Every Struggle.

Dear Mom,
It's great to hear from you every week. Getting emails from you all is like Christmas every Monday. Letters, emails, and pictures are like gold as a missionary.

This week has been really hard, if not harder than most. It's hard when people make choices that hurt you. I've tried my hardest to pray to know how to help them. It's really stressful and brings a lot of tears. But something I really like that one of the elders in my zone told me this morning is that every struggle you go through changes you. You choose how you want to handle it.

Something I really learned from my last companion, Elder Christensen, is to not judge people because we rarely know the full story. It's really important to remember that I think. No one is perfect, and shouldn't be expected to be.

Regardless, I've had some great experiences. It's been a busy week.

I'm just going to stop telling you about kids peeing on me or my shoes, but it happened again. This time we were teaching a lesson and a kid pee'd on my shoes from the second floor of the house. What luck?

We're teaching many people and are looking at helping eight of them to baptism on the 26th of March. I love them all so much and am changing with them. One of the people we're teaching I'd like to share with you is named Nenita with her daughter Atleya.

A few weeks back, Indi (Nenita's nickname), was confined in the hospital because of a heart attack due to high blood pressure - or something like that. We were able to visit her with other members of the church and since then she has really been changing. She comes to church every week and her, along with her 13 year old daughter, love listening to us. They drop whatever they're doing and we're able to sit outside in this little alley and teach them. Seeing the change in them has been such a blessing. Indi's given up smoking and Atleya is really starting to honor her parents. They love coming to church too and learn many, many things. Indi takes notes and loves making comments which is awesome. They will hopefully be one of the people getting baptized on the 26th.

Yesterday we got kind of worried though. She didn't come to church and people are required to come to church four times straight if they wish to be baptized. It's not easy bring people to baptism here. They really have to choose for themselves and show their desire. Anyway we went to visit her later on that day with some other sisters from the church and she was really, really happy to see us. She didn't come because she wasn't feeling well, which is totally reasonable. She said she got up on time but just could not handle coming to church. So she prayed and asked Heavenly Father to forgive her and asked Him to please send us to her that day. We don't usually go to her on Sundays because we work in the other side of the area but we just felt that we really had to see her. When we showed up she just smiled and said, "I prayed you would come and now look, you're here. It's true. God does answer our prayers."

It was a great experience and it was great to be able to be the answer to her needs. I'm really excited to see her continue to progress. She's awesome.

We were also able to take her to find work at the LDS Employment Resource Center. She was there for awhile so we went and had lunch with Elder Haws and Elder Suelzle. Elder Suelzle was my former zone leader, and well, everyone in the world knows about Elder Haws - starting basketball player for BYU as a freshman last year. They're both awesome though. Elder Haws is so unbelievably humble. We've actually gotten pretty close out here. We're only two transfers apart and he writes me pretty often through the pouch system here. I try to learn my best from him at how to just be humble and love life.

This week is going to be busy and great. We have zone conference tomorrow where me and my companion will be performing a musical number which is going to be great. He's very musical which I appreciate. I'll be singing the same song I was able to sing in the MTC. I'm way excited.

Saturday we'll also be taking our investigators to the temple which is always a great experience.

I hope all is well back home. Thanks for sending the pictures! Jason's car is awesome. I also attached a couple pictures too: one of the sunset walking home across a "Palengke" or open-fish market, and then a pretty cool picture of my "family," me, my trainer, and his trainer, or "son, father, and grandfather." Hope you like them!

Love,
Elder Corpuz