The fruit of the labor

So last week I talked a lot about fruit, specifically mangoes. This week I am going to write about the fruit that we have in missionary work. But before I do that, there is something that we should understand about work and faith:

      

The word faith includes a few parts that we don't always remember. Faith is a belief and a desire that urges us to work. When we have faith, we put in effort in order to achieve a certain result. For example, a farmer works every day and puts in countless hours to have a successful harvest. If the farmer did not believe the crops would grow or the harvest would be successful, he wouldn’t even plant the seeds. In missionary work we put in a lot of effort every day. We work very hard because we believe in the result of our work. Now that result is not baptism, only a step in the process. Our goal for the people we teach (and for ourselves as well), is eternal salvation.

       

If a missionary does not believe the people he or she helps will be able to obtain eternal salvation, he won’t even leave the house. Even that, in itself, is an act of faith: to get up in the morning and start to work. We show that we truly believe the people we are teaching will receive unending blessings in the life to come. We know they still have to follow the spirit and listen to what we have to say, but if they do... People like to measure success. We like to measure our success by what our investigators choose to do. For example, a lot of missionaries try to measure their success by the number of baptisms. But any converted missionary that has faith will know, the fruit of their labor was apparent based on their effort – no matter how many people listened.

      

With that being said, the amount that you work and the amount of faith that you have highly impact your ability to understand the fruit of your labor. Those that don’t understand will often feel like they failed, even if they put in a lot of work. Or feel like they succeeded with very little work at all. We might remember that Abinadi as a missionary had only one convert (One he didn’t know was even listening to his words) but brought to pass much repentance and salvation for his fellow men.

      

I have seen more baptisms than many people will on their entire missions, but that means absolutely nothing. What matters is the amount of work that I put in and the amount that I helped people become converted, including myself.

       

This is what we should be looking at in our lives as well. We find that some days, despite our best efforts, we seem to be lacking in happiness. We need to remember that we don’t always see what we will harvest until long after the hard work is put in. We lack the faith to understand that no effort of ours in the work of salvation (whether our own or for others) is wasted.

      

Now I will step down from my soapbox.

This week many things happened. Firstly, I finished reading the book of Mormon again. Remember how I challenged you all to read it by the end of the year (your time is running out). I started at the same time and now I am finished. Secondly, I started reading the Book of Mormon (that actually happened on the same day that I finished). I started again on the title page and have begun my journey through the book another time. Thirdly, we had three baptisms here in Sapang Palay: Mariel Sheiga, Charito Bonayon, and Nino Malla. They have all been great investigators, and now they are ready to start their time being great members of the only true church on the earth. (I say that because this is the only church that has claim to direct authority from God and is complete unadulterated truth. If you don’t believe it, you should probably start by reading the Book of Mormon.)

Culture: Humor. Humor here it is very different, jokes cannot be long – and they can’t be sarcastic. So that basically means ALL of my jokes are out. The humor here is very slapstick. It involves laughing very often – even if things are not really funny (at least not to foreigners). Humor is one of the things that Foreigners don’t seem to get very easily here. Honestly, with the culture here, it may be one of the things that I never end up conforming to. I don’t really desire to change my sense of humor. And this is pretty much how humor goes here.

     

Tagalessson: So I know that the whole focus thing still doesn’t make sense to any of you. I don’t expect it to yet but we will get there. But right now we are gonna learn a lesson that has to do with focuses at least a little bit. We have a word "May". It is pronounced like "My" in English. This word means "To have" or "There is". We can use this in conjunction with other verbs to describe what there is. Let us use an example with the word "Bili" Bili is the root word and means to buy.

Bibili: Will buy (this is in the sense like someone will buy) – Actor Focus

Bibilihin: Will buy (in the sense of a thing being bought) – Object focus

If you say "May bibili" it means that "There is a person that will buy"

and if you say "May bibilihin" it means "There is a thing that will be bought"

This is important because in different focuses it leads to completely different meanings, this is something that they use a lot and is very important to understand.

Pictures: I am trying a new way to send the pictures because these got sent to me

They involve the people being baptized and an old batchmate from the MTC, his name is Elder Solano.

Also Elder Stephens my MTC companion is in one or two of those.

I love you all and hope that you are doing well wherever you are. Life is good here, although sometimes it is stressful I am trying my hardest out here.

Love

Elder Faulkner