Put A Bird On It

JUNE 29, 2014

So this morning, after we were done cleaning, I was eating breakfast and Sister Deyro was doing the dishes, a BIRD flew into our house. This is the second time this has happened, and the first time, the bird few in for a little bit, then found his way out quickly. But this dumb bird had to fly around for 45 minutes before our land lord could even catch him to throw him back outside. I tried not to laugh too hard at the absurdness of the situation, since dear brother Domin was trying so hard to catch the little fellow. He was running around out house with our broom in one hand and a giant decorative fork in the other trying to coral the bird. In the end, man prevailed and only a few feathers were lost.

Church was epic this week. We had three investigators come to church, and they all stayed for all three hours. Of course, the ever faithful Tatay Fred was there, but we also had two new sisters come. Angelica is a former investigator who we have been teaching, she and her husband are very interested and he was also going to come to church this week, but he got called into work early on Sunday morning. However, Angelica still came by herself even though she had a baby and a young, rowdy son to take care of. Super star. Then Marites also came to church, her two year old daughter is named Megan and is the first Megan I have ever met in the Philippines. Turns out Marites is Angelica's aunt even though they are not that far apart in age. So that was great for them to be able to sit together in classes and talk about what they did not understand and just generally share the experience of the first time at church together. They even sat, of their own choice, at the front for the combined Relief Society and Elders Quorum meeting. I am through the roof.

Something kinda sad. We did not have any new investigators this week. That is the first time that has happened to me while I have been on my mission. We usually find about ten new people a week, but this week, wala. As in talaga. It was a sad moment to write that big zero on the key indicators list. Its all good though, we have a new area that has been added to our current area that we will be exploring this week, and we have some referrals that we need to contact this week as well. Big things are in the works here. On the other hand, we had 16 recent convert or less active lessons this week. We have a lot of recent converts here, also a lot of less actives, what else is new.

We did also have a woman straight up say to us "ayaw ko ng Mormons" or "I dont like Mormons" thanks lady, God loves you too.

Went on exchanges this week, and sorry Italy, I did not get to go on exchanges in a place like Pisa, but I did get to walk the beloved streets of Gonzaga again. And I got to have the amazing experience of teaching a truly changed man. He is the uncle of a returned less active and when I was serving in Gonzaga, he was a drunk. His brother died suddenly, and they had the funeral at the church and he collapsed during the service because he was drunk/dehydrated from drinking so much. He was always nice, but Sister Morris told me that he used to debate with the missionaries and prove the Book of Mormon wrong. NOW, he has come to church 8 times, cut down the booze and is one of the happiest people I have met, so curious, so willing to learn and even though I taught him Obey and Honor the Law (one of the silliest lessons in Preach My Gospel) I just felt blessed to be able to teach him. The Atonement really does change lives and people. It has surely changed me and Brother Louie.

Mahal Kita!

Sis Bet

Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ Have Bodies of Flesh and Rocks

JUNE 22, 2014

So in Tagalog, the word for bones is buto and the word for rocks is bato. So as you may imagine, I still get those mixed up sometimes even though I have been out for about a YEAR (holy shoot yall, when did that happen?). So this week I have definitely testified to people that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have bodies of flesh and rocks. Thank goodness for companions.

So Tatay Fred is still doing well, he is struggling to understand the doctrine, it is like when we teach him, we are talking about the Restoration and prophets and he is thinking about Adam and Eve. We are not really sure what is up with that, but I know that when he starts to read the Book of Mormon everyday and start praying more regularly, he will start to really get it. But he did come to church yesterday and he has been following the Word of Wisdom for about two weeks! He has gone from smoking a pack of cigarettes a day to only smoking three. He no longer drinks alcohol and is just drinking warm milk in the morning! It has been really cool to see the change this has had in his family. His son, who was a recent convert verging on less activity started to come back to church and we are going to start teaching some more of his family and friends! Man, I love this tatay.

We have also been meeting a lot of really prepared people this week. We had six people really commit to come to church, but then Satan thought it would be a fun idea to plan a parade on Sunday morning, the participation in which was required for all school kids. BLERG. So of course, our little congregation of 120 dropped to 68 and only two of our investigators came to church, one of which took a fair amount of convincing to get into the tricie to go to the chapel. Get behind us Satan. Next week we are going to have ALL THE INVESTIGATORS! All I tell you!

Stubborn Catholic nanays are still being stubborn and Catholic. But one less active former Catholic nanay who started going back to the Catholic church has really been warming up to us. I think she is close to coming to church. More to come.

All in all, it was a really good week, in spite of the Satan parade on Sunday.

Mahal Kita!

Sis Bet

You Know Its Hot When You Break Into A Sweat Clipping Your Finger Nails

JUNE 15, 2014

Yeah, that happened this morning. Grabe. Right now, I really just break into a sweat no matter what kind of activity I am doing.

So Tatay Fred Milanes, the man we met when he was drunk? Well he came to church again and this week was District Conference, so that meant that he had to go all the way to Gonzaga to go to church. And you know what he did? Went to Gonzaga and was on time and stayed for the entire morning session. Sis Deyro and I went to pick up and elderly recent convert and when we were riding in the trike back to the jeep terminal, I saw Tatay Fred standing on the side of the high way watching for a jeep to take him to Gonzaga AND he was waiting with his recent convert son who has kind of gone a little less active. Oh my can I just express how much love I have for this man?! I have taught prepared people before, but something feels different about Tatay Fred, he is just so willing to do all the things we ask of him and he is reading the Book of Mormon and he is already uniting his family in the gospel even before he is a member and good golly gosh wow this man!

This week we also got to go to Laoag to listen to Elder Ardern from the area presidency speak. His training was so good. He just kind of started talking and went where the Spirit took him. We seriously talked about everything from how to help our investigators feel the Spirit to marriage advice to how we develop talents to what the Beatitudes mean. That man is called of God, fo real. So we went for that awesome training AND I got to see all the people. Sis Keith is now near Laoag, so she is way far from me now :(. But I got to see Sis Abelhouzen, she is looking so good and is now in Cagayan as well. Sis Sese was there and Sis Kenfield and it was so good to see all of them. I squealed more than one time.

Other awesome thing from District Conference, we sustained and set apart EIGHT new Melchizedek priesthood holders and THREE of them are from the Sta Teresita branch and ALL of them are preparing for missions and TWO of them are recent converts that live in my area. When they all stood up, I could almost not contain my joy, but I did because we were in a room of, like 300 people and that would have been awkward. But, really people, this is HUGE. This district is growing by leaps and bounds. Last march they set apart another three priesthood holders and there are just more to come! Its gonna be a Stake soon. Maybe next year. So awesome.

Last, one of the awesome priesthood recent converts mentioned above has this aunt that is quite possibly the most busy person I have ever met, next to Deon Bettilyon, but I have seen this woman sit down maybe twice ever. We always try to teach her, but she is always like "sorry, busy" so this last wee we were just standing and talking to her, then we started teaching about the Sabbath Day and then we shared a scripture and testified and ended in a prayer and while it was all happening, I was like "of course, if we are going to teach Evelyn we just have to stand." So we did and it was awesome. It is going to be hard, but I think she has a lot of potential too.

Also, its my freaking BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!! Thanks in advance to all the happy birthday emails I have not yet read. Love yall too!

Mahal Kita!

Sis Bet

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

So We Are Back To That

JUNE 1, 2014

Back to pumping water every day, twice a day. Yeah, so you know how our water was brown before? Last week it turned black and Sister Deyro and I went back to pumping and carrying in water for our showers. The water in our tap went back to clear-ish, but the smell is still really gross, so we are just going to be rocking it old school for at least two more transfers here in Sta Te. #servinginthephilippines. Dont worry though, we got a filter for our kitchen sink, but even the three tower filter cannot completely erase the smell of nasty from our water. But we are still alive, so I think our dishes will be fine, we will just keep buying drinking water.

So this week is sad, but good. Our golden investigator Lorenz is moving to Tugugerao for school. Tugugerao is in a different mission. Boo. We will refer the missionaries to him there, but we are really just praying that his schedule will allow him to come home on the weekends so he can be baptized here. The up side is that his mom is really warming up to us. She has gone from not sitting in on the lessons to being at every one and on Saturday night we were walking by their house and she shouted hi and waved at us! Such progress. Next step is church.

Also this week, we had interviews and training by President Barrientos and it was such an answer to prayers. He talked about how we have investigators who seems really golden in the first two lessons, then at lesson three they all of a sudden are not interested anymore. We have had that a lot in the past week or so and it had been really confusing and frustrating to me and Sister Deyro. I just sat and took so many notes. It was all amazing stuff and it really makes sense. In teaching the gospel to people, we ask them to change a lot about their lives in a very short amount of time, it is completely reasonable for them to back out after only a short while. But it is our responsibility as missionaries to reassure them that change wont happen all at once and that the changes they make will make them happier. So we went back and visited Angelica Yere and she said we can still come back and visit her, hooray for inspired teaching!

We also met a less active pioneer this week. She was one of the first members here in Sta Te and now she is less active. It breaks my heart. She told us all about why she stopped going to church--kind of a long story, we were there for an hour and a half--but she basically was offended. But she also told us how unhappy she is and that she knows it is because she is not going to church. She said that every time she goes by the chapel, she feels so happy and light inside and how she wants to come back, but that she has no one to go to church with. Her neighbors are all less active too. She said she would come to church, and she didnt, but I didnt really expect that change to happen that quickly. During that lesson though, I just felt how much God loves and misses sister Cayari and it made me love her and miss her too. I cant wait to go back and visit her

So there is this old tatay in our area that lives by a recent convert and every time we go he starts talking to me and is like "you are an American" and I am all "wen tatay." but the other day we were taking to him more and we ask him how old he is and he goes into this whole long thing about how he is still young and looking for a wife. No tatay, I will not be your next wife.

I have been learning a lot this week about the cost of our discipleship. As disciples of Christ, we have a lot of responsibilities. Callings, missionary work, tithing, service, following the commandments, sacrificing our will for God's and so much more. It all sounds really difficult, but the more I learn about how much it costs to be disciple of Christ, the more excited I get. I love that my life gets to be full of sacrifices for the Lord, and I love that making these sacrifices means that I have his promise of safety and happiness. The gospel is great isnt it?

Mahal Kita!

Sis Bet

There Is A First Time For Everything

May 25, 2014

So this week I had my first instance where I actually had to RUN away from dogs. There are dogs EVERYWHERE here, as in everywhere. None of them have been fixed, so they just keep going around making new barking, sad, starving, angry dogs. In my previous areas, we had dogs that would bark at us, but they were harmless or tied to a tree with a chain. But this week, we were walking away from an investigators house and everything is fine until we hear all this barking behind us and we turn around and a pack of dogs comes running out of this gate coming right for us. Sister Deyro and I look at each other and then just start running. We get to a patch on the dirt road where there are a bunch of stones and we pick them up to throw at the dogs. The good thing is, since the dogs here always have stones thrown at them, they see you bend over, and they usually start to back off. The funny part is, I picked up a little stone and just threw it as they ran back to their house, but Sister Deyro picked up this giant shot put sized rock and hurled it at them. Die laughing I did. She is itty bitty, and she chose the big rock. Maybe you had to be there.

So this week we had a couple of set backs, we had two investigators with a lot of potential drop us through text. Boo. Mary Jane said her husband, who was less active Igelsia ni Cristo, decided that he wants to go back to church and does not want her to talk to us anymore. Then Angelica, she was a former investigator that we re-contacted on Tuesday, taught again on Thursday, extended and accepted a baptismal date and she said she would come to church on Sunday, then she texted us during church and said that she no longer wanted us to visit her. It is so heart breaking to meet these people, who have so much potential, to drop you. I think Angelica is just scared because we extended baptism so quickly. Even though you explain that coming to church does not mean you will be baptized immediately, a lot of people here think that going to church means you are a member. I think we might try and visit Angelica again this week and try to explain what we are really there for. To help her come unto Christ, not just to throw her into the baptismal font.

I had a realization this week about the organization of the Church. It really is like a family. We went to a recent convert's house to teach them, and as we started talking, she started telling us about this problem that they were having with their farm land. They rent the land and they have a little farm and some pigs. They had paid their rent, but the people they rent from said that they had added a payment of 6,000 pesos because of some maintenance work they had done. This family does not have 6,000 pesos. So we talk to her about it and Sister Deyro says that she should talk to President Tabulog, the Branch President, about her problem. Sister Cabudol just kind of looked at her and was like "he can help me?" we said yes, that if she has any kind of problem, she should talk to the Branch President because it is his job to help the members in Sta Teresita. We took her to President's house and they started talking and we left, so I dont know what happened there, but I think I realized, like Sister Cabudol, that once you become a member of the Church, you become a part of an international family. When you have a problem, you should tell your church leaders, because they have the authority from God to help you. This Church is so much more than just a church, it is a family and families help each other.

I think that is something I have slowly realized on my mission is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not just a church or a way you live your life on Sunday, it is everything. The more I have realized that, the more comfort I feel. I dont really have to worry about anything else in life except trying to live the gospel and keep my covenants, everything else will shake out in the end, because if I am being a valiant disciple of Christ, I may have trials, but I know I can make it through them because of his promised blessings. I just love Jesus.

Mahal Kita rin!

Sis Bet

How Do You Get German Measles in Filipino Philippines?

May 18, 2014

I dont really know, but I managed to do it. So, when I Skyped yall last week, apparently I already had German Measles. I had had a fever the last three days before that, but I felt better on Monday, Skyped and then felt awful immediately after, so perhaps that was a little tender mercy from the Lord. Dont worry, I am 100% better except for the gross colored rashes that are still on my legs, but Sister Barrientos says those will go away, and she is a registered nurse, so we can trust her. President Barrientos also says "dont worry, you will return to your normal color" and he is a man of God, so we can trust him too.

So since I was sick Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday, we did not get as much work done as we would have hoped, but its okay, it was still a good. We taught Lorenz and his parents and his parents accepted baptism! They also committed to come to church yesterday, but did not come. So that was a bummer, but I think they are close to progressing. Each time we go, Lorenz's mom looks happier to see us, and she is sitting in on lessons now, so that shows real progress. We taught about the Word of Wisdom, and Melvie (Lorenz's mom) was all over it. She looked at her husband and was like "alcohol and cigarettes are bawal, how interesting." Okay, so she didnt say, "how interesting" but that was the feeling of what she said. It was great though. We committed them to live the WOW and they accepted. I am excited to follow up on that. Yesterday was also Lorenz's third Sunday at church, which means he just has to come one more time and he can be baptized! We are not totally sure if he is converted yet, it seems more like the Gospel just makes sense in his head, it has not really entered into his heart yet, but at least it makes sense to him. We are going to start dropping by every day to check in, I think it will really help him.

So remember the Pajarillios? Nanay is the one who had the dream about working with the missionaries? Well they moved last week and their new house is freaking legit. So you walk from the high way, past these houses, then you go up this little path that leads into a coconut tree orchard? I dont know if you call those orchards, but any way, you go up there, wind around these little hills and valleys and you round a corner and there is their house, on an ISLAND in the middle of these fish ponds. To get to the house you have to walk across this little foot bridge made out of bamboo. Its like the Swiss Family Pajarillio up in there. They have these two bamboo hammocks that swing out over the water and I want to nap in those all the days. It is so cool though. Pictures to follow, I will steal Sis. Deyro's camera just for the occasion.

The work keeps plugging along here in Sta Te, and I think this next week has a lot of miracles coming. It will be nice to work for an entire week finally.

Mahal Kita!

Sis Bet