Elder Dallin Espiritu: Holidays & Baptism

Nov. 4, 2019

What's up everyone!

This week was a really good week for Elder Hedman and I.

Halloween was this week. Not to many people here celebrate it but there's still quite a few. It's sad though when kids trick or treat.They just go to public places and ask for money. It's really sad. It really makes me grateful for all the things I have in my life.

The other Holiday celebrated here is "All Saints Day" (November 1st) "The day of the dead." It's a national holiday that the Philippines still celebrate from when they were under Spanish rule. The whole day, most everyone would go to the cemetery to visit the people who passed away in their families. Most people stay at the cemetery the whole day. Usually in our area there is a ton of people but this weekend it was really hard to find anyone who wasn't gone. But it was still good.

Earlier in the week, we tried to go find some new people to teach in an area we haven't really been in. There's two things that still amazes me. First, our church has so many members around the world. And second, a ton of people really don't know anything about our church.

While we were trying to find some people to teach, we noticed there was a ton of goats and turkeys just walking around. So we went up to a group of kids and asked them why there was so many goats and turkeys and they honestly didn't know. They just said they walk around and sometimes people eat them.

After we finished talking about turkeys, one little girl said "Elders who are you looking for here?" So Elder Hedman and I looked at each other and asked her how she knew we were Elders. She told us her family were members.

We went to go visit them. It amazed me that literally every little area we go to there's always at least one member there and it's awesome. A lot of people don't know anything about our church so missions are sick honestly haha.

We had another baptism this week. Elder Hedman baptized Daniel Casalda. Daniel is about 50 years old and he's so funny. He's been really good when we teach him. He likes to joke around a ton but when we teach he's super serious and his insights and answers are really good.

During his baptism I had the opportunity to speak before Daniel got baptized. After Daniel was baptized Elder Hedman said he and Daniel were talking and Daniel said "Now I'm a real disciple of Jesus Christ". I thought that was awesome. Daniel's a very good example to me to remind me to always be happy and be a light in the world.

That's about it for the week. Hope everyone has a good week!

-Elder Espiritu

P.S. From Mom while on a chat with Elder Espiritu:

He was really sad about losing "Mira," our twelve year old dog.

He also asked me like his brother Joseph who also served in the Philippines (Laoag), "Mom, why didn't you teach me Tagalog growing up." :)

Filipinos LOVE Christmas so much that they start celebrating when the months of the year start with "ber." Christmas songs are already playing on the everywhere. These Christmas lights have been up since September! haha