4-2-17 I love that we have a living prophet today

Kumusta po Family!

 Thank you for your emails! I love seeing how the family is doing, although I feel horrible that Kala'i's in such good shape haha. Good motivation though to keep finding time to exercise. Funny how things turn out, now Kala'i's my motivation to get fit haha. Hali'a is so pretty! Lehia is still good at everything. U'i them sent pics and videos as well and I'm so happy to see my nephew and niece doing well too. This past week I had a couple days where I just felt down for some reason. I felt like I wasn't making much progress in my teaching skills, felt that there wasn't enough time to accomplish all the responsibilities I have and the other side things that I enjoy doing, etc. I thought of ways to get out of that depression and remembered Herbert's invitation to me a long time ago to make a "blessings list". I've done it once but forgot about it quickly. This past week I started a new one and obviously put my family at the top of the list. I then wrote small bullet points that I admire about each person in our family. Through that I realized that I have so many blessings it's ridiculous. And then I just had to laugh that of all the problems I could be having, I allow myself to get down for not being able to read the scriptures as often as I'd like to. I realized that I complain to the Lord for such little things when I should be thanking Him for the countless blessings that I already have. Thank you guys for being such blessings to me. 

 How was General Conference? I'm super excited for it this coming weekend! I love that we have a living prophet today who can communicate with our Heavenly Father and tell us exactly what He wants us to know at this specific time. What a blessing to know that God still speaks with His children today! 

 Elder Doctolero and I are doing super super well. I continue to learn so much from him. We had a cool experience this past week where I saw how powerful Elder Doctolero really is. On Thursday we got crazy punted and didn't get to teach one person we planned to teach that day. We decided to improvise and use some time to go contacting and then work in a different area. While contacting we entered a small compound of houses that we've only passed by in the past. Outside one of the houses we found a man, brother Noli, just sitting in his chair. We greeted him and asked him some questions but he wouldn't answer us. We tried to introduce ourselves but he completely ignored us and pretended that no one was there. I gave up pretty quickly and was ready to move on to the next house, but Elder Doctolero stayed and kept trying. After just a couple more tries, he responded to Elder. He then answered our questions and we got to get to know him a bit. He's entered a few churches in the past but eventually returned to the one he grew up in. He hasn't tried entering the "Mormon" church yet though. He allowed us to share (and put a shirt on before we did which I thought was nice and respectful) and we got to teach him about our beliefs and the restored gospel. At the end he was hesitant to pray out-loud when we invited him to give the closing prayer, but after some explaining he did it and gave a great prayer. It was perfect too since this past week our District Meeting was on prayer and getting investigators to give prayers. About 75% of the people here aren't comfortable praying out-loud. But Noli did great. We're going to visit him later on today which I'm excited for. This experience taught me that I still have a lot to work on when it comes to being humble and patient. And it showed me that Elder Doctolero has a gift in bringing people to open up.

 Alright we're on our way out. But thank you again for your emails! And thank you dad for sharing your goals for the boys. I'm excited to help you out with that when I get home.  

 I love you guys!

Elder Ishibashi