I didn’t realize that it was 7/11 today till I just wrote the date down. Freak yo, I missed out on free Slurpee day! :) Anyway.. I did know it was July 11! I just didn’t realize it was 7/11. ;)
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| The sacred Grove. (; |
But! Today was my 8 month mark. I honestly cannot believe it. Next month I’m half way done.. If my second half of my mission goes by this fast I won’t like that.. I love it here so much! Time is going by so fast! Even though I still really struggle with the language and wishing I could be lazy for an hour or so every day, I love being a missionary!
I also love our Branch President here! Oh man, he is awesome! I barely know him but I want to constantly be around him. I just want to hear all the counsel and advice he has to offer. He makes me think of my dad. I’m just so excited to go home and have real gospel conversations with him and learn about everything he has to offer.. which I know is a lot! :)
Also! My district is a total party! I don’t know most of them, but I felt so welcomed and happy to be around them. They’re a lot of fun! I’m also really happy Elder Raguin is my Zone Leader again. He’s the best! :) And.. Elder Kloepfer is in my district. We met a couple years ago at AFY in Idaho. Haha, what a crazy world. We randomly met one day while camping and we see each other again in the Philippines. It was a lot of fun talking about people we both know and life back at home! It was great till it made me miss being able to drink real milk and eat real cheese! ;D
7-13-16 (Wednesday)Today was quite the party! We had Zone Interviews with President Deyro. Woo baby! And because our Zone is pretty close to Urdaneta we got to go to the mission office which is always fun. :) And even though I already had my interview with President last week, I got to visit with him again for a couple minutes because he didn’t want the rest of the Zone wondering why he didn’t interview me. I was pretty glad I ended up getting to visit with him again because ever since our interview last week I’ve been trying to live a better life and constantly repent of my short comings so I can have and feel the Spirit more abundantly all day – everyday. Then after interviews and getting our flew [?!] shots, we got to eat lunch at McDo before coming home. It’s nice to eat American food every once’n –a –while, even if it’s McDonald’s. ;)
But once we got home, we had personal and language study, which was awesome today! During personal study I just studied my purpose as a missionary and man..! That got me so excited to go out and talk to everyone I saw! It just helped me have a clearer vision of what I should be doing as a servant of the Lord. But of course the day I have the best studies ever is the day we don’t have any lessons.. haha. ;D
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| Para sa inyoooooo! (; [For you] |
So after studies Sister Diaz, Sister Alinton, Sister Quijada and I all went to go see this house that’s for rent because our contract is up for our house at the end of the month. So once we were able to have someone show us the house the other sisters really liked it so they had the finance Elder, Elder Raymundo, come look at it. Elder Raymundo and Elder Dixon didn’t really like it; which made me happy because I didn’t really like it either. But then we ended up spending the rest of the day looking for a house or apartment to rent.. We weren’t having very much luck finding anything big enough or safe enough, but I had a ton of fun so it’s all good with me that we didn’t have much success! ;D We did meet this one guy though trying to OYM [Open Your Mouth] and ask for help and he ended up driving his motorcycle around and taking us, as we followed him in the car, to all the places for rent he could think of. He was seriously the nicest/coolest guy I have ever met! I hope we can find him again so we can teach him. :)
7-14-16 (Thursday)This morning sister Deyro surprised Sister Diaz and I by joining us in personal study, companionship study, lunch, and weekly planning. At first I wanted to die. Haha, I was so uncomfortable! I didn’t want her to see and know about all my flaws and weaknesses, but once I humbled myself.. I realized it was a complete answer to Sister Diaz and I’s prayers. We have both been worried about how to take care of our area because neither of us really know what we’re doing. Sister Diaz is leading the area and doing a great job, but I keep wishing we could see our investigators more often throughout the week. But me coming from Aguilar.. I don’t know how to work in a big area. So we both were praying very diligently to know how to better our work in the area and how to plan better during weekly planning. And our prayers were answered by Sister Deyro helping us not only plan better, but to have better lessons with inspired questions and commitments.
Sister Deyro also helped me realize I need to pray more specifically. When I ask for something, I need to ask for something very specific. Not something general like “please help us to find elect investigators” or “please help me with learning Tagalog.” I should ask for specific things like “please help us find a family with 5 kids that lives close to the church.” Or “please help me to understand and know when to use an object focus or actor focus verb in Tagalog.” I’m excited to see the miracles from my more specific prayers. Hopefully I’ll receive more specific answers. :)
But also! In our nightly prayer tonight, Sister Diaz thanked Heavenly Father for the opportunity we have to talk with Him. That really struck me. I don’t think I have ever once thanked Heavenly Father for prayer.. I have completely overlooked how grateful I am for prayer. It’s something I use every single day multiple times a day, but have never expressed my gratitude to Heavenly Father for the opportunity I ALWAYS have to literally talk with Him. We ALL have the opportunity to literally talk to God. Just ponder that for a while and think of how wonderful that truly is. :) Needless to say, I learned a lot about prayer today and I LOVE IT! :)7-15-16 (Friday)
Even though work this week has been pretty challenging for Sister Diaz and I, I still love every day! But work today was pretty rough.. People here are either too busy, ayaw [unwilling], or drunk. We really want to find new investigators because none of the ones we have are really progressing. So we spent a lot of time today trying to find, so we walked around quite a bit. Which is fine because I like when we walk a lot; because I like the exercise and it always helps me get to know my companion better. Like today, Sister Diaz told me all about her boyfriend and their story. And oh my word, it is the cutest! It honestly made me jealous, like.. I hope I can find a boy as sweet and fun as Jaco. :D It just was so fun having Sister Diaz open up to me about him! She is so cute! I loved it. And I love them. ;) I feel like Sister Diaz and I are best friends now. :)
And at the end of the day, we had a dinner appointment at the Fabea’s and it was a total party! They all like to speak English so I was able to talk more than usual. They also showed me their 2 pet monkeys, 2 turtles, 2 crocodiles, and 5 million cats. It’s like they own a mini zoo! ;D But the best part was getting to see their baby pigs that were born yesterday! Oh my word! They are so freaking cute! I about died! I wanted to hold one so bad, but they were dirty.. But they were still so dang cute! :)7-16-16 (Saturday)
Today was awesome! We actually had lots of lessons today and I loved every second of it! We have two investigators that can be baptized on the 30th if we can finish teaching them all the lessons this week. I really hope we can do it, because it’s my goal to have a baptism every transfer. Kat and Argin are both so ready to be baptized! It’s just hard to teach them a lot because of how big our area is and how spread out our investigators are. But I know we can do it! This will just be a good test to see how good Sister Diaz and I are at planning and using our time. ;)
I don’t really have much more to say.. I’m just so tired and want to actually go to sleep on time. ;) It’s honestly a lot of hard work writing in my stinkin’ journal every single night. I mean, I’m 100% grateful I do..! But it’s hard work. ;)
7-17-16 (Sunday)
Today during studies I learned that I need to have better confidence in myself. It’s not like I have self pity or compare myself to others, I just think they’re great at what they do so I’m perfectly content sitting back at letting them continue doing the things they’re good at. (I just re-read that sentence and I realized even though I’m writing in English I use “at” instead of “and”, Woo! my mind is naturally thinking in Tagalog!) :)
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| I saw this and DIED! ;D |
Anyway.. In sacrament meeting these two little girls that are like 2, were running around with a bag of chips about the size of Red Hot Cheetos. One girl grabbed the bag out of the other girl’s hands and that girl obviously didn’t like that, so she grabbed it back and straight up Hulk smashed the other girl in the face with the bag of chips. Oh my word I DIED! Words cannot describe how dang funny it was! And what makes it that much better is the girl that did the hulk smash is fatter than I am, (I’m not joking, the poor two year old has kankles..) so I understand her reaction perfectly. ;D
