Week 87 - April 3, 2017

From: Jordan Mark Merrill <merrill.j@myldsmail.net>
Sent: Sunday, April 2, 2017 9:40 PM
To: Lauri Merrill
Subject:

Well maybe I can say I’ve pretty much got the area down👌. We've been focusing more on the areas further from the centro which seems to be progressing more. It takes about 20 minutes to get to the street where we'll go in and then it’s just a bunch of streets leading from a main street. So far as we’ve been tracting we’ve found a couple of long-time less actives. And when we ask why, they say because of the members... So of course we tell them that the church is perfect and not the members, then we invite them to come back and attend.  Unfortunately, yesterday they didn’t show, but it’s all good. We re-gave them a new Book of Mormon and committed them. As of finding people to teach, I guess you can say it’s been alright. Most of the men don’t want us and when we find a family where the dad isn’t home, we can’t teach because there’s no male present. So this one day we decided to find some new houses near the ocean line. And as we were walking we came to a looong bridge made of just bamboo and were like, 'Sure!" So we cross the sketchy thing later to find out were on an island. Now imagine an island where they dropped off about 30 people and told them to make it livable. Then look at that island in 10 years and that’s what we found. We climbed, slipped, and asked a lot of questions. As we came to the end of the road on that island we saw a bunch of people gathered. They told us that the government is planning to kick everyone off the island and make it to a tourist attraction. So all the people on the island are protesting against it and are worried what to do. We found out that technically that the city owns the island, not the people, so the only thing the people can do is hope for a re-location space for them. But ya, we plan on returning back and hopefully introducing the gospel to them but then again, if they lose the debate and lose the island we got to tract them down again ha-ha. But for our investigators on the main land we seem to be doing well. 

So for me and my studies, I’m almost done with the Book of Mormon. In 4 months I hope to finish again for the 4th time. This time as I’ve been reading the bible and BOM at the same time. I’ve caught a ton of connections with the Bible coming from the Book of Mormon and it just tells how true it is with all the revelations and things like that. Don’t forget daily studies. :) 

Well I guess I’ll close it up. I’m sure I’m missing lots of cool details but oh well. :) 

Love ya all. :) 

**Elder Merrill**

If you can afford it, this the typical Filipino B-day dinner.