Well this week has been another interesting/frustrating one
but good and exciting as well. So on Monday, we will start off with that,
Sister Walker got her first taste of buying stuff in the Philippines and
getting ripped off as an American, luckily I was there and we only sort of got
ripped off. J
It’s been an adventure since we re-split the area to try and find all of the
people that the other sisters were teaching before. After getting lost about 12
times, we finally made it to one of the recent converts house! Yes! We were
able to teach a great lesson! Then there
is one progressing investigator with a baptismal date that we tried to find…. After
looking for about 30 minutes with no luck, we decided to bag it and just go to
the next appointment, after walking in the opposite direction of her house for
awhile, the other sisters texted and said that it was her birthday so we had
make sure that we went to teach her…. Back the way we came, finally found it
and taught a great lesson! Success! I got to wash my laundry with Sister Woahn,
we have the greatest chats about life during our laundry washing time. J Thank you Heavenly Father
for the tender mercies that you send me. J
On Tuesday, I will admit that I was a little more than frustrated with the members here, yes I realize that I don’t know Ilakano and my companion doesn’t speak very good Tagalog yet, but they pretty much tore us to shreds because of it. It was like a 20 minute lesson of them telling us how “kuwawa” (pathetic) we were….. thanks guys, love you too. Actually I sort of wanted to punch… oh yeah I’m a missionary…. God bless them. J We continued on in the loop of our teaching and had to run from a pack of vicious dogs towards the end…. Gotta love those mission stories that everyone talks about. At night when we went back to the house there was a group of Muslim women outside of our house, they were waiting for someone to bring them a new tire because there old one went flat, so we got some mike and ikes and share with them about being missionaries, obviously they weren’t converted or anything, but at least they got a nice “taste” of LDS missionaries. Learned how to cut a pineapple today…..
On Wednesday we had lunch at a members house… it was spaghetti….. that’s safe right? Nope Sister Walker didn’t want it so I had to eat a ton of it! Basically the story of my life right now. L We wouldn’t want anyone to get offended. L So instead I’m getting fat…. Kuwawa. Then we worked with some of the members, it was mostly like we were the fellow shippers… they talked A LOT but afterwards we explained to them about what their responsibilities are as fellow shippers, they did a little bit better after that, I think that that is one of the most difficult parts of working with members, is just making sure that they know what they are supposed to do and not trying to overstep their calling or take over ours, but it’s definitely more effective to work with the members. I taught the Plan of Salvation in about two Minutes today in a lesson haha they were like uh…. We have to go. And I was like 2 minutes, just 2 minutes…. Shared with them AND got a return appointment! Yes!
On Thursday we taught the first vision in a grove of… palm trees? Haha that was really awesome! We had some really great fellow shippers with us that day and so we were able to get a lot of work done and their testimonies were really powerful, that was also the day that we were able to teach one of the people that we found last week, his name is Jhon, we haven’t been able to teach him yet because we haven’t had a fellow shipper, but I think that he will really start to progress, he came to all of church yesterday and he said that he will be baptized, we didn’t give him a date yet, but we are still really hopeful. J It is a little tricky at times with an American companion, I remember when I got here I didn’t ever want to talk and stuff but Sister Francia was Filipino…. So it was okay, now when I run out of Tagalog… I just gotta keep going haha we are both learning and growing a lot.
On Friday….. we might have had a little bit of a breakdown, it happens to the best of us. J Sister Walker was just feeling very overwhelmed by everything.. So we didn’t do our weekly planning on Friday, it just wasn’t going to happen, so We instead attempted to make a cake and she told me stories about her life once we could actually get her talking again. I know she’ll break out of it soon enough. But we did have a sweet lesson on Friday, so to start off with, the day was crap! We got punted like 3 times in a row and then the lessons we taught were just so so. I’m losing my voice from talking so much and I’m way tired, so I was a little edge-y, So I was like can we just sit for like 2 seconds on this bench? Sat down seriously like 7 seconds in all and I just said in my head, “Heavenly Father, will you just give me a break?” then at our next appointment we started to teach and a ton of people just came from other houses and started listening! It was a miracle! Afterwards I was just like, “Ah…. Thank you Heavenly Father. J That was very nice of you. J”
Saturday the other Sisters had a baptism, it was really great that we were able to attend because she was my old investigator, but there really wasn’t a lot of support from the members at this baptism, so that was a little bit disappointing, Hopefully the next few are better. We didn’t have time to teach everyone that we had planned so instead we just ran the fusina loop (it’s like 2-3 miles) and stopped at everyone's house and invited them to come to church! It was effective. J We had five people from that barangay come and one family of less-actives.
On Sunday we were able to have our PEC. It was really good and we have a lot of projects that we are going to be working on with the branch so hopefully all of that goes well. Actually I always get really frustrated in PEC to be honest, not that I don’t love having everyone tell us constantly that we can’t be successful because we are all foreigners, but…. Actually I don’t love that. Afterwards we worked and then did our weekly planning, man it’s been a long week…. Gotta love missionary work!
On Tuesday, I will admit that I was a little more than frustrated with the members here, yes I realize that I don’t know Ilakano and my companion doesn’t speak very good Tagalog yet, but they pretty much tore us to shreds because of it. It was like a 20 minute lesson of them telling us how “kuwawa” (pathetic) we were….. thanks guys, love you too. Actually I sort of wanted to punch… oh yeah I’m a missionary…. God bless them. J We continued on in the loop of our teaching and had to run from a pack of vicious dogs towards the end…. Gotta love those mission stories that everyone talks about. At night when we went back to the house there was a group of Muslim women outside of our house, they were waiting for someone to bring them a new tire because there old one went flat, so we got some mike and ikes and share with them about being missionaries, obviously they weren’t converted or anything, but at least they got a nice “taste” of LDS missionaries. Learned how to cut a pineapple today…..
On Wednesday we had lunch at a members house… it was spaghetti….. that’s safe right? Nope Sister Walker didn’t want it so I had to eat a ton of it! Basically the story of my life right now. L We wouldn’t want anyone to get offended. L So instead I’m getting fat…. Kuwawa. Then we worked with some of the members, it was mostly like we were the fellow shippers… they talked A LOT but afterwards we explained to them about what their responsibilities are as fellow shippers, they did a little bit better after that, I think that that is one of the most difficult parts of working with members, is just making sure that they know what they are supposed to do and not trying to overstep their calling or take over ours, but it’s definitely more effective to work with the members. I taught the Plan of Salvation in about two Minutes today in a lesson haha they were like uh…. We have to go. And I was like 2 minutes, just 2 minutes…. Shared with them AND got a return appointment! Yes!
On Thursday we taught the first vision in a grove of… palm trees? Haha that was really awesome! We had some really great fellow shippers with us that day and so we were able to get a lot of work done and their testimonies were really powerful, that was also the day that we were able to teach one of the people that we found last week, his name is Jhon, we haven’t been able to teach him yet because we haven’t had a fellow shipper, but I think that he will really start to progress, he came to all of church yesterday and he said that he will be baptized, we didn’t give him a date yet, but we are still really hopeful. J It is a little tricky at times with an American companion, I remember when I got here I didn’t ever want to talk and stuff but Sister Francia was Filipino…. So it was okay, now when I run out of Tagalog… I just gotta keep going haha we are both learning and growing a lot.
On Friday….. we might have had a little bit of a breakdown, it happens to the best of us. J Sister Walker was just feeling very overwhelmed by everything.. So we didn’t do our weekly planning on Friday, it just wasn’t going to happen, so We instead attempted to make a cake and she told me stories about her life once we could actually get her talking again. I know she’ll break out of it soon enough. But we did have a sweet lesson on Friday, so to start off with, the day was crap! We got punted like 3 times in a row and then the lessons we taught were just so so. I’m losing my voice from talking so much and I’m way tired, so I was a little edge-y, So I was like can we just sit for like 2 seconds on this bench? Sat down seriously like 7 seconds in all and I just said in my head, “Heavenly Father, will you just give me a break?” then at our next appointment we started to teach and a ton of people just came from other houses and started listening! It was a miracle! Afterwards I was just like, “Ah…. Thank you Heavenly Father. J That was very nice of you. J”
Saturday the other Sisters had a baptism, it was really great that we were able to attend because she was my old investigator, but there really wasn’t a lot of support from the members at this baptism, so that was a little bit disappointing, Hopefully the next few are better. We didn’t have time to teach everyone that we had planned so instead we just ran the fusina loop (it’s like 2-3 miles) and stopped at everyone's house and invited them to come to church! It was effective. J We had five people from that barangay come and one family of less-actives.
On Sunday we were able to have our PEC. It was really good and we have a lot of projects that we are going to be working on with the branch so hopefully all of that goes well. Actually I always get really frustrated in PEC to be honest, not that I don’t love having everyone tell us constantly that we can’t be successful because we are all foreigners, but…. Actually I don’t love that. Afterwards we worked and then did our weekly planning, man it’s been a long week…. Gotta love missionary work!
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