Someone who gets it

 It was a super busy and fast week this week.  I have really enjoyed it though.  We were able to get two baptisms.  One was for the mother of the four girls that we baptized in November and another was a golden investigator that we met about 6 weeks ago.  Elder Ramos baptized both of them and I confirmed both of them.   

     We had a good lesson on Tuesday with a new investigator.  When we told her about the promise of the Book of Mormon she said "WOW!"  I thought "Finally, someone who gets it! Why doesn't everyone think our message is that amazing?".  The bad thing is she is moving to Puerto Princessa and her family doesn't want her to change religions so we can't really continue with her.

     We also had interviews with the mission president which was good.  There was also pizza.

     This week we also had some adventures.  Last Sunday a lady came up to us in church and asked us if we could bless her father who is sick.  They live in Panitian which is still in our area but far away.  We finally found time to go there on Thursday because this week has been so busy.  I was really hoping that the guy wouldn't be dead by then.  We got to Panitian and started asking around where these people live.  We thought we found out where they live which would take another trike drive.  We found someone to take us.  It ended up being the wrong place but the scenery was great.  We drove on a windy road through miles of rice fields and lots of mountains around us.  When we returned to Panitian we found the lady and her father.  He wasn't really sick at all so we didn't need to give him a blessing.  After all that we returned to Quezon.  Even though it was a waste of time I really enjoyed it.

     Saturday we went to Narra to watch a worldwide missionary broadcast and there are a lot of changes.  (James will be jealous)  The amount of studying we do has been changed and the schedule has also been changed.  We can now do our studies, lunch, and dinner whenever we want.  This will be great because our area is dead at 7:00 pm so we can return to the apartment then and eat dinner and do studies instead of having our nightly walk around Quezon.

   

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Love, Elder Harkness

Most areas in the mission aren't as successful as ours is.  Usually there are only about three or four investigators at church.  Our area is very unusual right now but I don't really know why.  I think one of the challenges is that many of the men here are either fishermen and have to work on Sunday or are trike drivers and work all day.  It also can seem like the only good investigators are women.  Out of the ten baptisms we have had in the area 9 of them were women. 

     We have mission conferences every three weeks but sometimes we also have interviews and bigger conferences.  We either go to Narra 1 hour away or Puerto Princessa (for the bigger ones) three hours away.  We will have a new mission president in June I think.  I don't hear really any news at all and the government probably isn't stable but I don't really know.  The worth of their currency has gone down a lot over the last ten years.  

     I think a good peronal success is just the language and feeling the spirit more.  The baptisms are just luck and working.