Riker Zyke, Kurt Axel and Wrecker Flynn

JUNE 8, 2014

These are all names of babies that I have met in each of my areas. Its like their mothers want them to rebel and start a garage band. Apparently the generation of Filipino babies being born right now is the generation of two names. Random fun Filipino fact for ya'll.

So this week we had an unexpected-awesome-surprise-yeah! The father of one of our recent converts came to church! I will explain why this is so amazing: the first time we met this man he was drunk and he asked us to come visit him. We set up a return appointment thinking there is no way he will remember. He remembered. And every time we saw him he was like "sisters, why didnt you come visit me?" ummm...because you are kind of creepy? Well he digs wells for a living and he was working on the well outside the church this week, so we saw him a lot and he kept asking us to go visit him, so we did finally and it was like, what the what?! Before we could teach him, we needed to find an adult female to fellowship, then it was raining so we couldnt teach him at his house because there is no where to sit inside and it was raining so outside was not an option, so we ended up teaching him at the house of another recent convert who is also his neighbor and through all this fiasco, he was very patiently, sweetly waiting for us to be able to teach him. THEN before we even start the lesson, he was like "Im going to come to church tomorrow." Sige tatay. AND THEN at the end of the lesson he said a kneeling prayer and it was so good. And guess what, on Sunday, he came to church. In a white shirt. And he was going to leave after sacrament, but we convinced him to stay for the gospel essentials class. We could not go to class with him because it was so full (#servinginstate) but the Elders said that he answered a lot of questions and said that he was going to come back again next week. Can you say GOLDEN?! I can. Golden. So freaking excited!

Sad part: Lorenz left for school. But we had lunch at his house the day before he left and it was great. We taught about family prayer with his mom and she is really opening up to us. We are still waiting to see if Lorenz will be able to come home for the weekends, but in the mean time we are going to try and teach just his parents tomorrow. It could be a struggle, but I have high hopes.

And have you ever tried to tell two old Catholic nanays that their baptisms are not valid? Maybe one of you does, shout out Italy, but I think the rest of you might not know how that goes. Its a bit rough. We have these two part member nanays who we are teaching and they have both been fighting accepting a baptismal date. This week we re-extended to them and it went well, but not the way we wanted. Each of them was like "I have already been baptized" and in my missionary life, that has always been a hard concern for me to explain. But as me and Sister Deyro testified and explained to them the necessity of God's true authority for baptism, I felt so guided by the Spirit in everything I said. They still did not accept the dates, but I know the Spirit was there in the lessons, and now it is up to them to accept and pray about it or not. I have high hopes.

Each week has good moments and bad moments, but the work rolls on! And side note, this week we get to go alllllllll the way to Laoag to hear Elder Ardern speak. He was the guy in General Conference with the SUUUUPER thick New Zealand accent. I am pretty stoked.

Mahal Kita!

Sis Bet