November 25, 2015 - Kamputhaw, Cebu

Kamputhaw zone is the I Love to See the Temple Zone. It is literally the best. We had the chance to have a temple tour for a group of 30 high school students and their teachers. We had different stations, where different missionaries shared about the sacrament, family history, baptism, and the temple. It was really cool.

So this week I got to work in Busay, with Elder Ray. This is the one I was telling you about, who's just like Tristan Dunford. It was cool working with him. It turns out his mom is a native German, so he knows just some basic German phrases. I, on the other hand, know absolutely no German. But that's okay. We walked from their area going home. Take a look at this on Google maps, Bonbon Elementary school, along the highway until the Church in Busay. That's what we walked. This is a very mountainous road. We passed a point where there is a look out over the whole city. All the glory of this Cebu metro area was in front of us, but clearly visible, as the only light that doesn't twinkle, is the temple. So I can now say, from every single area in our zone, you can see the temple, which is what makes Kamputhaw zone the best. It was really cool.

But I want to talk about the work in Busay just a little bit. Elder Ray's area is on the other side of the big mountain that sits over Cebu City, and it's a pretty, provincial area. We were working in Bonbon, when after a few lessons, Elder Ray said, "Well, we'd better start walking our of here, because we've got one more family we've got to visit." They were the Lopez family. After a 40 minutes' walk, we got to the Lopez home. It was a small home, but a nice one. When we got to the house, the family was getting ready for bed, but they welcomed us in. Brother and sister, and their three children, a daughter in law, and two grandchildren listened to our lesson about how through Christ we can be cleansed from sin. At the end of this lesson, the father told us "Elders, this whole family will be baptised. All of us." They live quite a ways away from the church, on top of a hill that sits over a large valley, but they've already come two Sundays. The source of income of this family, and this is my favorite part, is flowers. They grow flowers on the side of their hill. This family was just one of the most peaceful things I could imagine, and it is one of the greatest reasons for me to be here, and to be a missionary. 

We've had a lot of progress this week. As in, a ton of Progress. Elder Garcia is going home this transfer (we would have been batch going home), and he is working hard. We have taught so many new people this week, and so many people who we can return to. One remarkable person we found, was a little 11 year old girl who was baptised about a year and a half ago by one of our close friends in Cabagtasan, an area in San Carlos, which is a group of the church that sits on top of a volcano.

I love this work. It will continue.

Love,

Elder Dunford