I love the work and love my mission! This truly is a blessed and holy place!

Dear Family that is Perfect for ME,

Good week. Lots of good came out of this week! We had 8 investigators come to church and every week is just getting more and more! The week was nice, lots of teachings lots of great people i got to me and see progress.

One being Sister Merna Palma! She is this sweet single old lady and when we first got this referral we thought she was a bit crazy... which she is! In all the right ways though! She loves the gospel of Christ and is such a great spirit! She loves to laugh and have fun, but also loves to read and understand the gospel. She has been approached by many religions but they all pushed her to hard and scared her. She says she loves this religion because we come just to help and the members are so kind and welcome her to everything! She is just the sweetest person ever! She will be baptized on March 7th! 

We then had this weird lesson to this other old lady. She is 80+ years old and is crazy in a crazy way. She has had weird dreams of pretty much Satan and stopped coming to church in Decemeber. Well we decided to go back and teach her, but it is more like a call to repentance haha! I feel like a prophet in the Book of Mormon when we teach her. We really have to just say, "Repent, go to church, and Baptized or you will got to.. imperno." It is harsh, but for this old Nanay Daguhoy it got results! She went to church and accepted to be baptized on March 21! haha! 

So through out this week I have been really trying to work hard, and for some reason every night after the work I would sit there and think about my feet and how they hurt... and I realize now how selfish I was being... This morning we were riding on this jeepney and when we were riding I have never seen so many nice things happen. It was hard this morning with people making those sligh remarks saying "hey joe" and other things that just prick at the nerves... as we sat on this jeepney my attitude was not so good. I looked around and started to see something though. The people were talking and complementing eachother and talking about their kids and things. These things I have not seen very much sense I have been here in in the field. Well as we were on our 1 hour trip to get to Kabankalan so many people were cramming on this jeepney. I think we had a good 30 people on the inside of this thing and others on top of it. Well even though we were crammed there was this old man around 70-80 years old and the people squeezed together so tightly just to fit him on. As we were on I looked around and saw this old mans feet... and it was something that I will never forget. It really took me back a couple steps. This man had large sores on his feet from his whole life of hard labor in the Sugar Cane fields. I thought of my feet and how though I too have painful sores on my feet, I at least of good medical care and money and means to fix it. This man had on flip flops and his feet were dirty just from walking around in the dust. And after about 5 minutes I noticed that he was looking directly at me, not in a weird creepy way, but it in a way like he saw something different about me. Not like I am an American in the Philippines either. The way he was looking at me made me feel as if I had something that he didn't. I think he saw the Spirit and Priesthood of Jesus Christ. I am a representative of Jesus Christ, who suffered everything in the Garden of Gethsemane. I can make this without complaining! 

My goal this week is to do all I can to be a better person and spread this gospel and just keep a smiling face! I love the work and love my mission! This truly is a blessed and holy place! 

I love you all and miss you! Email me send me pictures and questions and I will try respond the best I can! I love you! Keep those shoes on! 

Love,

Elder Minson