July 21, 2015 - Toledo City, Cebu

I'm glad to be hearing lately of your many adventures in Genealogy, finding all the many ways we are interrelated and our many royalties. Keep up the good work amongst the dead, while I'll keep over here with the living for a while. Genealogy is supposed to be really tough over here, because after 3 generations, everything turns to Spanish, then after that, once you get to 17-1600's, there is literally no record, because the ancestral filipinos were not exactly a record-keeping people. It'd be interesting study, though, because the bloodlines here is really a Great Filipino Melting Pot, you've got chinese, japanese, Malaysians, thai, Indians, Arabs, Vietnamese, and pacific islander blood mixed around with the native filipino.

We had a baptism this week. Sorry for the lack of pics, but the internethan we're at is not complying. Mary Jane and her 9 year old Daughter, Glosa mae! Their whole family has been taught for a few months now, and it's super exciting to see them receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Sister's husband and son is to be baptised in a fairly short time, so keep alert for an email about that.

In my studies, I've been learning. One thing I've really wanted to learn more about is prayer. So many people we teach "say their prayers every night, then go to sleep." It's a nice effect of the religiousness of everybody here, but it also reeks of not heartfelt, sincere prayer. For a while, I've been trying to learn about more effective prayer. Today before personal study I read in Jesus the Christ, where Christ tells his disciples before he prays in Gethsemane that they must pray lest they fall into temptation. What hit me here is that the apostles just had a most spiritual experience at the last supper, common sense may tell us they are far from temptation because of the Spirit with them. But the truth is, that is the time they have to pray the most, because that is the exact time they will be tempted.

This was confirmed in Alma 34:38-39. We must humble ourselves before God, and receive the Holy Ghost, and be watchful and prayerful always, so that we do not give away our soul to be sifted as wheat. I studied that whole chapter today, starting from verse 28. It is very interesting what Amulek teaches we need to do to have effective prayers, and also says that if we are not charitable, we are useless as dross.

Let's not be dross! Let's pray really nice, and smile a little more too. If we do that we can learn something more important from the Spirit.

sige bye.

Love

 Elder Dunford