Training, finding and playing the piano

Well this week was definitely a crazy week for sure! ON Monday we got the information that we would be training and being transferred (me training and sister francia transferred) on Tuesday we traveled to Laoag, where I stayed for the rest of the week and Sister francia continued on with her new companion to her next area. While I was in Laoag, my temporary companion was Sister Incognito.... Usually I could find her though:) But I worked a lot with Sister Boekweg from Utah. I actually really loved working with her because neither of us by any means are fluent in tagalog, so we really worked off of each other to be balanced in how much we taught in the lessons, something that up to this point in my mission has been hard to come by. We did a lot of finding though which is pretty much my favorite thing to do, and we only had one hour of companionship study! Since i have been on the 12 week training program, I have had 2 everyday....wow.... and now that I'm training I get another three months of it...yaya.... but don't tell my companion I hate it, I'm trying really hard to convince her that I love it so that she has a better attitude about it than I did:)

Speaking of my new companion! Sister Sabio! She is from Bacolad and she is so great! She really only speaks Tagalog right now.... so I'm learning a lot!!! But in the last couple of days we have worn ourselves completely out!!!! we've been filling in any extra second that we have with work and I am loving it!!! It's nice to have someone that loves finding as much as I do!!! because of our finding efforts, we have found 7 new investigators in three days!! I know I know... we're pretty great!!! I'm really excited to be her companion:) She's right now in the homesick stage so I'm trying to keep us as busy as possible, because when we are busy it's not as bad (this I know from experience)

Yesterday while we were teaching a 9 year old about fasting and giving service, we were both so tired (and hungry) that she fell asleep during the lesson which left me to teach a lot of it..... grammar for fasting.... not too good! It's in times like those that I am grateful that I at least have some ability to draw pictures:)

On Sundays, Sister Francia was always the pianist in the ward because none of the members here can play, since she is now gone, what a blessing it is that I GET to play the piano now! haha it was awful! I practiced for 30 minutes only before the meeting. Mind you I've never taken piano so I was relying on my one year of playing the bell set in band from the 7th grade. I did okay with count your many blessings, the sacrament hymn though.... I don't even remember what it was, my mind must have blocked out the details because all that I can remember is that it was awful awful awful. The last hymn though (sweet hour of prayer of course) went really well and I was able to make it through the top hand without a flaw:) there will be a lot of practicing this coming week:(

Love you all! Hope you are having a great new year!!! I just reached the 5 month mark!!! Well... I will... Tomorrow...

Sister Schultz