Called to Serve: Week 14 in the Philippines!

This week, as usual, has been really good! In particular it was full of a lot of laughs

and some good learning and teaching opportunities. Additionally, it has been full of growing anticipation and excitement as we have counted down the days for tomorrow, when we will get to go to Naga for a seminar with Elder Bednar. We are so stoked! To be honest though, I'm pretty sure my companion is WAY more excited than me. Elder Bednar is her FAVORITE apostle and she absolutely loves him.

Last Monday while we were cleaning our house for P-day, my kabahay Sister Jimenez went a little crazy and basically cleaned the entire house. We were helping of course, but after a couple hours of straight cleaning, Sister Stackhouse, Sister Satini and I had our fill of cleaning while Sister Jimenez was still going strong. I won't complain of course, because now I think we might have just about the cleanest house in the mission. It's almost like being back home! ;)

Anyways, while Sister Jimenez was cleaning, she found a weight scale in our cabinet which we immediately had fun using. Seeing my weight really helped inspire me to start trying to work out and eat healthier this week. I will just say, the working out part ended up being a success. I managed to motivate myself to workout almost every day this week. But the eating healthier thing could use some work. ;)

For one, there are little tindfahans (stores) full of food everywhere in the Philippines and I always like to stop for a snack (since they are so cheap, and delicious). My new kabahay is another reason I am gaining weight as she is an awesome cook! It's really annoying! Ha Ha And what's worse, is Filipinos are not sensitive about weight, so if I start to put some on, she immediately starts asking how many months along I am. She thinks its really funny :) I think my favorite think she has cooked is sopas, which we ate last night. It was absolutely delicious! Additionally, I received some packages from my mom this week that were full of awesome stuff from America, including Mac & Cheese. Which I absolutely love!

This week, I have learned so much from Sister Satini's example, and I think my Tagalog is getting better too. When she first got here, I think I was a little shy to speak Tagalog around her because I was afraid that what I said would be wrong. But as the week went on, I slowly got over my irrational fear and felt more comfortable speaking Tagalog around her.

About the language, I feel like there are some ups and downs to having another foreigner as a companion. For one, it is nice that we both speak English, so it is so much easier to express my thoughts and ideas to her in English. On the flip side though, since we are both fluent in English, it can be a huge temptation to just always speak English outside of lessons. Additionally, Sister Satini has been speaking a lot of English to me because she is trying to practice for when David A. Bednar comes (she wants to sound smart). That is alright though because I have found that when I am doing my part to speak the language, Sister Satini is always quick to help me correct my grammar, which is really helping me to get better. Especially while we are teaching :)

So about the teaching... it has been great! For one, we have really been focusing our teaching on progressing investigators and in some ways, I feel that making them our focus has almost caused us to be busier and to help our investigators progress. Now we actually have 15 baptismal dates with two baptisms coming up this Saturday, it is so exciting! In a couple instances, I feel like it has even been the investigator who found us instead of us who found the investigator.

For example, when we were walking along last week we crossed paths with this teenager playing with a rubix cube. As we were walking by he called out us and we all started talking. At first I thought I had already met him, because he was acting like we had met before. I didn't want him to think I had forgotten about meeting him, so I pretended we had already met too. Only to find out a minute or two later that we never had. That was slightly embarrassing.

Anyways, we invited him to church last Sunday and were surprised when at the beginning of Sacrament meeting, he actually showed up! Sister Satini and I were so excited! Since then, we have gone over to teach him a couple times and let me tell you, there is definitely something special about him. For one, he has such a strong spirit and is so open and receptive to the Holy Ghost.

At our second lesson with him, we shared a Mormon message with him and his family and by the end of the video, he had tears in his eyes and lots of good things to say about the message. After, we extended a baptismal date to him and his mother and they both accepted. Before we left, he said that he could feel a difference at our church compared to the many others he had visited and he really liked it.

After that lesson, I left with a big smile on my face, feeling so blessed and fortunate to have gotten to meet him and to be a part of the Lord's work.

Besides that, this week has been very busy. For one, I think I have become an expert of the area book with all the practice I have had this past week.

Additionally, I have also become an expert at catching ducks.

I've even caught a pigeon or two!

I don't want to say anything bad or disrespectful about the good name of the giraffe, but I honestly think that in the past few weeks, ducks have definitely become my favorite animal. For one, they look so cute and funny when they waddle around everywhere with their little heads bobbing back and forth. For another, they make the funniest noises! Especially when you chase them!

I will admit, when we headed out to one of our further areas this weekend (bahay) and I saw a group of hundreds of ducks along the path, I couldn't help but to catch one. It was so cute!

On another occasion, I straight up slipped and basically fell on my face in the mud as I unsuccessfully tried to grab a duck. Sister Satini laughed so hard, she says she wished she had videotaped it.

So overall, despite the slips (literally and with the language) I feel like this week has been really good.

I have been trying to work on learning to be more humble this week, starting by trying to figure out what humility really means. As I was reading in Alma 5, a part of verse 5 really stuck out to me, which says "...and a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God."

This really made me realize that an important part of humility is for us to really learn to trust in the Lord and his timing. I know that the Lord has a plan for each of us, we just need to be willing, patient, and humble enough to accept it, I know that if we can just do that, there is no end to the joy we can have in this life and the life to come.