E-mail dated 5/28/18

Kamusta kamo??!!!  

Wow its the last week of may, its almost june! That is crazy to think a year ago I graduated from High School. You are exactly right about how much has changed in that year. NO offense to our public education system, but I have learned a lot more important things in this year than I did in all of High school. 

Anyways this week has been a pretty good one. We got some good work done and experienced some miracles and learned a lot, so what else could I ask for right? So this week on tuesday I had the opportunity to go on exchanges with my Zone Leader, it was a really cool experience. He was just recently made Zone Leader and so I didn't know him very well, but as we worked together and talked, it was cool to get to know him. He has an awesome conversion Story, the gospel really saved his life. It was cool to hear that, missionary work is so powerful and changes lives. It was a good exchange and I learned a lot. 

Another really cool experience we had this week is we taught a new investigator a moderately older gentleman (it has been discouraged to call people old, sorry Gram you aren't old.) and It was an amazing and really short lesson. He can barely walk and its just him at his house and he usually just sits outside or sleeps. When we taught him about families, he opened up to us that his wife died some years ago and he has been praying that he can be with her again.  When we testified that this was an answer to his prayers, the spirit was so strong and this retired philippines military man began to cry. It will  be exciting as we continue to teach him. 

So recently in our mission we have been strongly focusing on members and missionaries working together and that is why it is not allowed to go tracting in our mission. President Cruz has received a lot of revelation of how we can more effectively work with the members. We have this new way to ask for referrals called footsteps to baptism, it will take a little longer, but it will get us so much more quality referrals. It is exciting the coming months and years is looking like it will be very successful.  

1. Do they celebrate anything like Memorial Day over there? Not really. Well I guess there Halloween or day of the dead is kind of like our memorial day. Back in October all people went to the cemetery and put candles on all the graves at night. 
2. Have you participated in any service projects lately? Yeah. Last saturday we had a stake service project and we planted trees/plants I forgot what they are called, but they are planted right by the ocean and we were like shin deep in mud, it was a lot of fun.

Well Thank you all so much again for your love, support and emails each week! It means a lot! I love YOu guys!

Palangga ko kamo! 

Elder Joshua Degen