Preparing for Baptism

      

Last email I mentioned the fact that as a District leader I would have to do Baptismal interviews for people. Checking to be sure the missionaries have taught an investigator and the investigator has met certain requirements. They have an interview to make sure they are spiritually ready to be baptized. This is important because through this interview they show what they have learned and express their desires to be baptized. I was a little bit nervous because I would be the one to do the interviews! I quickly got over this fear because I interviewed 4 people for baptism right away. This was a humbling experience. I started to realize that it isn’t between me and this person, it is between them and God. Baptism is a very important step in their lives and I was glad to be the person to witness their expression of understanding about God and commitment to the covenant. 

       

I have also found that I can go pretty much the whole day without speaking English and be just fine. Me new comanion, Elder Tagal, does not speak all that much English. I can’t always lead conversations about whatever I want in Tagalog, but I find that the conversations tend to go pretty smoothly and we understand each other just fine. It is really helpful to my language skills. Then again, Elder Tagal's first language is not Tagalog. He actually came into the mission not being fluent in Tagalog. So sometimes there are mistakes in his grammar. The weird thing about Tagalog – it is often more about the confidence with which you speak it, rather than they words. Even if the grammar is wrong, they will understand if you are close and explain your meaning through body language.

         

This week has been good in our area because we have helped a lot of people to start to progress. We are now looking at helping them move onto baptism and making that promise to God. It is very important for people to understand before they are baptized. I have been very worried about encouraging people to be baptized if they are not completely ready. Something I am learning: as you follow up with people, you can learn if they are ready. Just last night we talked to one of our investigators about all the things that she has learned during our time teaching her and going to church; we found that she was very ready and understands the covenant of baptism extremely well.

         

Honestly, one of our major goals as missionaries is to teach people to become independent and have an independent relationship with God. So many people are afraid here to approach God and talk with him. We try to teach them the steps to have that relationship and continue looking for answers.

     

Culture: Hiya: a word that kind of means shyness. It is equitable to the fear of being rejected or the fear of being embarrassed. Basically it is a social barrier where people fail to communicate because they do not think they can talk openly. This can be a huge impairment in relationships and can hurt a lot of people. This is important here because people have this "Hiya" to God as well. People in their prayers will very rarely be direct to God when they have questions. We teach people to pray directly to HIM with their questions, but it is very hard for them to do that because of this fear. They will often not keep the commitments we give them because they do not want to be rejected by God.

     

Tagalesson: "dapat" and "pwede". So we mentioned about focus before. Basically these two words change focus based on the word that follows them. "Dapat" means "should" and "Pwede" means "can". These two words are basically never found without another kind of verb after them, which can change the focus. For example, we will use the word for reading "basa". There are two conjugations: "Magbasa" and "Basahin". Now we can make two sentences that mean close to the same thing but focus on two different objects: "Dapat akong magbasa" "Dapat kong basahin" They both mean "I should read", but they work a little differently. The second one is focused more on the thing that you should read instead of on your yourself. The thing here is pwede works the same way pretty much.

       

This is important because dapat and pwede are not always consistent in their focuses this makes it very important to know what you want to say before you start saying it.

Life is going pretty good. The work continues on. I miss a lot of people back home. 

SHOUTOUT TO ALL THE FATHERS OUT THERE. ESPECIALLY MY DAD, IT IS FATHER'S DAY TODAY AND THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT 

Father's day was an interesting time to be away from home, this may have been my first fathers day away from my dad so it was a time for deep thinking. I love you dad thank you for all you've done in my life.

I love you all.

Elder Faulkner

Pictures: I took sneaky pictures of Elder Stephens and Elder Tagal.