Dear Mom, Dad, and Cole Family,

Rain rain go away, come again another day!!  Welcome to my life in the Philippines.  This past week it has rained nearly every single day which has meant.... lots and lots of mud.  It has also meant that our work this past week was.... well it's looked a lot better in the past.  Elder Grospe and I have been trying to increase our teaching pool but it hasn't been that effective at the moment.  We talked to everybody that we've seen but they've either been busy or they weren't interested.  I guess we just need to "Keep moving forward".  That is officially my theme for my mission because it's true.  If your head is always in the past about what you did, you'll never know what you could do or become, but if you keep your head up and keep moving your right foot in front of your left; the possibilities are endless.

We had a baptism coming up this week but we have to move it back a week because we need to finish teaching Justin all the lessons and have the baptismal interview for him.  Elder Grospe and I are also teaching a young man named Sherwin and this guy is awesome!  He's about 23 and a criminologist but can't find a job because it's hard to find a job like that here in the Bicol Region so he's working for a delivery company right now.  Every time we teach him there is a special spirit in the room.  He hasn't accepted the baptismal invitation yet but I feel that in a little bit he'll be ready.  This past week we as missionaries also hosted a missionary fireside in order to try to help the members get excited about missionary work.  There were about 20 people who attended which is more than we anticipated so that was great  The only bad part about that was that Sister Delicano and Sister Redline (she was in my district at the MTC) told me a little bit before the fireside that I was going to sing a special musical number.  Whoop di doo.  I'm not going to say how it went so I'll let you imagine that I sounded like David Archuletta.  On top of that I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking in church yesterday about "Strengthening Families".  I'll say that that one went much better than my musical number.

It really has become a reality that my time in the mission field will actually come to an end some day.  It just hit me that my sisters are going home next transfer and that marks the beginning of my "4th Quarter".  Now for all you sports fans the 4th quarter is the most important part of the game because if you give up in the 4th, you give up the game. All that hard work that you did in the first 3 quarters wont matter because you are going to end up on the losing side.  It's almost the same thing in the mission life; of course the good that you did in the first 3 quarters of your mission isn't going to go away, but the feeling of being a victor is going to be absent from your heart.  Missionaries only have one shot to make their mark in the "Record books" so there isn't time to waste.  Even the best teams know not to relax when they have a big lead because anything can happen.  Live. Laugh. Love. Serve. I love you all so much and I wish you the best with everything.  May God be with you till we meet again.

                                                       -Elder Cole