Kamusta po kayo ang akin pamilya,

We had a pretty effective week. We were able to get 12 people to sacrament meeting which is the best I've ever had. Of course it really wasn't anything we did, it was entirely the Lord. We had one older couple that we had been teaching but they weren't really progressing, wouldn't come to church for three weeks, and were never home. We decided it was probably time to stop teaching them and start focusing on other people that would progress. As always, we ended our last lesson with an invitation for them to attend church. I don't know what changed, but we were waiting at church when we saw them walk in. The Lord had obviously touched them in some way to create a desire for them to come to church.

The First Presidency is changing a little bit of the way we missionaries work. It’s nothing big, but they are focusing more on the missionaries teaching by the spirit and the needs of the investigators. They are really trying to get us away from the routine lessons. So that is something we will be working on a lot these next few months. We got a brief overview of it during Zone Conference and I'm really excited about it. It will help us follow the spirit, teach by the spirit, and really do this work the way the Lord wants it done.

Something is happening that I never thought would ever happen to me; I'm forgetting English! Our zone went to a family home evening at some couple missionary’s home this week but they are from England so they don't speak Tagalog. I was the one that got to translate for them but it's so much harder than I thought. I would sit there listening to the speaker then realize the couple missionaries had no idea what was going on. When I tried to translate, I would accidentally repeat stuff in Tagalog or completely forget the English translation of a word.

Well that is what's going on over here; plus a lot of rain. It's crazy how hard it rains here and how quickly places start to flood. Thank you all for your prayers and letters.

Love, Elder Smith