Resilience

Maray na aldaw!

Hope your guys' week was ridiculously awesome. Mine was great, as usual. Can't complain. First off, I'd like to express my gratitude and sincerest love to my parents. They sent me this HUGE package in January that I probably didn't deserve, and I just got it on Friday. That blew me away. I thought they packed my dog in there and shipped him over here. It was actually that big My parents are the coolest. The worst part about this week, however, was that my companion got super sick with a fever. So we stayed home for a few days so that he could rest and fully recover. He's all good now and back on his feet! Thankfully he didn't have dengue. We all remember how THAT was... But anyway, that brings me to my topic for the week.

Resilience. So being at the house all day, I had a lot of time to think. Like a LOT of time. I guess you could say that I related my sick companion and his recovery to our day to day lives. We get sick. We struggle. That's truly how life is. It's impossible to avoid those things in this life. Last week I focused on optimism and the importance of thinking of solutions to our problems. This week I'd like to note that we do fail. We mess up. There's no escaping the fact that we make mistakes every day and are eventually burdened by that fact. But like my companion, his sickness came to pass and quite frankly, he is now stronger than ever. So like him, we just have to pick right back up and keep on keeping on. As missionaries, we teach that our purpose in life is gain experience and ultimately prepare for the day when we meet our Maker. So I've mentioned this in previous emails and will repeat it because it's THAT important. We MUST be resilient. I know that we learn from our mistakes and grow from our weaknesses. As long as we press forward and continue in righteousness, I know that at the last day, we'll be able to say that we truly did our best. That's why this gospel that we share is so beautiful. We aren't perfect. God knows that. But he expects us to strive for perfection every day, to become a better me than I was yesterday. That's my message for this week. I love you all and hope you had a great week. Thanks to those who emailed me this week, I loved hearing from you! Talk to you all again next week!

-Elder Bondoc

​The San Jose Elders