Jewish Traveler

We traveled up to a small branch this week for exchanges. We had to hop on a shuttle and weaved our way up through the mountains and next to the coast for a few hours. Up in the mountains it's really thick jungle and was raining really hard. As we wandered through the mountains in the shuttle, it turns out the lady sitting behind me is from Israel and is a backpacking tourist here for about a month. I had to turn around in my seat to teach her and to talk to her but there reached a point in the journey when I just kind of looked around thinking about how weird that I was up in the mountains and it's raining really hard and I'm teaching a Jew about the Book of Mormon... But she was really nice and committed to read the Book of Mormon that we gave her. 

When up in the city of Roxas we had a really good time. We walked on the beach to go some fishermans house to try and help reactivate the father. The Roxas branch has really great faith... We saw lots of members selling food or other things to save up as much money as they could so that they could make the journey down to Puerto for District conference (or for us, Stake conference). I just loved feeling their faith and thought to myself, before my mission would I dedicate this much time and effort to attend and work this hard to save up money to hear my church leaders speak at stake conference? It was a blessing for me to be up their with the those faithful saints. Lots of rice fields and Carabao chillin in the mud. We  taught and ate with a recent convert family looking forward to going to the temple next year...  

The kids up there got a little crazy... Most of them have never seen blue eyes in their lives and lots of them still think I'm wearing blue contacts haha. 

We had a great Zone conference and we are starting a new thing where we are pushing for all recent converts to go do baptisms for the dead... It's a big  blessing for their family members and apparently is amazing for retention. 

Turns out Fred Pelayo from my last area in the city got baptized!! I'm sure he is now happily paying his tithing, he was always looking forward to that so much haha. But I was very happy to hear that. 

Yesterday we called at a house to see if anyone was home, and a man came out and we thought we were going to get blown off like we had been all day but this man let us in... He is actually really well off as well. But we saw right away he was a man of great faith... really strong faith haha. He got really heated with us about The Book of Mormon.... He had just never thought there could be something like that... Another Testament of Jesus Christ. He is a faithful Baptist member, but was almost shaking and yelling wondering if what we were telling him was true. Could there really be prophets in another land? Is the Bible not complete enough?  What does that mean if the Book of Mormon is true...? Does God really talk through Prophets in other lands?  We opened with him to Ezekiel 37, and did all we could to testify of it's truthfulness. At the end my companion said we want you to have this and to read the introduction... He got kinda mad and said I can't know it's true by reading the introduction... I need to read the whole thing. We smiled and hoped he really will read it and pray... 

I know he can do it!! It's up to him now... I pray he will do it. We have been finding good people lately and working our hardest.
Sorry I can't upload pictures, my computer isn't letting me for some reason.  It's too bad because I have some great ones from the Roxas City and with members,  maybe next week. . . 

I know the Book of Mormon is true. 

Love,

Elder Roberts