Looking Back

This past week I've been revisiting the mission pictures drawer - one of those cheapie-style plastic storage drawers. All my pictures (except those taken by others and given to me) were taken on film. And while I am friends with a lot of my old mission comps, members, and investigators on Facebook (or "Mukha ng Aklat," as the Filipino-translated Facebook homepage says), I have no pictures to post as none of my pictures (except the one above) have been digitized.

This picture has always been one of my favorites from the mission, for multiple reasons, but mainly because . . .

1) It could easily blend in with those hanging on the walls of the MTC. Why did I not mail it in to them? lol.

2) The story behind it. Tatay Silvestre (far left, holding "Ang Aklat ni Mormon") missed a few appointments with us in a row. We would show up, and there would be no sign of him. On our third time coming back and still no Tatay, we left a note for him with Viverlyn (the one holding the Liahona magazine) telling him the exact day and time that we would return.

Not only was he there for the next appointment but he saved our note (and continued to save it) in his wallet. It turned out he wasn't trying to escape us on those previous visits, he was actually hiding from his "berkada" - friends that wanted him to drink and gamble and smoke with them. To avoid them and their vices, he would climb up on the roof of his house and read his Book of Mormon.

2 Nephi 27 is one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon. But even more so in conjunction with this story. Verse 11 reads:

11And the day cometh that the words of the book which were sealed shall be read upon the house tops; and they shall be read by the power of Christ; and all things shall be ^arevealed unto the children of men which ever have been among the children of men, and which ever will be even unto the end of the earth.

You know, it just made me happy, looking back on some good times.