2/24/2014

Maybe I will give you the latest low-down on a  family we are working with first this week. We went to their house to teach a short lesson about obedience to Heavenly Father's commandments (in preparation to teach the other commandments). The lesson went really well for a long time. All up until Nanay came in with three cups of coffee. This is one of the poorest families that we teach, and they spent what little money they had to buy coffee for us.  They had had a lesson on the word of wisdom in gospel essentials a few weeks ago, but we hadn't taught it yet... Elder Nebeker and I both agreed that it is the most tempted either of us had ever been to break the word of wisdom. It was a really crazy situation, and Tatay understood why we couldn't drink it, but we aren't sure if Nanay did, because Tatay didn't come to church this week and we haven't been able to teach them since. They just haven't been home. We did see Tatay on his padyak the other day, and went and said hi though. Definitely a tough situation.

I'm glad to hear that things are going pretty well at home. I'm actually kind of sad that I missed the gun show. (and definitely the pizza too). I am excited to try out those exploding targets though, that sounds pretty sweet. I really miss pizza though. Hopefully we will be able to make it to Shakey's (a pizza place in Naga) sometime soon.

We actually bought a pineapple the other day and put it in fried rice. Eating the part that we didn't put in the rice was one of the best experiences of my life. That pineapple was so good. It almost brought me to tears. The rice was good too.

I really like the distorted prism of pessimism quote. That is really true. If we expect things to be bad, they probably will be. It is really tough to get out of the pattern of pessimism. It really just is a vicious cycle of negative thoughts and negative happenings.

The seminary pie object lesson sounded really neat too. That is really true about eating the pie off of the floor. It is really sad when people are so willing to eat the pie off of the floor so to speak. That is a really powerful analogy.

I feel like I don't really have much more to say. We are just pushing along here, and continuing the work. I hope everyone there has a good week.

I love you guys tons!

Ben with a coconut