Ready, Set, MANGO!

Dear Family,
The best news this week is that I just bought 5.5 pounds of MANGO. 4.5 pounds unripe, at 10 cents a pound and .5 pounds free (inactive member), and 1 pound ripe -- 30 cents. The grand total: 70 cents well spent and more tropical fruit than I can eat! It's my last dry season and that means that I've only got about 3 more months to get absolutely fed up of mangoes.
The zone conference this week was one of the very best, and that's saying somethin'. Sister Puzey gave an amazing talk about the Book of Mormon. She quoted prophets and shared the result of 2 months of serious research about the book. She'd gathered statistics and read the whole thing twice. You can read on page 114 of Preach My Gospel about what she did. She and President Puzey challenged us to "Find Christ" in the Book of Mormon. They gave us a clean copy and I've already started. We're looking for references to Christ, words of Christ himself, and His attributes.What I've learned: 1st Nephi is not about Nephi! "The Lord" Jesus Christ is clearly the main character, and I'm guessing that this is true for the whole book. I'm amazed at how Nephi writes -- The Lord did this and gave us that and told us this. . . it's about what Christ is doing and saying. Nephi might be the main character on the large plates, but the smaller plates are definitely about Christ. I can't hardly go a verse without Him being mentioned. It's been enlightening.
I got really spoiled at zone conference. Sister Puzey made a poster with a message for the new baby brother, and I got to pose for a few pictures. She also had a frog (not alive) that she'll send to you, I sent a note with it. On my first day in the mission home sister Puzey shared a message about F.R.O.G. and how to stay happy in the mission. President Puzey was there and I mentioned to him that I was getting pretty spoiled and he just smiled and said that he knew all about that and he had it a lot better.
I met Casey Major's namesake -- Casey Puzey and his wife this Tuesday. They visited the Puzeys this week and toured Baler and got to hike Mount Pinatubo and all the stuff we missionaries dream about doing. They shared moving testimonies. Casey Puzey told us that when they were climbing Pinatubo, Casey wanted to climb an ancient looking tree to grab a picture, but as he got to the top, the whole tree came down and he came down with it. He got away with only a twisted ankle -- his only lament was that they hadn't gotten the picture. Reminds me of another Casey . . .
Other than that, President Puzey did something unusual -- He showed us graphs and our numbers, and what was happening in the mission. That's the first time I saw our numbers analyzed like that. But the point was, in the Angeles mission, on average, for every 41 new investigators, and every 15 investigators at church, there is one baptism. The message was not "go for a ton of new investigators", it was "why do we have to go through a whoppin' 41 to get 1 ready for baptism? The average in the whole Philippines is only 30 new investigators for 1 bapt., and in all of Asia it's only 24. So he addressed the need to take care of our investigators. Sometimes (this is true) when the going gets slow for one investigator or problems come up, it's easier just to find a new person and hope they're easier to baptize.
President Puzey's message came just after some big changes in the area. I took advantage of the changes to make a few tweaks (big ones) in our day to day doings. We started focusing on one area every day and some cool things happened. In the past 2-3 weeks we've found 8 investigators in 5 homes that we are really, really focusing on. We visit them every day, we read the Book of Mormon, answer questions, sometimes just drop by. They've gotten used to daily follow ups at a time they help us set every day. We've been able to establish a solid relationship with these 5 families -- Galutan, Capistrano, DeLeon, Marquez, and Bongato. They've all accepted the invitation to prepare for baptism and and taking time to investigate. They all promised to come to church yesterday but only the Capistrano family showed up. I don't feel like we did enough to help them because this will be their first time attending. This week we're starting to plan a chapel tour for them and setting up plans for them to be picked up. This is a critical time for them, they need to come to church right now -- sometimes investigators are like phosphorus matches, they light fast, but getting the fire from the phosphorus to the wood itself is a bit of a trick when Satan's trying to blow out their small flame. Those 5 families are literally our lives right now, our prayers, plans, roleplays, sometimes it seems like everything I think about is for them.
Piano lessons are moving along and there's one member that I think will be able to take over pretty well when I leave. It's a blast to teach!
Valentines day was great and the Primary passed out plastic flowers before sacrament meeting. I got 3. I've been promoted to chief cook. And chief dishwasher. Call me Chief. Sinigang, gourd with chicken, Milkfish surprise, adobo, canton, pacbit, sopas, monggo, we're getting quite a menu going. Get that wok ready back at home! And a years supply of rice!
I love Elder Maandig, and we're having a great time. The transfer is flying and we've got interviews this thursday. I can't believe the baby hasn't come!!! I thought for sure. . . I'm thinkin' of ya', mom (and ya'll as well, 'course)
Love,
Elder Loren Peck