4-30-17 Being humble means pleasing God

Magandang hapon po Family!

 Before I talk about our week I want to thank the Primary girls for their wonderful letters! A sister sent me some of them through email last week and I forgot to mention that. Thank you! Every little bit of support helps and keeps me going :) also nice haircut pretty girl! Herb's awesome. And happy birthday to Jeremias! :) 

 This computer also won't allow me to send pictures...sorry. We had a great week though! Elder Marquez continues to be such a great missionary and anak. He's super funny and kind of just keeps everyone alive and positive at home. He's a great teacher and is constantly asking how he can improve. It's funny, I kind of expected that the Lord would give me a hard companion to really test me in my last 2 cycles, but Elder Marquez so far has only been great. He's actually one of my favorite companions already. 

 On Tuesday we had a great Zone Conference in Ilagan. There were 2 main topics we discussed during the conference: Pride, and the Book of Mormon. We watched a General Conference talk called "Beware of Pride", written by Ezra Taft Benson but read by President Hinckley. It was such an inspiring message and something I needed to hear. I realized I still have so much pride and that I need to stop comparing myself with others so much. One of the bigger things that stood out to me was that being humble means pleasing God, and not man. I'm grateful that through this talk I can now be more aware of my pride and repent quickly and effectively.  I also loved talking about the Book of Mormon. Since I've been out here I have developed such a love for the Book of Mormon. It's so interesting! And there are so many lessons we can learn and apply to ourselves from each verse if we seek deep enough. The Zone Conference overall was a success and we applied many things we learned into our teaching immediately. 

 We're finding some golden people! On Saturday we met nanay Cauilan, whose daughter actually just came home from her mission a couple weeks ago. Apparently nanay was taught by missionaries in the past but never went to church yet. We taught her about prophets since that's one thing she remembered being taught but forgot why they're important. By the end she realized how important they are and we kind of guided that to the baptism invitation. She said that she was willing to follow the prophet, no matter how rough or uncomfortable it'd be, because she knows that by doing so she'd be following the Lord Himself. We invited her to be baptized and she accepted! And we were even more happy to see her in church yesterday with her daughter! Her daughter was also one of the sacrament speakers which was perfect. After church we worked around her house again and met another nanay. While speaking with this nanay, we noticed nanay Caulian coming through to go somewhere. Before continuing on she stopped by us and told this nanay that she should take lessons from us and they could go to church together next Sunday! We didn't even invite nanay Cauilan to return yet but she has it set that she will. How awesome is that!

 We met another golden person this morning. We visited a family for the second time who seem to be pretty interested and willing to act upon commitments. Brother, Julius, couldn't make it to church yesterday because of his leg, affected by diabetes. His daughter, Jalen, attended a funeral the night before and slept in yesterday morning. They'll try to go this week though and they also have accepted the invitation to be baptized on June 17! While teaching them one of their cousins, Mitzi, just walked over and sat down. She listened very intently and asked when we'd come back to teach. She said she wants to keep listening to us! When we gave the invitation to be baptized she gave the most certain "Yes" out of the three of them, almost as if she's been waiting for it. It was almost like that time in Roxas with Princess if you guys remember. She said she'll prepare herself to be baptized and will do all the things we invite her to do to know for herself that these things are true. It was such a cool thing! What's even more great is that their uncle is President Daggao, our Branch President. I'll keep you guys up to date with them.

 Everything is just going so well and Elder Marquez & I are growing and learning so much. Today was already great and I have a feeling the rest of this week will be very fruitful as well. Thank you guys for your continued support and prayers. Sorry again for not being able to send pictures, hopefully next week! 

 Mahal ko po kayo,

Elder Ishibashi