Mission Tour

For the last few days Elder Brent Nielsen of the First Quorum of the Seventy and 1st councilor in the Philippines Area Presidency has been touring our mission and today was our turn to have zone conference with him.What a spiritual feast that was! He taught us about some things that have been on my mind lately and really answered a lot of my questions.One thing he taught was about revelation and the fact that the heavens are open to us today and that the way we access revelation is to ask.Heavenly Father respects our agency so much that he does not force knowledge or blessings on us. He wants to give them but only does when we ask.Another thing he taught was that revelation comes to us as we pray, read scriptures,and attend church and we need to teach that to the people we are working with. He said that one piece of revelation that the Area Presidency has asked about and received is the importance of teaching the doctrine of the Sabbath to Filipinos.He said in Samoa it's really easy to teach sabbath observance because it's against the law to work or have businesses open on Sunday but here in the Philippines the culture is that you go to church on Christmas, Easter and on Birthdays so when you ask people to go to church they say sure I'll go to church.What we really need, he said is to thoroughly and completely teach and help them understand the doctrine of the Sabbath because understanding the doctrine will change behavior.There was lots of other things he taught and time won't allow to share it all but we had a wonderful spiritual feast. It was neat to meet Elder Nielsen and his wife too because he served his mission in Finland  and though he left about the time Lily got there they were able to share memories of Finland.Sister Stucki invited us to go out to dinner afterwards with them so that was fun.