March 24th - Fro Pio Duran

We crossed over the ricketiest looking bamboo bridge, and we
stopped to take pictures at the end of it.

Add caption

One of the Members Caught a Snake Turtle

Random scenery on the way to a dinner appointment.

This past week has been quite inspiring on Tuesday we had exchanges
with the Zone Leaders. While working with one of the Zone Leaders, he
had me do some door to door contacting, and expected me to do it more
or less on my own. It was pretty intimidating, but after doing it a
couple of times, I realized that I know a lot more Tagalog than I
thought I did. Since that day, I've held several independent
conversations with natives. It has occurred to me that we are often
like that. We underestimate our capabilities because we constantly
tell ourselves that our capabilities are less than they actually are,
and we miss the development of those capabilities. Then when God or
one of his instruments kicks us out into the open and forces us to
rely on those capabilities, our first response is fear and then we
realize that we've come a lot farther than we realized. Often times
trials and tribulations are designed to force us to realize that we
are much more capable than we think.

Closer to the end of the week, while teaching one family, we met a man
from their church who said he was a "layman preacher." He asked what
our holy day was and why, and I explained that our holy day is on
Sunday, and that I wasn't exactly sure why (I knew that previous to
Christ's time, the Sabbath was held on a Saturday but I wasn't sure
when exactly the transition started or why the change happened). I
researched it and the following day we returned. I started to explain,
citing Acts 20:7 and planning on then moving to D&C 59:12. He
interrupted me, and went off on a rant about how Sundayworship was
biblically unfounded and was instituted by the Catholic church. This
was the first time I'd run into anyone who wanted to bible bash, and
any attempt for me to finish my explanation were ignored. He continued
to throw out scripture after scripture, each time citing his own
interpretation of the scripture to make a case against Sunday as the
holy day. The entire time the man talked, there was absolutely no
confirmation by the Spirit that what he was saying was true, no doubt
because of the aggressive and combative manner in which he spoke. If
anything, I was getting the impression that the things he said weren't
true. Finally, Elder Carpio stopped him, told him that we were willing
to return if and when he was willing to listen to us, and he bore his
testimony. Very quickly the environment and the feel of the situation
changed. I'm not sure that the family or the preacher will be willing
to soften their hearts, or if they were in a spiritual place to hear
the spirit's whisper, but it was a wonderful opportunity for me to
develop my recognition of what the spirit feels like in two very
different situations. Sometimes people just want to argue about
religion. Our role as witnesses of Christ is to explain to earnest
seekers of truth and testify of what we know to be true, not to
facilitate combative angry dialogue. The Spirit is driven away by
contention, and the Spirit is the most powerful testament that what we
as Latter Day Saints teach is true.