Full-Time Missionaries

President De LaMare, president of the Quezon City Mission, is mindful of the needs of the Senior Missionaries in his mission and works to accommodate us.  Specifically, in this instance, I'm talking about the fact that a Senior Mission differs from a Full-time Mission in many ways, but most particularly, it's that full-time missionaries address spiritual needs and senior missionaries are serving people's temporal needs.  Usually.  Not always.  There are many senior missionaries called to proselyting missions where their work is more spiritual.  But in our mission, there isn't a single one of those.  We're here taking care of all things temporal.  Public Affairs,

Office Couple, Security, Humanitarian, Executive Secretary to the Area Presidency, Doctor, Missionary Recovery Center, Employment Resource Center, Perpetual Education Fund, Making sure the Full-time missionary apartments are in good order, and one that I forgot the name of, but they go out and map the boundaries of the branches, districts, wards, and stakes.  Which is not to say that there aren't spiritual aspects to all of these because, after all, this is the Lord's work.  And we try to follow standard missionary practices - scripture study, prayer, companion study, reading the Liahona and all good books.  We had the TV disconnected in our apartment so we weren't tempted to camp out in front of it.  But we still succumb to the temptings of the internet.  We keep away from our beloved novels though, so that compensates - right??  President De LaMare told us when we first got here that he's provided a way for Senior Missionaries to experience a taste of that spiritual mission.  So we are invited to go out with the Full-time Missionaries and share a testimony or add a little to a lesson or in some way, be involved in teaching the Gospel.  It's been wonderful.  We've met delightful people.  We've had great experiences with the missionaries.  We've felt the Spirit.  It's been marvelous.  Eric told us that, as a missionary, he braced himself when he took members out teaching with him because he could never be sure what they were going to say.  Well, that's been the case with these young Elders too.  Even though we've recently spent an intense week living "Preach My Gospel", we blunder into things that they have to come along afterwards and clean up.   They're good humored about it and I don't think we've permanently broken anything.  We attended a baptism on Wednesday and there is another one tonight.  It's hard to do permanent damage to the Truth.  And that's what they are sharing.  And that is what is changing lives in the Philippines. 

Elder Sweat and Elder Nelson are in the top picture.  They are the first Elders to try to teach us how to find Tanay.  When that didn't work, they sent in Elder Baucom and Elder Mag-Usara.  Repetition seems to work with us.  Elders Baucom and Mag-Usara taught Michelle and her young sons.  She will be baptized tonight.  Elders Nelson and Sweat taught Sister Elvie who was baptized on Wednesday. 

 We tried feeding the missionaries like we always did at home, but that doesn't work so well when you're doing you calling all day and want to go out with the Elders in the evening - no time for cooking.  We got one chance to do a P-Day breakfast.