Hi Everyone!
I did get to have my Thanksgiving feast here. It was way good. We ended up having mashed potatoes and bratwurst! It was soooo good to have a meal with no rice! Your Thanksgiving sound different but really good too. I would kill for a steak right now! How did you guys like the liver? I can't stand it. There is a Sudan here (what you put on rice) that is chicken liver and hearts. Every time I have to eat it I fight severe gag reflexes. That has been the only thing here so far that I have eaten that I literally cannot keep down. Everything else is pretty good. I guess intestine isn't that great either, it just depends on how they flavor the poop inside.
So now the Big news! We had zone conference on Monday, and WOW. We sat down and first thing we heard was "Hey Elders and Sisters, the zone conference is going to be a little longer than usual today. We are going to end at 4:00pm" That's 8 hours long! We soon found out why though. President just got back from a Mission President seminar with the Area 70s, and the Quorum of the 12 have made some huge changes to the Philippines missions. First, President gave us some stats.
-There are 645,000 members of the Church in the Philippines
-Only 114,000 are active (attend at least 1 sacrament meeting every month)
-There were 77,000 convert baptisms performed from 2004-2010
-Only 14,000 are currently active of the 77,000
-Out of all members in the Philippines, only 22,000 are Melchizedek Priesthood holders (abt. 3%), of which about half are inactive.
So these are some pretty disappointing stats. He then shared with us Jacob 5:47-48 about the allegory of the olive tree who's branches grow too fast and heavy for the roots to sustain. This made a lot of sense to us, and then he told us what we are going to do to fix it. First, starting last Monday, NO MORE TRACTING. None. We are now almost entirely focusing on building up and strengthening the Church that has already been established here. We are now focusing on reactivation and retention, and our main goal is not baptism, but temple sealing. Our baptisms will now come from part member families, or loved ones of less or non-active members that we meet while fellowshipping and rescuing. We are now working very closely with the Branch Presidents and Bishops to organize accurate membership records, organize them geographically, and then go rescue and help all these lost sheep return to the Church and get to the Temples to be sealed as eternal families.
President shared a couple quotes with us from the General Authorities at the conference.
President Neilson- "If all we do next year is properly teach and strengthen recent converts and inactive members of the church and get them to the temple without a single new convert baptism, the Prophet will be happy.
President Ardern- "As we reach out to reclaim inactive members we will bring back thousands, and we will bring in thousands.
So this is a crazy new approach to missionary work as I know it, but the Spirit was so strong at our Zone Conference, and I know this is inspired, and it is what the Philippines needs to establish a strong foundation that can support the rapidly growing church here. So that is all very exciting for us here, and we are anxious to see the blessings start flowing into the lives of the people here through the Church
So that's the big news from the Philippines this week! Keep up all the hard work back home! I love you!
Elder Garver
p.s. I included a picture of us at our Thanksgiving feast, and me fighting a goat for territory in Pilar. Love you!
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