Weekly Philippines Letter

As Christmas fast approaches, I can't help but look at this photo, at those who have so little, and not be appreciative of how blessed my little family is.  We have so much!

Elder Rubow on left and Elder Hopkins on right.

This last week has been mostly a lot of preparation.  Preparing for Christmas, and preparing for typhoon Ruby.  Though some members call it typhoon Rubow.  Go figure.  Anyway, ill start with the first.  One thing I did not expect here was Christmas Lights.  They are everywhere lighting up the roads at night and it looks really cool.  Every house right now has some tree, tinsel, lights, signs, and so forth.  I really love the Christmas spirit here.  They have been preparing for Christmas since September.  Its coming really fast.

The typhoon was supposed to hit on Sunday so we only worked for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday.  Then we waited....and waited...and waited and it never came.  Ended up not hitting our area so we are all good here.  Sacrament meeting was canceled as well.

This week was mostly spent finding.  We have very few people to teach right now so we went searching for Less Active and new investigators.  And we have found a few of them.  We don't know if any of them will progress at this point but we certainly hope so.  With Christmas coming up so soon very few people have been had time to listen to us.  Everyone is busy busy busy apparently.  I am expecting more things to happen after Christmas.  We have one baptism this month and we are planning for 5 more next month.  

One of the biggest highlights of the week though was teaching Less Active families.  The Assistant to the President worked with me two weeks back and one thing he told me to do was to start finding Less Active Families.  So this last week that was our focus.  While teaching a few of these lessons, I really focused on the Holy Ghost.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most basic principles that is also essential for not only our salvation, but our daily growth.  

I've come to see the five steps of the Gospel 1.Faith 2. Repentance 3. Baptism 4. The Holy Ghost 5. Endure to the End) not as steps but as a cycle.  We focus a lot on Baptism and Endure to the End I feel.  It might just be me though.  One of my favorite scriptures on the Holy Ghost is in John 14.  Jesus Christ teaches about the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost.  With Christmas coming up, we are all focusing on gifts.  Gifts we want and gifts to give.  One gift that we can receive is the Holy Ghost.  After baptism by proper authority we can all receive this wonderful gift from God.  In Doctrine and Covenants, we learn that Eternal Life is the greatest of all the Gifts of God.  But to be able to receive that gift we need the Holy Ghost in our lives always.  But we also need to qualify for that gift.  We must be worthy of His presence, which is why we first need to have Faith, then Repent, then be Baptized or the renewal of, and then we can have His presence so we can Endure.  So as this Christmas lets remember this wonderful gift the Lord has given us.  Thanks again for all the many prayers in my behalf and I pray for you as well.  Have a good week!

Elder Rubow