Hey everyone,

This week was really busy. I thought it would go by in a flash, but things have kind of slowed down a little bit. This picture that I sent was taken in Tagaytay. Its one of the tourist attractions in the Philippines and was a fun day to do some sight seeing!

Group of missionaries at Tagatay overlook

But aside from that, I thought about this picture a little more and there’s something here that I’ve noticed. About half the missionaries are sitting/standing on a fence that has a cliff on the other side of it.  With every decision we can either jump off the wrong side, sit on the fence, or stand firmly in safety. 

I’ve also noticed lately that there are “fence sitters” in application. I’m still struggling with it and i’m sure a lot of us are, but there is a fine line between saying something, meaning it, and DOING IT compared to just saying and meaning it.  If Jesus Christ said and meant that we needed to be baptized, but wasn’t ever baptized, we would have no clue about how we should be baptized or why.  He was the perfect example of DOING.  He acted throughout His whole life. There is a famous talk by President Henry B. Eyering that explains the word “someday”. Its one of my favorites. There is this one part when President Eyering discusses his personal life. As an older man, he discusses the fatigue and the mental exhaustion that comes from his day to day life, and then he says that although we have these trials, we need to keep telling ourselves and give ourselves one more push to keep going, to not only do the task, but complete it. For all you T-birds out there, give it 212 degrees instead of 211, and then turn up the heat even more!

I encourage you to just give the one more effort.. give it one more push. There is a saying here in the Philippines that they use all the time when someone is struggling or trying to acheive something, “Push mo iyan” meaning, “push it!”. Just give it all and then let the Lord give the rest that He has promised you. 

So something good that happened this last week that blew my mind was that we were finding new people to talk to in a place called Kua, and me and my new companion saw an old man walking down the street toward us. He looked at us and smiled, without teeth and kind of a hunched back. we started talking to him and out of the blue my companion asked if we could teach him. He said yes and he introduced us to his extremely humble family.  His wife hadn’t had any formal schooling and would just sit there and smile at us.

Another experience was last week while we were finding and we contacted a referral. She was a member of another church that is very hard to teach, we started teaching and it kind of went down hill.  But then we went to the next appointment and we taught about the five principles of the gospel, and kindness. There is a woman we are teaching who gets in arguments a lot with her husband. We are trying to help her be more Christ like towards him. They found out that we had songs (hymns) at church and they wanted to hear one, we sang families can be together forever and they all started crying and really want to go to church now. even the old dad who can barely move. it pains me to see him walk. He has bandage wraps all over his legs and he only has one change of clothes.. anyway.. it was great.

The other night we were teaching one of our investigators.  We taught her the gospel and then she asked, “Why does God give me so many challenges like this???” and she just wanted a rest. She said she was tired and drained and about to quit. We shared Matthew 11:28 with her and promised her that she could feel peace through the gospel but that she has to go to church to find out. She went to church, brought her two kids, her friend, and her friend’s kid too.. and they had a good time. Turns out, she is the aunt of one of our recent converts and a neice to our old relief society president. She made connections in a heartbeat and I could tell she was happy.

Well, thats about it for now.  I love and appreciate all of you back home and miss you – but I am glad to be serving and doing what I know is right.

Love,

Elder Hunter Burbidge

Hunter and a gator!