one person back this year. That would be awesome.

Our branch has a nice building. We share it with another branch. For priesthood we meet in a room that is too small. We have maybe 30-40 priesthood holders. 10 of them are young men. We always have 70-80 people, at least, to sacrament meeting. The members that come are awesome.

I thought I would tell you about our investigators:
Beverly Siapoc - Her conversion was helped because we had some awesome lessons with members. She is getting married on Feb. 14th and then she will be baptized on the 15th. She knows most of the lessons and tries hard to do what we teach. She is reading. She needs to continue to come to church. Her husband is busy with work so we haven't been able to teach him. They have 3 kids.
Latycia Danao - She is the mom. She is getting married to her husband on the 14th as well. She will be baptizd on the 15th. Her daughter Eddielyn, who is 15, is also progressing well. They come to church often. Again, the dad isn't interested in listening. Yesterday we built them two walls because the ones that were up before were made of whatever...and they were afraid of thieves breaking in and stealing stuff.
Ramos - Rejonan is 12 and he is awesome. He has come to church many times. We are trying to keep him reading. The mom hasn't come to church for a while. She is the reason Rejonan isn't baptized yet. The Dad asks lots of questions. We need to work on the whole family coming out to church.
Mary Ann - She is a neighbor of a less active. She is a good investigator. She has a baptismal date for February 11. We taught her the plan of salvation. She has come to church once. We are trying to get her to read the Book of Mormon, which shouldn't be too hard. We teach the lessons at the less actives house and are trying to get them all committed to coming to church.
Almarez Family - They were referred to us by a member. They have many challenges but we are working with them. The mom and dad are trying everything to keep the family together.

San Gabriel is a beautiful place. There is the main road then little streets that come off of it. Many of the streets drop down off the hill, they drop down into the valley and then go back up on the other side. Some days we have lots of hills to go up and down, but it is good. The members here feed us and help us teach. It is a lot less hot here than in the city.

This week is busy. Interviews with President Stucki on Friday and taking investigators to the temple on Saturday. Anyway, Love you lots, Elder Woolf