Jubilee!

May 15, 2011

This past week was amazing! The most amazing part of it was getting the opportunity to attend the local Jubilee Celebration! The church is celebrating 50 years of missionary work here in the Philippines. In the past 50 years over 600,000 people have been baptized into the church, two temples have been built with one more in the process, and 17 missions have been formed.

I'm a geek so of course I had to do the math- with over 600,000 members in the past 50 years, and assuming a constant rate of converts which is a very silly thing to assume, there are over 1000 baptisms each month. If you assume the rate of growth is accelerating at a constant rate (also a fairly silly thing to do, we're talking about people here) then the current growth rate is 2000 people a month and there will be over 2.5 million members here in the Philippines after another 50 years. Isn't that amazing! This country has a total land space equivalent to Arizona by the way. It's not geographically a large country. I started to get myself into more complicated math before I remembered that a- I don't have my TI-89 with me to help me with the math and a cell phone calculator can only do so much and b- I'm a geek. So after enjoying myself with things I remember from calculus class I returned to thinking about the Jubilee itself.

At the local celebration- which occurred Saturday evening, there was a program where the stake president and mayor both spoke, we watched a video about the history of the church here on Panay Island and then had a cultural program where the youth portrayed cultural myths and dances from the history of the Philippines. During the video it was stated that the Philippines is a country "divided by oceans, but united by character." This idea was further emphasized in the Jubilee theme song- United. The chorus goes as such:
A thousand isles, a hundred tongues,
Gathered as one fold.
Shinning like a pearl for a weary world.
One in heart and mind- United!

This is the purpose of the church- to unite a country despite language, to unite the world despite culture, and to unite us all despite death. We are united.


The next most interesting thing about this week was that I got sick again- I think I've been sick more times in the past 4 months than I have in my whole life. Anyways- it was just a really bad stomach ache and it only lasted a day- so all is well once again. It did cause us to miss out on lessons though. I woke up sick Wednesday morning and by 2 in the afternoon it hurt to much to keep working. So we came home instead and I spent the rest of the day in bed- I felt very useless and spent a lot of time sleeping and reading the Book of Mormon. By the next morning I was perfectly fine again and work has proceeded as normal ever since.
Yesterday we returned to Brother L, the investigator who read all the way to Alma between visits. We've visited him other times- but he lost his glasses and hasn't been able to read. Since our last visit he found his glasses and has begun reading again. This time when we asked where he was he responded "really close to the end" and turned to Moroni chapter 8. He says he knows it is true because he feels the same peace when he reads it as when he reads the bible.

It's been a fun week. I really hope you are all doing okay, you are always in my prayers and I miss you bunches!

Lotsa Love