Faith Precedes the Miracle

Hello Pamilya

I'm a little nervous for the coming transfer on April 10, partially because that means that I'll be completely responsible for my area for a couple of weeks, until my companion starts shouldering the responsibility, and partially because I'll have a new companion. Sister Montemayor is being transferred and I have absolutely no clue as to who my new companion is and how well they can speak Tagalog or English. Our mission president keeps the companionships as close to foreigner-native, but not all Filipinos naturally speak Tagalog...they speak their area's dialect...so this could be interesting.

I think pretty much all the baptisms that I'll have here are going to have some sort of interesting story behind it. For Carleslyto, we had asked the Branch President if he could go to the chapel in the morning to prepare the font for us since we had a really busy schedule that morning and no time to make up for it later in the day. So, in the afternoon we went to the chapel, where the relief society had just finished the RS anniversary celebration, said hi to one of our investigators who had gone to it (fist pump), and then we saw our Branch president walk out of the building...my head was saying "uh-oh" at this point. Walking into the baptism room confirmed my fear, the President had turned the water to the font on about twenty minutes before we got there. The font takes about two hours to fill up and it was about twenty minutes before we were supposed to start the baptism....about another ten minutes later, the water stopped and the building had no power....brown out (scheduled black out to repair power lines and whatnot)...and the generator wasn't working...by this time, Carleslyto and his mother, who is Less Active, had just arrived. Being the awesome

missionaries we are, we went into another room and prayed for the power and water we would need to have Carleslyto's baptism. Walking out of the room, there still wasn't any power, but faith needs to precede the miracle. So, we had Carleslyto and the baptizer put on the baptismal clothing and by the time they were dressed, the generator kicked in and the font was filled very quickly...and was still filling throughout the meeting...(oops), but it didn't overflow at least. And the generator even lasted long enough for our branch to have it's planned FHE that followed pretty much right after the baptism.

Faith always precedes the miracle, we just sometimes need to show a bit more

when things still look doubtful. Take Nephi in the Book of Mormon, he and his brothers had been chased out of Jerusalem by 50 armed men after they had been robbed of their property they had used to try to buy the brass plates, the scriptures, from Laban, to just walk right back through the front gate pretty much meant death and Laman and Lemuel had both given up. Nephi, on the other hand, went back into the city "not knowing beforehand" what was going to happen or what he was going to do, but the Lord provided a way for him to obtain the scriptures for his family.

Mahal ko Kayo

Sister Jones  

p.s.  We don't get to watch general conference or the general womens conference until a couple of weeks afterwards (April 5, 12, 13 respectively). I'm bracing myself for Tagalog blabber and am most likely going to download the English to my mp3 when I get the chance. thank goodness for modern technology.