E-mail dated 11/5/18

Kamusta Kamo??!!

How is everybody doing!!? Man am I excited to email you guys right now. I experienced something today that I have never experienced before....earlier today there was an earthquake!....now before anyone freaks out, everyone is fine, it wasn't one of the bad earthquakes it was just a cool one. So it shook 2 times like an hour apart, the first one was weak and just felt like the ground was vibrating while we were playing basketball, but the 2nd one felt like the ground was swaying, like we were on a boat, it was so cool! Now thats not something I email about every week! 

Well other than the earthquake earlier, this week has been a pretty normal one! Busy as usual, but this week we had some awesome lessons and extended baptismal dates to 5 investigators. We are really looking forward to December. On sunday we had a meeting with the Stake Presidency and all of the zone leaders and Iloilo North stake. We set a Stake Baptism for December 25! White Christmas! The goal for the whole North Stake is to baptize 90 souls, which means a goal of 30 per zone! I am so excited, it is going to be awesome. North stake does this every year and it will be so awesome if we can reach our goal. After this meeting we extended a date for December 25 to 5 of our investigators ( Bro Gabawa and the Junsay Family). Elder Tolentino and I have faith that they all can overcome their challenges and be baptize on Christmas! We had an awesome lesson last night with the Junsay family. We read together and discussed Lehi's dream in 1 nephi ch 8. As we explained, read and testified, their interest in the Book of Mormon grew, the spirit was so strong when we told them that we are here serving a mission so others can partake of the tree of life, we expressed our desire for them to partake of it and then invited them (4) to be baptized and they all accepted. It was an awesome lesson!

Other than those great experiences, we were kept busy with our responsibilities as zone leaders. Sometimes we have to sacrafice for the benefit of the other members of our zone, but its good, It has honestly taught me a lot. I am still enjoying it. Also this week, there has been a lot of preparation for the coming of a general authority to our mission this week. Elder Teh of the seventy is here in our mission this week. We will have 3 meetings with him this week (Zone conference, MLC, and one special meeting)  I am excited it should be an awesome experience to have him here. I will tell you all about it next week!

Well as always I am so grateful all of you! You guys really are the best! I am so grateful for this opportunity that I have to serve a mission, it is so awesome! And it honestly is fun! I hope you all have a wonderful week! Hopefully The Utes and Jazz play better this week! GO UTES GO JAZZ! 

Palangga ko kamo!

Elder Degen