Hello po ulit,

It has been a pretty crazy week for my companion and me. We had a few investigators that we have been teaching that are a part-member family. The mom has been inactive for a long time, but she wants her kids to be baptized so we have been working with them. Things were going great until the mom got in a fight with her brother. When I say fight, I mean a real fight. A few teeth got knocked out, a big rock got thrown at someone; it was just a mess.

They ended up having to go to the barangay which is like the local police. Because the mom was going to be at the barangay for one to two weeks, she made her kids go stay with their dad, which means we can't teach them and they can't go to church or get baptized for a while. We didn't know what to do so we just prayed that the Lord would do something to help. Luckily, their aunt is a great member who got things worked out for them to come back so we are teaching them again and they should be getting baptized pretty soon.

In other news this week, people have started to give us money. We had just gotten out of a lesson when we got a phone call from some missionaries. My companion was talking to them trying to help them with their problem when a guy came up to me and started saying that he likes the beliefs of our church. While I talked to him and got his number and address, he went to a tindahan and got us drinks and a snack. That's not too weird because everyone here is really nice and like to buy us snacks, but then he started to try and give us the change too. We explained that we don't take money and politely rejected his offer but he wouldn't listen to us. He then grabbed my companion's arm, put 50 pesos in his hand, then said "a gift from the Lord" and left.

We thought that was weird but a few days later, today, we were buying groceries when another guy walked up behind us and said "to support what you are doing" and slipped 1000 pesos into an elders' hands. We were all so taken off guard that we didn't even have time to say anything before the guy had slipped around the corner. So that was my week of weird events, but of course we have also been receiving spiritual blessings; not just people trying to give us money and snacks :)

Love, Elder Smith