The Power of Prayer

This week was so amazing! Sister Villa and I taught and met lots of people, had lots of fun and my testimony definitely grew a lot. 

I am also finally starting to see some real progress with the language! Granted, one day I feel like I'm great at Tagalog and the next I feel like I know nothing, but I can definitely tell that I am improving. Also I am already getting faster at hand-washing laundry! It still takes me a while, but all our neighbors are no longer laughing at me for how slow I am :)

Last Monday, I was so happy to get to hear from my family and everyone else back home/on missions. Sorry I do not always have the time to respond to everyone but I promise that I read and love all of them. They definitely help make my week so much better and I will do my best to respond to as many of you as I can.

Last week, I was feeling a little anxious because I was anticipating Sister Villa's and my's last meeting with Brother Emanuel, who we have both come to know and care for a lot. I didn't know what to do about it so I was definitely saying many prayers. We taught him again last Tuesday and it ended up being a huge faith building experience for me. I wanted to share a little bit about it. 

As I said, a lot of prayers went into preparing that lesson because I knew that it might be our last. Before, I expressed my love of Christ and testimony through a piece of art that I drew...

and a letter in Tagalog for Brother Emanuel that I was hoping might help change his mind. 

Last lesson, we also strongly encouraged him to read the chapter of the Book of Mormon that we assigned him for this upcoming lesson and prayed that he would feel prompted to actually read. 

Long story short he did! We went over to teach and ended up having an amazing lesson. Additionally he agreed to let us come back and teach again.

I felt so happy and thankful about the lesson and after, I really started to think about how God answered my prayer. As I was pondering, I realized that God has always answered my prayers even if it is not always in the way or the time I expected.

Learning this really helped me to build my testimony on the power of prayer. I started thinking about all the answers I have gotten just in this past week and in this past year. I know that if we pray with real intent and faith we will always receive an answer. Learning this made me realize even more how important it is to pray for our investigators, and I plan to pray twice as hard for Emmanuel and our other investigators this upcoming week.

Besides that, things are going as usual here. Every day, I am slowly improving at Tagalog, my faith is growing and I am getting better at managing my time. The rat poison we bought last week is already gone and I haven't seen any rats in the past couple days and I got to go to a trainers and trainees meeting in Naga last Wednesday. I learned about how to be a better missionary and utilize my time. While we were in Naga, we also went to the hospital to get an ointment for Sister Villa's rash. 

We think she is allergic to something in Goa because she keeps getting an itchy rash on her arms and legs. Additionally, I am no longer afraid of spiders or cockroaches and I make a personal effort to kill a couple every day.

Last Friday, I killed my first rat. We came home from an interesting day of work when I found a rat who had fallen off of the pipe in the back room and impaled its leg on a wire on the pipe, so it couldn't move. 

Sister Villa wouldn't kill it so I ended up having to do it. Let me tell you... it definitely was not fun. I felt so bad and was almost in tears by the time the rat was dead. One thing I learned from this experience is that I don't like killing rats.

Finally, I experienced my first black out this week! Sure, we always lose power in our house but this time there was no power in our entire area for about 30 minutes Thursday night! According to Sister Villa that is pretty normal in the Philippines. Which I understand because once the power went out, everyone went about life as usual. Some people even pulled out candles and used them to light their little shops.

The longer I have been here, the more I am beginning to appreciate all the luxuries I grew up with. I am thankful for AC, real roads,

  a house without rats, cockroaches, or spiders 

and a nice car. I am thankful I grew up with toys, games and nice clothes. I am thankful for washing machines, toilet paper, showers with warm water and flushing toilets. I am thankful for ovens, English and my family.

At the end of each day, my feet are always covered in mud

 and I have a couple new mosquito bites. I hand-rinse my clothes, take cold showers and eat rice with every meal. 

When I ride a tricy or enter a home, I always have to crouch and my feet hang off the end of my mattress. But I have never been happier in my life. I love the Philippines, every part of it :) and I am so grateful that I am lucky enough to serve here.

 -Sincerely, Sister Matheny