Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Sister Franks in the Philippines - December 8, 2013

Hello again!! :)

My time is a little short today (again), because our old zone leader (Elder Tipene, who is now in a neighboring zone) was here in Antipolo, and stopped to say hi to us...so I sacrificed a portion of my computer time to catch up with him. Also, as you'll notice, there's an attachment (hopefully) to this email. That's the other reason--it turns out I'm not as quick at typing as I used to be. At any rate, the attachment is a sort of "Christmas newsletter" for the ward and branch, if there's somewhere to post it. I'm aspiring to write real letters soon, but for now this will have to suffice. I thought I would include it for everyone to read, if you're interested.

Our week this week was good, and short (since P-day was just on Wednesday). One experience I wanted to share is from a lesson we had with Regine last week. She is the only member of the church in her family, and while they don't oppose her being a member, she doesn't really have support from them spiritually. When we met with her on Friday, she said that she was confused before about how anyone could become less active in the Church, but now she is starting to understand. Even though her testimony is still strong, she knows that the Church and the Gospel are true, she said that she understands now how hard it is to stay active when you have no family support. That really struck me, since she is the first investigator I was able to teach and see baptized. I know her faith is strong (she amazes me every time we meet with her--I'm humbled to realize how weak my own faith is). Yet she is having a hard time staying active, because of the influences around her. I'm not really sure what the moral of the story is, but I just wanted to share that thought, since it's changed the way that I think about less active members of the church. They may not have stopped coming to church because of anything specific that happened, but just because they don't have the support they need to withstand Satan's continual attacks and opposition. Maybe that's a good place to start to help them rekindle their desire to be active--start by being their friend and letting them know we care and we want to support them. :)

That's all I have time for today. I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week!!

Love always,
Sister Emma Franks

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