Elder Turley's Missionary Blog: Week 2 Transfer 2

So this week has been a wonderfully amazingly humbling week for me. So I have only been here in the Philippines for two months in 4 days. Which is insane but that means that I have been out pretty close to 4 months which doesn't even feel like it. But the MTC was really slow compared to time now. I don't even know where time is going but that's fine.

So this week we had Zone Meeting on Tuesday and my Zone Leaders taught us and I learned a lot. We focused a lot on the apostasy and teaching it and really letting our investigators understand why it was so bad and to be a little bold about it but loving at the same time. But anyways, towards the end of our training we did EDPER's and one of our AP's companionship were there (Elder De Vera and Elder Wilstead). The had someone come to their mind while doing an EDPER and shared it with us. I thought it was really cool and definitely something that I have never thought about. Because of the Apostasy there was no authority left on the Earth from Heavenly father through Jesus Christ when all of the Apostles died. Therefore all of the Churches left on the Earth during the Apostasy were false. They taught mostly true Doctrine but they had not the authority. That is where Joseph Smith comes in and the story of the Restoration and why I am here today. But anyways the thing the AP's shared was; out of all the churches and people in the world, The Church of Jesus Christ is the ONLY people who truly actually testify about their Church that they know it is true. That hit me so hard. I was just like wow, that's true. I have never heard anyone else from another Church testify about their Church that they truly know that it is true.

The next day we had followup training for everyone in my MTC batch so we went to Bacolod. It was nice. We were able to go on splits with the other set of AP's and I went with Elder Burton. I learned so much just from that night of splits. Because it was the city of Bacolod that meant we could teach in the Church building and also peoples houses aren't so loud because no Roosters or Carabao and there weren't a ton of littles kids running around screaming. I could feel the spirit so strong in all of the lessons and Elder Burton and I both taught each other a lot. At my followup training, President Lopez really focused on Obedience. For my batch I guess the language is really going along really hard for everyone else and they are still struggling. I am so humbled and blessed. All I'm trying to do right now is not to have pride. I have been working so hard in language and even just that I can't take credit for. I know that the Lord has blessed me so much in speaking the language. Through so much pleading with Heavenly Father in prayer for help in the language I know that he has blessed me so abundantly.

For this Sunday we had the most members that we have had in a while, and Priesthood too, I might add! Anyways its been a crazy week with traveling and being humbled and blessed. I'm so happy that I have had all of these experiences. Everything I experience on my mission I try to take and turn into a lesson and growing experience. I hope that all of you have an amazing week and remember that if you plead with the Lord sincerely and humbly for anything that you truly "need" in your life, he will grant it.

I don't have many pictures this week because I was so busy.

A spider in a members house. It was scary huge!