The Book of Mormons...

Hello friends and family!

     It has been a wonderful week in the Philippines! We are seeing miracles occur with our people, I'm finally not totally clueless with what people are saying to me, the sun is shining, and our Nanay (very friendly landlady) gave us ice cream last night! What could be better?! I guess there have been challenges too...but I'm excited for the way things are progressing, and looking forward to things to come. (Especially if there's more ice cream involved. :)

     One of our investigators, Marianne, has been meeting with missionaries for some time now. For the past several weeks, she has been kind of skeptical of the whole message of the Restoration of the Gospel. She's a very intelligent woman and has many beliefs shaped by her past experiences. However, she (thankfully) been reading the "Book of the Mormons" (her words, not mine) and praying about it too. After weeks of meeting and wondering if she would progress, she finally received a strong witness through the Spirit that the book is true! What a miracle! Despite her many doubts and skepticism, the Holy Ghost softened her heart, and she sincerely wants to come unto Christ. This resulted in her attending church yesterday with us, and the ward members were amazingly inviting and friendly towards her. Hooray! Hopefully she will continue to learn and keep commitments so she can receive the blessings of baptism.

     Of course, I'd heard many stories like the one above before, but up until this point in my mission, I had never had anything even close to that happen with one of my own people. It was a firm testimony to me that the promise in the Book of Mormon is true: anyone who reads and prays with faith, desiring to sincerely know will have the truth confirmed. Elder Garcia and I had another similar experience a few days ago as we taught a Sister named Shiena. After explaining Joseph Smith's First Vision to her, she told us she was quite skeptical of the whole story. We agreed that it was kind of a wild story, but we then shared both of our testimonies with her, and Shiena responded by saying that she felt like someone was holding her comfortingly. 8I Not what we were expecting to hear, but definitely what we had been hoping to hear the 50 other times we had taught the same basic lesson and shared our testimonies. Proof once again the the Spirit is real and that people prepared to receive the Restored Gospel do exist!

     I am so grateful for these miracles, and the many others that occur regularly. Even if it seems sometimes like heaven is closed and God is far from us, my testimony is that He is ever watchful over us and will bless us greatly if we are  faithful to Him. Persistence in doing what is right always calls down blessings from above. The Lord is with those who are trying to follow Him. 

     Many thanks for all that each of you has done for me! I hope that your coming week is wonderful, marvelous, and full of many tasty things (which I will just have to dream about eating in roughly 19 months :P). Take care!

Love, Elder Dickison

1) Elder Garcia and Elder Dickison taking a selfie break in heaven

2) The proper appearance of a properly organized missionary desk

3) A gigantic gap where there should be a bridge

4) The backup bridge. :)

I had better be a Filippino by the end of this month...

Dear Family and Friends,

     Maraming salamat for all of your prayers, good wishes, letters, friendship, etc.! Your kindness and love makes an enormous difference to me, and I am so grateful for each one of you! I am looking forward to being able to visit with each one of you again in the (relatively) near future. 

     This week has been filled with much change and lots of opportunities to grow in patience! I received a new companion, Elder Garcia. He's a native Filippino from Taytay who has been out on his mission only 6 weeks longer than I have. :) Despite our relatively small combined pool of mission experience, I am grateful for him and our companionship. Thankfully he speaks Tagalog natively, and is also a very adept teacher as well. With the absence of Elder Anderson, my previous companion, I am now the only foreigner in our apartment, and the only one who doesn't natively speak Tagalog. Needless to say I listen to a lot of Tagalog every day. :P And even though much of it is still incomprehensible to me, at least this way I should become a full fledged Fililppino much faster. (Except for the fact that I'm a giant white person of course. :)

     We were finally able to listen to General Conference this past weekend, which was a wonderful, spiritual experience. I was so grateful to have the Spirit of the Lord whisper to me that all the announced changes are indeed the will of God for His kingdom. I am looking forward with great anticipation to the implementation of the announcements and the blessings that will surely follow. The Lord is surely setting our course straight and providing us with better tools to withstand the countless traps and deceptions of the devil.

     After multiple messages about receiving greater blessings after great trials, I had an opportunity to experience that very thing yesterday. We had an appointment with a very promising person very far from our home. We were originally planning to take a tricycle out to this Sister, but discovered that all the tricycle drivers to her area had decided to go home for the day (maybe because it was dark, rainy, and kind of gloomy :P). So despite the distance, we decided to walk. After thirty minutes of walking, the rain turned into a downpour, and I seriously considered turning back, knowing that there was still a long walk and a very muddy ditch between us and our appointment. But, I decided to continue forwards anyways (probably to Elder Garcia's slight chagrin). After 45 more minutes of dodging puddles and cars sending up splash waves, we made it to the muddy ditch and discovered that it was very wet, very muddy and we really needed rainboots to have any hope of crossing without turning into swamp creatures. Again, I really considered just turning back. We were both tired, muddy and soaked, and really seemingly in no state to teach a lesson at all. But (now perhaps to both of our chagrin), we decided to cross anyways. After much slipping, some sinking and much scrambling, we finally arrived at the Sister's home. Hoping that our faith hadn't been in vain, we knocked on the door, and were invited in. Though the subsequent lesson wasn't perfect, I felt more at peace with my Tagalog than I have at any other time. I was able to communicate using words I had barely studied, remember phrases from the Provo MTC and actually understand everything that was said. Probably for the first time in my entire mission. I was (and am) so grateful for the blessings that the Lord grants us because of our diligence in spite of difficulty. Truly that are great blessings to be received and peace to be found, no matter how dark, wet or gloomy our days become.

     Many thanks again for your love and friendship! Please take care and I will look forward to communicating again next week.! Ingat kayong lahat!

Love, Elder Dickison

That thy faith may grow stronger...

Dear Family and Friends,

     This has been a week somehow seemed to go by really fast and really slow simultaneously. We've had some really awesome things happen, and some not so easy ones too. After Elder Anderson being sick and wiped out almost all of last week, we were finally able to make it back to Agoo late Monday night. When we made it back to our apartment, Elder Anderson went straight to bed, while I decided to brush my teeth and put a few things away. Within about two minutes, Elder Anderson was suddenly yelling and jumping around like a crazy person. After all that had happened the week before, I actually thought he was loosing his mind... Okay, maybe not, but I was a little confused. I turned all of the lights on and discovered a very large, angry black beetle in E. Anderson's bed, hissing at us both. Things are never boring here.

     We were able to visit the Eisma family again on this week, and we discovered that their mother had made a surprise visit from her work in Hong Kong. This was a great opportunity for us to try and get her to talk to her husband, so that we can get permission to baptize the Eisma kids. After our visit, the mother said she would talk to him, so we're hopeful that a miracle will occur and we will be able to move forward with these kids.

     Again, we've had a lot of appointments fall through this week (I'm sure this is going to be a very long term problem here...), so we weren't able to make as much progress with our people as I would have liked, but oh well. I guess that's missionary work sometimes. 

     We also got transfer news yesterday, and found out that Elder Anderson is leaving this area to become a zone leader elsewhere! So I will be getting a new companion in my area, and be expected to lead the area. YIKES! Can't say I feel even slightly ready for that. My grasp on the language, culture, people, geography, etc. is improving daily, but I still feel inadequate as far as leading anything here is concerned. I guess it will just be one interesting opportunity for me to grow my faith under somewhat crazy circumstances. Sometimes I suppose we are put into hard positions in order to force us to grow and expand, even if we feel very uncomfortable about it. I'm still not sure who my next companion will be, but I'm looking forward to getting to meet him. Hopefully, together we can help the people in our area to come closer to Jesus Christ. That's the most important thing.

     I'm really excited to listen to General Conference this upcoming week here in the Philippines! Hopefully all of you in the USA have enjoyed watching it already! (Please, no spoilers. :P) Please take care, and I'll look forward to writing again next week!

Love, Elder Dickison

Pictures:

1) I was able to baptize one of the Sister's investigators this past Saturday! What an awesome experience!

2) Elder Anderson slowly loosing his mind, stuck in a hospital room for days on end.

3) The very angry, very large beetle.

May Sakit? Bakit?

Dear Friends and Family,

     I so hope that your past week has been wonderful! Please know that I pray for you daily and wish you the very best in what you are doing. I miss getting to interact with each of you, but I am grateful to be here in the Philippines as well, and I am looking forward to being able to visit again in the future.

     Unfortunately, I don't have much excitement to share about this past week, because it's been a little bit slow. After emailing last Monday, Elder Anderson and I had a lesson with one of the families we are teaching, and they insisted (despite our many protests) that we eat dinner with them. We tried our best to talk our way out of it, since they are quite poor and need the food they have, but I guess we failed. The following Tuesday morning, Elder Anderson woke up quite sick. He tried really hard to get ready to go out to work, but it just wasn't realistic. He could barely walk two steps before he had to stop, grimacing at the pain in his stomach. So, we gave him a blessing and decided to let him rest. 

     On Wednesday, his condition worsened, and we went to the local hospital in Agoo...which isn't really a hospital at all. Or at least not by American standards. They ran a couple of tests, and then came back and told Elder Anderson that he was definitely sick, but they had no idea why. Not the most useful hospital trip in history. :P The doctor there prescribed him some medication, but it didn't seem to have any effect. Thursday, we tried to go out to work again, but Elder Anderson was still just too sick to have a prayer of functioning normally.

     Finally, we were scheduled on Friday to travel to San Fernando City (a larger city than Agoo) for a training meeting, and we decided to go to the larger, much better hospital there after the meeting. We were able to get Elder Anderson to the doctor, and they decided it was best to admit him into the hospital. Definitely not what we were planning on. So, while the doctors were putting an IV in my companion, I was trying to fill out Filipino paperwork based on instructions given to me in Tagalog...It was a bit messy.

    Eventually, one of our AP's (Assistant to the mission President) arrived and became my temporary companion. He was familiar with my area in Agoo, having served in that area previously himself, so we drove back down to Agoo, and did normal missionary work for the first time during the entire week. Despite all the previous setbacks, I was so grateful to work with Elder Villapaz (the AP). He's a great missionary, and he had a couple very helpful suggestions on how to improve my teaching skills and our work in our area as a whole. So even though this week has been really weird and frustrating for me at times, good has certainly come of it.

      During my many hours of no work this week, I sometimes started getting frustrated that we couldn't go out and do normal, good missionary things. The appointments we had almost all didn't happen (due to us this time :P) and it felt like our area was regressing instead of progressing. All this, despite Elder Anderson and I doing our best to fulfill our duties as missionaries. It almost felt like being the Prophet Joseph Smith, confined in Liberty Jail when his only crime was trying to do good. However, as I remembered the Lord's reassurance to Joseph Smith, "all these things shall be for thy good", I started praying for patience and spiritual endurance. I'm sure that the Lord had a purpose in mind for this situation. And I was able to see at least part of that purpose in the instruction and help that I received from Elder Villapaz. 

     All in all, the weeks here are never boring. After this month...either the rest of my mission is going to look positively boring, or things will get super crazy, only time will tell I guess. Hopefully next week will be a little more normal. Please take care, and I will look forward to writing again next week.

Ingat kayong lahat!

Love, Elder Dickison