So last week (and hopefully
this isn't a surprise to many of you) was General conference, which means that
the Prophet of the world, who is also the President of the church for which I
am currently serving as a missionary for, and the apostles of the
aforementioned church spoke to everyone. I say everyone because General
Conference is not just a time for people of the church to hear these words, but
Thomas S Monson has been called as a prophet for the whole world. He was
speaking to everyone. Now I did not get the chance to hear any of the talks
until this past Saturday and Sunday. This is because I live halfway around the
world from where the talks were given and they couldn't get the schedules to
work out so I could watch it live.
Anyways. This time
to listen to people directed of God to receive revelation, for me, was quite
special. I got to listen to words that were prepared for me in mind, as well as
words that were prepared for all of us. I don't want to understate the
importance of this time, so I will invite you all to listen for yourself as all
the talks can be found on HERE.
It is a really cool
experience to dedicate two days to this event, and see how much it can impact
people in their lives. We heard many testimonies of truth and many statements
of confirmation of things that we know to be true. I think that too often we
understate how important a living prophet is to our world.
Other than General
Conference this week, we had a very good time teaching and finding. Elder
Rasmussen and I are still enjoying our findings and work, but we are working on
bringing our teaching style into one that bespeaks the importance of
commitments and change in our investigators. We are trying to change peoples lives
here and save their souls. The worst is when they don’t understand the gravity
of the message because we couldn’t explain it well enough.
Other than that, the
work is moving along nicely and we are going to see a lot of progress in our
investigators as we teach them the necessary steps of repentance and teaching
them the Plan of salvation. Having done a lot of finding the last few weeks, we
aim to move forward with teaching those new investigators and constantly work
with them to feel the spirit of the lord testify of the truth to them.
Culture: Tambay (To
do nothing or to “hang out”.) Filipinos love doing this. When you tambay, you
kind of just sit around and sing, or talk to your friends with no real purpose.
We are also in an area where there are many people that tambay outside of our
house all the time. This makes it easy to talk to them, and start simple
conversations to practice the language. Often times when you approach a group
of people on the street and ask them what they are doing, the answer is just “Tambay”.
This is a word with a lot of meaning because it fills in so much of the youth's
time. But in the end, it has little meaning as nothing really gets done. I love
Tambay.
Tagalesson: Today we
will learn how to ask what someone is doing and how to ask if they are good at
certain tasks.
“Ano ang ginagawa
mo?” (What are you doing?)
“Tumatambay-lang
ako. “ (I’m just doing nothing)
“Sige-lang Marunong
ka ba na magguitara?” (Well then, are you good at playing guitar?)
“oo” (yes)
“Astig, may guitara
ako. Tambay na tayo.” (Cool I have a guitar, lets hang out.)
Keep in mind random
questions to people aren’t invasive here, it is chill to ask almost any
question of any person at any time.
Welp I love you all
and I hope that you are doing well. I encourage you all to read the words
spoken in General Conference, or watch the recordings.
Love
Elder Faulkner
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