My apartment cleaning was postponed with a new cleaning project, cleaning the areabook. This week was a very productive area book week. We defined our boundaries for the areas here, so now we know who works where. Also the areabook is completely updated, it was so much work.
Talibon is going to be a lot of work, we don't have too many investigators, but my companion is willing to tract, so we will slowly build up. I am still the Senior Companion, and my companion is Elder Garibay. I had an interview with President Tanner, and he told me that our mission is 2nd lowest mission in the Philippines, and that he doesn't know why. He has been asking all the missionaries what he needs to do. Well, hopefully our mission becomes better.
Its fun to see all the pictures of what everyone is doing, hearing about Jeremy getting his permit, Molly with swimming.
This week I gave a talk in sacrament meeting, I recorded it on my MP3 in Visayan, I was thinking I would try to send it next week. The general idea was about growing our spiritual trees, I got a lot of comments after saying it was a great talk, and people starting pulling out paper, or opening scriptures to take notes, it made me pretty happy.
I talked about our spiritual Trees, how the Book of Mormon has many stories about trees, and how these trees teach us valuable lessons about our purpose here on earth and our direction in life. I divided it into 4 sections
1)fruit - a symbol of happiness, our friends that come into the church. The purpose of a tree is to bring forth fruit, and it is also our purpose to help people receive the restored gospel so that we can return to God with them.
2) branches - is our missionary work, a tree cannot bring fruit if the branches are small, and not every branch brings forth fruit, the more effort we make in our missionary work, the more fruit we can have, if no effort is made, no fruit as well.
Jacob 7:72-73 - Zenos taught how if we do more missionary work our branches and fruit will grow
3)the roots - our personal testimony. We cannot see the roots of a tree, just like we cannot see others testimonies, we don't know how strong the roots of testimony are in others. It is also very important, Alma Taught in Alma 32:38 how important the roots are. He said if a hot day comes, and the tree is without roots, it will perish. The same with us if trials come into our lives and we have no root, our testimony will perish.
4) The seeds - for those without a testimony please listen to Alma in Alma 32:33 and plant yourself in the church, and watch to see if you grow
Conclusion Alma 32:37 Please watch your Trees
Then My Testimony
Elder Remer
