OK, here is a miracle where I learned to trust Heavenly Father more.

From letters to Dad....

January 15, 2017

This week was kind of confusing, we didn't get to work that much because of zone stuff, so only one person went to church when we were expecting like 20, but we saw so many miracles it was crazy.  Here is just one then I'll spread the other ones around the family and you can have mom spy on my account and you can read them all.

We were walking in this part of our area called green revolution and our appointment fell through.  All of the sudden we felt that we needed to go to Saging St., which is like a 30 min walk away.  So we went and when we got there, we just talked to the first guy we saw.  He was this old guy named Ben, he's 75.  He said that he was taught 7 years ago and was about to get baptized but his house burnt down and they moved before it could happen.  But he still has a Book of Mormon and reads it consistently.  While we were teaching him, he said that he knows that we knew each other in the life before this one.  It was crazy but cool!

I have been talking to my kabahay (roommate), Elder McCauley, and he and his dad go hunting all over the world and mount all the cool stuff in their basement, we need to do that.  I decided that is going to one of my hobbies now.

I love you dad, start preparing our trips, or I guess I can just learn in the mountains, but we are starting right when I get back, and I need a 30 ot 6.

January 22, 2017

This week was pretty awesome.  We had the last zone meeting before they turn into all zone conferences, and we also had interviews with President.  Last night was really fun though.  We met this guy on a tricycle and he invited us to come and share.  When we got there, it was him, his 4 daughters and his like uncle I think.  Right after we said the prayer, we found out that he was a Jehovah's Witness guy and they started to throw tons of Bible verses and questions at us.  We wrecked them and then we able to share our message about Joseph Smith and the Restoration.  You could see it in the guy's face that he was feeling the Spirit, but trying to reject it, I felt it.  It was awesome.  At the end, the uncle admitted that he has been searching for the true God his whole life, and he hasn't been able to find Him and he hopes this is it.  They invited us over on Tuesday as well and he is going to bring his pastor friends who "want to listen".  We are going to show them the Restoration movie so they don't just fight us the whole time, and watch the Spirit do His job.

It was really funny to me that a 19 and a 20 year old from another country can make a 45 and a 60 year old who study the Bible a lot, listen.  Our priesthood authority is real haha.  

Nikki looks cool, could she come hunting?

Letters to Mom....

January 15,2017

There's still a lot of stuff we have to fix haha, we had like 4 days when we only worked like 1-2 hrs this week because of zone stuff, but it is fun.  I'm going to send you a miracle OK?

OK, here is a miracle where I learned to trust Heavenly Father more.  We had 1 and a half hours to work so I planned out this awesome day and I thought everything would go perfect.  Then, all of my plans fell through and we had 30 mins left, so we said a prayer and talked to the first person we saw.  We ended up getting into a house with 7 families in it and 32 people.  The two leaders of the compound (the old grandpa and grandma)  had been taught by missionaries before.  They said that the grandpa has a disease and we are going to heal him once his faith is strong.  It was cool.

I love you mom!

January 22,2017

haha that's way cool!  I love you, thanks for the picture!  That's an awesome thing to be chosen for!  I wish we would have read before my mission hahahaha.  I love the Book of Mormon.  I'm almost through the Old Testament, but it's kind of hard sometimes haha.

I would love that food now (I made Korean spicy pork).  I'm actually learning how to cook Filipino food right now, I'm making sinigang later.  Elder Erwin is super good at cooking from what he learned in college and he actually convinced me that it's cool, so I'm going to get good.  

We found a guy from Oakland, CA the other day.  He's Filipino, but he grew up there so he likes English better, so I said the First Vision in English for the first time in my mission haha.  He actually lived near the temple and really wants to learn what it's about it was cool!

This is the last Monday before the new schedule drops so next Monday and until the end of my mission, we are going to do awesome stuff and visit awesome places instead of just sleep (on their Pday) !  I'm excited!

Well I love you mom!

Catching up...

Letters to Dad....

12/25/16

Here's a cool thing that happened this week.  We went far away from our area to teach our last appointment which is an investigator right next to our house.  She wasn't there and it was 9:01 which meant that we were late unless we could teach one more lesson.  There was no one around, so we just taught our member worker, Henry.  We asked him how his Book of Mormon reading was and he said that he hadn't read in 2 years.  We got him a new book and started with verse one.  "I Nephi, having been born of goodly parents"  He told us that his dad died a couple of years ago and his life has been hard ever since because he is the only member in his family.  Elder Cortez and I started to cry.  We talked about baptisms for the dead and the truth of the restoration, how he actually could see his father again, and be with him.  As we ended the lesson, and Henry went home, I realized how grateful I am, to be born in a family of faith, in a time where the gospel has been restored, just like my patriarchal blessing states.  I know that it's all true.  

1/1/17

It was a ton better than last one (New Year's) !  We had to be more obedient this year so we didn't stay up until 12, but we ate special spaghetti on the roof with jelly bellys.  I heard you fell off the ski lift haha.  That's a great talk thanks!  

Everything is super crazy in the zone right now.  Since all the crap that happened last week, 15 out of the 20 missionaries in the zone were transferred, including my comp and all the district leaders, so I am the only leader that's not new to the zone.  Tomorrow we will hold a special meeting to help everyone out and get on their feet cuz there are a lot of fresh starts too.  My new companion is awesome and believes in miracles like me so we are going to accomplish great things.  

One cool thing that happened this week was with an oym named Oscar.  He is 75 and we oymed him on Thursday and left him a Book of Mormon.  He's kind of hilarious, he said that for the last 20 yrs he has been searching for what happened to the lineage of Joseph of Egypt.  It is really important to him for some reason.  We told him that the people in the Book of Mormon are that lineage and when we returned the next day, he had read 153 pages and was in 2 nephi 28! He's probably done by now, we'll go back tomorrow.

I kind of hate all the changes cuz there is a lot to do, but I also love it cuz I feel like I'm growing.

1/8/17

Thanks dad, this email is awesome!  I will remember that, for this week, I pretty much just wrote funny things (in his journal).  Elder Erwin and I have a plan to try to rent a pedicab every day so we can save money, and it'll be cool with us driving.  It's like a tricycle but with a bicycle instead of a motorcycle.  We are meeting a ton of new families to teach but crazy things are happening so they can't go to church.  One of them had both of their parents stabbed in the head with knives so she couldn't go.  

I love our church, I love that it doesn't just make sense spiritually, but also logically.  Other preachers and stuff always try to "confound us in our words" but nothing they say makes sense and they always contradict themselves haha.  We just got back from St. Lukes for my eye and our taxi driver was a born again minister.  He was quoting all of these scriptures and yelling and trying to prove his points by force, even though all he was trying to prove was doctrine from the Nicene Creed which he thinks is in the Bible.  We just bore our testimonies of the Book of Mormon and he stopped yelling.  He still wouldn't take one though.  I often think of how lucky I am that I was born in the church.

I also think about the warnings in my patriarchal blessing about listening to those voices and how they could break my faith.  One of our recent converts baptized on Christmas apparently just came across some anti Mormon stuff on the computer and is super confused.  We'll try to fix it later tonight.

That's awesome about Wyatt haha!  

But then sometimes the Spirit does speak to the pastors like this one we are teaching his family and he is the head of this other born again church.  He started bashing a little bit and then by the end of the lesson he was reading the Book of Mormon and asking us to come back.  I think if he gets baptized, his whole church would follow cuz he's like their prophet haha.

Well that's all random stuff, but it's kind of has the same theme haha.  I love being a missionary right now and this is probably the funnest part of my mission so far.  I love you guys.

Our "White Christmas"

Letters to Mom....

1/1/17

haha mom you are the best!  that wall is amazing!  I love you.  Thanks for the money haha, but I'm just gonna try to save it, if I can.  My new companion is awesome!  It's fun having two Americans.  I bet you were a great YW president, Thanks for always being the best mom in the world, I don't feel like you take any less care of me now than you did when I was at home haha

My stomach is fine now.  We are teaching a lot of new people, it's kind of hard to keep track of anything, so today we are going to make a huge study room with cool stuff all over the walls.  I had a funny thing happen.  One of our newer investigators gave me a gift cuz she said that I was the only nice American she had ever met.  It was a bar of special whitening soap.  Tell Shelby that we always are in one ward, here it's different, there are 6 missionaries in like 1 ward haha, but we have 3 wards under our stewardship.

That's all I can think of mom cuz my brain is kind of busy thinking of ways we can fix the zone, but please send me the way the Hill family found the church, salamat.

Mahal ko po kayo nay

Elder Zesiger

1/8/17

We found a cool new family that lives right across the street from us.  The husband is a less active member and really wants to go back to church and get his wife and his kid baptized.  We can help with that!  The wife actually oymed us and payed for our trike coming home.  They've lived across the street from missionaries for many years now and they are just now being taught.