The one shall be taken, and the other left

Hello, It's been another good and busy week, and as the title implies, it is transfer day tomorrow, and Elder Secillano will be leaving while I'll be staying in Mallig. My new companion is Elder Gardner, an American that arrived in our mission in the late summer/early fall, so it should be interesting; this will be my first time in almost a year that I won't have a Filipino Elder as my companion, it will also be the first time that I've been left in my area without my new companion being a brand new missionary for me to train, and this will be the longest time I've ever spent in a single area haha, so we'll see what adventures this new cycle brings here in Mallig. Things have more or less been the same as last week; a lot of success with finding and teaching some part-member and less active families, and the branch continues to seem a lot more stable than it was when both Elder Secillano and I arrive, which makes us happy, he doesn't even want to leave Mallig because he loves it here too haha. We invited Ross Gray (the son of Rose Mary and the grandson of Rosalinda) to be baptized alongside the two of them, and we also moved their baptism up to March 4, so it should be an exciting next couple of weeks as we help them prepare for baptism. Ashley, Leandre, Bella, and their families that we're working with are also doing well and continue to receive the blessings of the gospel into their lives, and the kids of some of the part-member families that we've met recently came to church with their aunt (who is a more active member), which is great, and we'll be working a lot more with the parents this week to help them come to church with their kids as well. Speaking of Ashley/Leandre and their families, we had another Family Home Evening with them and their extended family members who are also members of the Church but are not active churchgoers. We've had a couple with them over the past couple weeks, and this one was pretty great because there was a lot more activity participation from them. For context, quite a few of them are young women like Ashley and they're good friends (and they're actually all members, baptized a couple years ago or so), but they're a bit shy and didn't interact with us/the lessons as much, so it made Elder Secillano and I happy to see them interacting a bit more and not being as shy. Leandre is still a bit hesitant about getting baptized because of a couple family issues, but Ashley is still doing well, just a little hiccups that we're working through. Unfortunately, we still haven't been able to meet with Aida, and she hasn't been able to come to church, so we'll have to push her baptism back or remove her scheduled date entirely until she's less busy. Nothing too crazy happened this week, but we did have interviews with President Cobing this week, which went well. We talked about my social media assignment, of course, and how I'll be needing to train a replacement soon before I go home, which may or may not be my new companion, Elder Gardner, we'll see what President decides. He then asked me what I've been doing lately to make my mission more meaningful to me, and I told him about my studies of the gospel of Jesus Christ and how impactful that has been to me during this time in Mallig and how it has made me feel greater joy and love from our Heavenly Father, especially for the people that we've been working with. Focusing on my studies and my teaching on the gospel of Jesus Christ and His doctrine (faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, enduring to the end) seems like such a simple thing, but I truly feel like it has impacted every part of my work and life here as everything seems to connect back to Christ and His gospel (even the lesson that I taught the youth in Sunday School this week was learning how to live the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Beatitudes that He taught in Matthew 5 haha), for without Him, without His sacrifice for us, and without His gospel, there is little lasting meaning to anything else in our lives, and we will be able to find and achieve the lasting love, joy, and peace that He offers through His gospel. If you want to find greater meaning, hope, peace, or whatever you may need, I invite you to study the gospel of Jesus Christ and ponder what He really means to you. I would suggest starting in 3 Nephi 27 in the Book of Mormon to read the words from Christ Himself about what His gospel is and what it means, and if you want a bit of a deeper dive into the gospel of Jesus Christ, I'll also attach a picture of the lesson I gave in Sunday School based on Matthew 5 and how Christ's teachings in that chapter help us to more fully live His gospel and become more like Him as a result (I hope that the picture makes sense by itself haha, it'd probably be easier to explain in person). I hope you all have a fantastic week. I'm keeping you guys in my prayers, and I know that your Father in Heaven is watching over you and those you love. See you next week! Elder Enger 1-2 - Sunset 3-5 - Mountains 6 - Surprise birthday lunch for Sister Pohahau 7 - The branch's Self-Reliance Services graduation 8-9 - My Sunday School lesson; for a bit more context, the attributes in the center of the blackboard ("poor in spirit", "mourning", etc.) are some of the Beatitudes described in Matthew 5:3-12, and the scripture references on the left of the blackboard are examples of how developing those attributes help us to live the first principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ written on the right of the blackboard (and vice versa), the end result of which will be us being made "perfect" (Matthew 5:48) or "ganap" in Tagalog (which more correctly translates to "complete" like the original Greek word in the Bible is intended to mean). And the chapters on the top of the blackboard are the assignments for the class to read before next next Sunday, I hope that helps you all make more sense of my scribbles haha

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