Elder Jakob Van Boerum : MIRACLES

So definitely this has been the best week of my mission so far. Without a doubt. It's a ton of stuff so all try to shorten it as much as I can, but it's worth it.

It all started on Tuesday, our transfer day. We all headed up to Naga to meet new companions and everything and it was great getting to see all of the Elders from my MTC District again and how well they've been doing in their areas! So then they started to announce our new companions, and my new companion is...Elder Asbell! He's been working as a finance Elder in the mission office for the past 9 months so he was so excited to get right to work and flip our area around! I was so excited to hear that, because I had been praying for a companion that would want to work hard! That night we didn't have much time to work, but we went to a lesson with Juben and committed him to be baptized on December 21! So as long as he keeps coming to church and he gets married before then, he will be totally prepared.

Thursday was probably the craziest day because of some incredible miracles! After a District meeting that morning, we headed out to a far part of our area to follow up on some contacts from last week. We stopped at a members house to see if he would teach with us and he said yes! So we taught a couple lessons then began the 45 minute walk back to our apartment, planning on talking and teaching on the way. Most people didn't really want to hear much though. Then I remembered we had on contact from a couple weeks ago that was on the way. We stopped at his house, but nobody was home. Some guy was standing close by and he started talking to us. After we told him we were missionaries he said "Come with me. There's more people over here." He leads us into a room of about 10 people who call out to their neighbors and kids "Come here and let's hear the word of God!" So we are sitting there and about 20+ people and some more kids are sitting and listening to us talk about prophets, Jesus, and Joseph Smith and the Restoration, all of them totally agreeing with it and saying they felt something good inside. As we were teaching, even more people were showing up to listen that we couldn't even see because there was no space inside. We bore our testimonies and asked them all to pray about our message and as we left some of them even thanked us.

Friday turned out to be crazy too! We were out working an area that we haven't really been to much and start following a random road into a rice field. We see some old lady stomping on rice stalks to get the grains out and go up to talk with her. She directs us into her small 8x8 hut where her daughter is. We start talking with her and she brings up that the missionaries taught her father years ago. "Ok so where is he?" "Just close by. Ask for Tony Della Cruz." So we figure we will go find this former investigator and start teaching him. But as we ask everyone, nobody knows who he is. All the sudden the daughter's two kids ride up on a bike and we ask where grandpa is. "Follow us." We end up following these two kids down the high way, one riding ahead to get grandpa while we follow the 7 year old on foot. We finally get to the house and start talking with this 70+ old Filipino and find out he's actually a Less active member! He was so happy to see us and asked us to teach him about Joseph Smith again and said he would start going to church again!

So Saturday night, we went to follow up with Victor, the guy we tried to contact when we met the group. We get to his house and he lets us in. "Ok Victor, did you read the Restoration pamphlet?" He says yes, the whole thing, and that he immediately knew it was true. So we start to kind of review the pamphlet just to be sure, and he stops us. "I already know it's all true." What?! So we pull out a Book of Mormon and start introducing it and give it to him. He tells us he already knows it's the word of God and true, before even reading it and that he had a beautiful feeling about it. We leave him 2 Nephi 31 about baptism to read and tell him we have a church in Nabua. Before we even say where it is, he says he'll go. We walk out of his house and head over to where we taught the group the first time. As soon as they see us, they sit us down and all gather themselves together again, with some that were new. We taught them all about the Book of Mormon and just the same as before, they all loved it and said they felt so good about it. We ran out of Books of Mormon for all of them! So we just had to promise we would bring more next time.

Sunday came and right on time, 71 year old Victor comes riding up on his bike ready for church. All the members welcomed him and he sat there smiling through the whole meeting. Later that night, we go to his house again and he's all ready for us. He had read the whole assignment and about 4 other chapters! We teach him about baptism and he committed to being baptized on Dec. 28! This was only our second lesson with him! One of his neighbors was sitting in on the lesson that had been in the group before and she said she felt a beautiful feeling during our lesson. We reviewed the Restoration with her and she said she felt great about it! And said she felt good about maybe being baptized!

So basically, we got a TON of new investigators this week! All praying, reading a Book of Mormon if they have one, and getting ready for us to teach them again! They were all so happy to be hearing our message and all said they felt peaceful during our teaching. This week has been such an amazing change from my last transfers as I really got to see what happens when we are out and working to share this Gospel with everyone we can! We have been going nonstop since transfer day and we are already planning on big things for our group, Victor, and Juben in the coming weeks! I'm so excited to see them all progress! I'm sorry for the long email, there were just so many amazing experiences! Thank you all for your support and I love you all and miss you so much!

Elder Van Boerum
11/24/13