Grabe ang bagong area ko!

It's been a crazy few days, even more crazy than usual. I got my new companion, fresh from the MTC. His name is Elder Partridge and he is from Utah. It was an interesting start to the new transfer, considering I didn't even know where our area was. We started work on Friday with no idea where to even begin. We got on a jeepney and just told him to let us off at Carissa, my new area. We somehow found the right place and started work right away. I love this area already! It just feels like there are a lot of people here waiting to hear the gospel.

When we got off the jeepney and started into the area, we found a nanay carrying a lot of bags so we offered to help. While we were helping her carry the stuff, we found out that her husband is an inactive member and she hasn't been baptized! We got her address and will hopefully talk to her later this week. We helped her to the trice then continued into our area where we were let into the first house we stopped at.

The area is pretty small but there are still a lot of people that say they haven't met missionaries. On Saturday, we returned to the area and kept on trying to find new investigators. While walking, someone called us over who we later found out is a member, it was a huge relief to finally find a member that could help us. He was kind enough to take us to another member who explained the layout of our area and took us to meet some other important members and told us where the church was. You have no idea how hard it is inviting people to church when you don't even know yourself where the church is haha, so finding the members was a HUGE relief to me.

The members in this area are AMAZING! It's just a branch but they are so strong and want to do the Lord's work. We even have a branch mission leader! When we got to the church on Sunday, he came up to me with a list of all the members and had highlighted all the inactive and marked a few part member families. I'm really excited to see what we can get done in this area; it's going to be great, and the Lord is already blessing us in our efforts :)

Love, Elder Smith