Called to Serve: A really great week!

It has been a really great week! Things have been getting back to normal here.

I'm FINALLY caught up on sleep and Sister Raneses and I have been having a lot of fun together. I really am learning a lot from her.

So to start, this week I experienced my first in-grown toenail. And let me tell you... THEY HURT! When my toe started swelling at first, I thought it would just get better on its own, so I left it... well, that turned out to be a mistake because by the end of this week the whole thing hurt, was swollen, and had turned red and blue. So after this I am going to get a pedicure to take care of the problem (that's what the Filipinos here told me to do).

Speaking of which, that is one cultural difference between the Philippines and America. Here, if someone has a cut, sickness, infection or anything like that, they don't just go to the hospital to get it fixed. Instead, they ask all of their friends and neighbors for advice on how to fix the injury and then just do that. Also, it is normal here to see older nanays sitting outside with kids helping pull out gray hairs or moms sitting and pulling out lice from their kids hair. Here, everyone just seems more open. I guess that's normal though when a lot of the people here are so poor that they don't even have showers, so the either use the community water pump and shower with t-shirt and shorts, or they wait for it to rain.

Additionally, many of the people here don't have electricity in their homes, so if we go share with them at night we either have to teach in the dark, or use our flashlight. In other homes, it is not uncommon for a family to have only one light-bulb for the entire house. So if they need light in another room, they will unscrew the light-bulb and take it with them. In a lot of poorer homes though, an entire family will live inside of a home about half the size of my bedroom back home, so at night they will all sleep across one bamboo mat stretched out on the floor.

One of my favorite things that sometimes happens here though is when we go over to teach at a home that has a TV. Now when I say TV, I don't mean the nice flat-screen ones we are used to in America. I mean the big old boxes that we used to use in the 80's and 90's. And usually, there is only one TV (if they have one at all) for the whole family. Since we are not allowed to watch TV, we always ask the family to turn the TV off before we come in. Sometimes though, there is someone in the house that doesn't want to listen, so they will literally unplug the TV and take it with them into another room so they can keep watching.

Anyways, enough about all that! Let me talk a little bit about this awesome week! So to start, I think one of the best days this week was Tuesday.

Sister Raneses and I were sitting at the house doing studies on Tuesday when suddenly, we got a call from the AP asking for a favor. When we asked what the favor was, he asked us if we were willing to be Sister Black's temporary companion for the day. I almost jumped for joy as we quickly rushed over to the mission office to get her.

When I saw Sister Black again, I gave her the hugest hug ever and was a little surprised when I was so happy that I couldn't hold back a tear... or two. Once we got home, we finished out studies and headed out to work. While we were out, we had an awesome day! We taught tons of people and talked with lots more, even managing to reach our goal of 10 lessons taught and 30 testifying contacts for the day. It was awesome!

After that, Sister Black and I stayed up just a little bit too late talking, sharing stories and catching up. It sounds like things are going good in Goa and that Sister Black has really got the area moving. Now, she's training!!!! Which is really exciting, and it turns out that her new trainee is also an American! Crazy, right?

In addition to that, last Saturday we also had a baptism for Sister Francia! Which ended up turning out really well. She was so happy on Saturday as she entered the waters of baptism and cried afterwards as she stood and bore her testimony about how grateful she was to become a member of this church and for all the changes she has seen in her life because of it.

What made that day even more special thought, was that her husband--Ferdinand, another recent convert of ours who was baptized last month--got to baptize her.

The next day at sacrament meeting when she received the Holy Ghost, she was smiling so big all day and almost seemed to be glowing with the spirit. I was so happy for her!

Besides that, it really has been a good week. And as I have looked back over all my weeks here in Naga, I am so happy! I have gotten to watch so many people grow and change and have been a part of so many different conversion stories... it's awesome! I am just so grateful to get to serve here.

Yes, there are ups and downs. But getting to see the smiles on a person's face and a new light in their eyes as they accept the gospel makes it all worth it. And it definitely didn't hurt when I got to open several awesome packages from home...