This week was probably the craziest of my whole mission.

Letter to Shelby....

We were teaching one of our families about the temple.  His wife died last year and they have 4 kids.  As we shared about it, the oldest one, who is 12, asked if it would help her see her mom again, We promised that it would and that families really were forever.  The spirit was really strong and as we were testifying, the clear thought came into my head "she is here".  Elder Cortez said that he felt their mom's presence too.  It was awesome!

Letter to Mom...

I asked him if his mission was still hard.

Ya it's hard a lot of the time, probably 99 percent of the time, but the 1 percent more than makes up for it many, many times over.  I'm grateful for every hard thing that I have made it through, I feel that I have changed a lot and i can't really imagine what my life would be like if I didn't leave home.  I love you so much for helping my get here.  I know that this church is true.  I know that I can make a difference in the world now and not just get rich for my self like my plans were before I left haha.  I love you mom.  I already said a lot to dad but we found some cool new families this week.  They all have a lot of kids, so we have like 40 people in our teaching pool right now and they are all awesome!

Letter to Dad....

Hey dad, I'll pray for bishop.  This was actually a crazy week for me also, probably the craziest of my whole mission.  We were able to teach 47 lessons, find 4 new families and have 12 people at church, we are leading the mission again, but everything changed when we found out that one of progressing investigators, Den Den Mordido was murdered.  He disappeared on Tuesday and they found his body with two gun shots in the head on Sunday.  We went to his funeral and comforted his 18 year old wife, Lea, with her two kids, one 2 and the other 2 months old.  It was crazy to see his body, I really wanted to use the priesthood to raise him from the dead.  So I grabbed Elder Cortez and we went and prayed about it and both of us felt that that would be the wrong thing to do.  I did not know why, but the feeling was very clear.

They were supposed to be baptized on December 17.  We are going to do everything we can to get Lea baptized and get Den Den's work done in the temple.  It's really weird to think that I talked to him last Sunday at church and then I just saw him in a coffin...

Everyone else in our area is doing good and we are seeing immense amounts of miracles.  I know that this is the Lord's work dad, I know that this church is true more than I know anything else and I know that Heavenly Father has his plans for each of us.  Sometimes it's just hard to reconcile with those plans.  I am starting to love the scriptures a lot.

Any advice haha?  This email was supposed to be awesome cuz other than den den, this was easily my best week ever.

I love you Dad

This was the most tiring week of my life!

Letter to Dad....

November 6, 2016
This was the most tiring week of my entire life haha.  Since we had mission leadership council and interviews with president and St Luke' s (hospital for his eye), we had to wake up pretty early for a lot of days hahaha.  But I'm still alive.  My interview with President was the best interview of my life.  We discussed a lot of stuff and he thanked me because he said that he has noticed that wherever I am "the work blossoms"  it was cool.  When I got to this area, it had averaged about 2 progressing investigators for the last long time and the mission average is about 2.6 haha.  We average about 11 right now.  But I think that Heavenly Father noticed that I needed to be humbled, so on Sunday, for the second time in my mission, no one came to church, so we are now at 0 hahaha.  But we will get it back up to 15 this week, you can follow up with me on that.  It's amazing to me how Heavenly Father has been sending us a new family of like 5-10 almost every week. I asked President why and he just said that I have been blessed with a missionary personality that people flock to, and it is a special gift from Heavenly Father.  You can see why I needed to be humbled.

Elder Zesiger and Elder Cortez

I discovered one of my weaknesses is that I cannot handle being micro managed.  President said that this is his weakness too and it stems from his childhood.  So I looked back into mine and I think that it comes from working on stuff with you haha.  I would always ask a ton of questions and you would just tell me to figure it out for myself, so now when people tell me every single detail, I get kind of bugged haha.

At the end of the interview, I asked him why I am here in Las Piñas.  He told me that my job is to do exactly what I am doing right now.  Set the area on fire and then inspire the whole zone by increasing their love for God.  We've got work to do!

November 13, 2016

I met this guy on Sunday in our ward, I started talking to him cuz I saw he was wearing a Mont Blanc pen and a gold Rolex president watch.  It was sick.Over the last little while, I've started to believe the false doctrine that expensive watches aren't that cool.  But seeing that brought back the truth that they are awesome, I've been wearing fake watches for too long haha.

That's crazy about Bishop, but I saw an amazing miracle this week that shows there's hope.  Like I might have said before a sister from Santa Mesa moved into Elder Fawson's area at the same time that I got transferred here.  On Saturday, I went on exchanges in his area and taught her.  I was super surprised when she said that her cancer is gone!  Earlier this week, she had gone to the hospital and they said that it disappeared.  Back in August, I gave her a blessing that she would be healed and be able to raise a family in the church, I felt really strongly about it, but was kind of discouraged that I was wrong because the doctors came back and said that she only had less than two years to live.  That was the last time I saw her.  About a week ago, she asked Elder Fawson for a blessing too and he said about the same words.  It made me think as I know that the blessing really has nothing to do with me or Fawson, and I know that more than one blessing for the same illness makes no difference, so I thought, why did Heavenly Father wait until the second blessing to heal her.  As I thought about it I realized that He delayed the effect of the blessing until she had the faith sufficient enough to be healed.  It was really cool though to witness like a Christ level healing!

We are still seeing a ton of blessings in the area and it's super fun!

I love you dad! 

Letter to Mom....

November 6, 2016

The new area is great! We are teaching about 5 progressing families!  It also has the best ward in the mission for missionary work. It is called the Las Piñas 1st ward, we eat good.  No we still do not have toilet paper, haha that's not just a Santa Mesa thing, that's a whole Philippines thing!:) hahaha

The baptism went great.  CJ's family, the Menil family, which is my favorite, were so happy because now that he is baptized, their whole family is complete.  It was a cool feeling.  The font also over flowed a little bit before the baptism so the speakers were all standing in a little puddle,  it was a super fun experience haha.

I was feeling kind of bad about Cheska before she was baptized because i didn't feel like I really had that big of a part in her conversion, like I just kind of showed up...  But a couple of days before the baptism, we were teaching her and we asked her when and how she really knew that this church was true.  She said that she had had doubts for a long time but when she read Mosiah 2 and prayed about it, she knew that it was all true.  On my first time there, I had been praying that I could give her a passage in the Book of Mormon that would speak to her, I prayed really hard and I gave her Mosiah 2.  It was a cool tender mercy from Heavenly Father to make me feel good.:)

I'll get some pictures of this new family that we got and their house.  As another tender mercy, Heavenly Father gave me a little bit of Palawan in our area.  They are the Aliñio family and they have 10 kids.  To get to their house, you go through this tunnel and then it opens up to this jungle, with just dirt ground and little houses made of wood and metal sheets.  There are chickens and ducks and dogs, and cats, and goats that run around and there is even a cool pond that I fell into up to my shins with about 30 naked kids swimming in it.  It is awesome!

I love you mom, thanks for being the best mission mom ever. :)

Elder Zesiger

November 13, 2016

I've read that talk, it's cool!  Happy Birthday!  I'm sorry that i didn't send a present, I decided that I'm just going to send them at Christmas probably.  I love you mom and I am so so so grateful for you and all that you do for me:)

My story for this week hopefully will make you laugh.  One of my greatest weaknesses still is that I am directionally challenged.  On Thursday, I had to lead an exchange in our area and even though I've been walking in it now every day I still don't have it memorized. (Oh no! sweet child of mine just started playing in the computer lab, I don't know if I can resist singing!) focus focus focus.... any way.  I prayed a lot for Heavenly Father's help so I wouldn't look like an incompetent leader haha and so that we could teach our people.  We saw so many miracles as I would get lost, we would immediately see a member or an investigator and they would show us the way and we were still able to teach about 10 lessons and then 11 people came to church:)  I love Heavenly Father haha and it probably totally looked like I knew where I was going haha!

Mom I love you and I'm so grateful that you were always at home with me, even when I was not supposed to be there haha.  I'm so grateful for you always making me amazing food, and always keeping the fridge full.  Here, i just eat eggs and bread and ramen noodles, but I still imagine your food when I'm really hungry.  (this song has the sickest guitar solo!)  Thank you for teaching me all that I know about the gospel.  Just so you know, I love reading now.  I have read the Book of Mormon almost 4 times and the rest of the standard works one each, and I'm on my second time through the missionary library and Jesus the Christ.  I love you so much mom and I hope that you had an amazing birthday.

Elder Zesiger

Part of a letter to Shelby....

My story for you this week was when I came very close to death.  We were in a computer lab, collecting numbers to report and all of the sudden, I really, really, really needed to go to the bathroom.  I started to search and the lab had a bathroom luckily.  There was no light, so I brought in a flashlight,  it was full of mosquitoes and spiders and there was no top part to the toilet, so I just had to squat there.  When I was done, I looked for some water to use cuz that's how you go to the bathroom here and all I found was a plastic barrel with about 2 inches of water in it.  I checked it out with my flash light and discovered that it was full of old paint chips and dead bugs.  I sat there for awhile and saw no other choice.  When I was done, I tried to find some soap and all that was in there was an empty little packet of laundry detergent.  I shook it and got out about 6 little grains and used that and the bug water to wash my hands haha.

Be grateful for America!