So I have two stories for you this week!
1. in choir we're singing "How Great Though Art" and it is awesome. especially with the massive amounts of Elders there. cuz its one of my favorite songs. also, the choir director told us how it was written and it was the coolest story ever! so this time imma tell you the story :)
Verses 1 & 2 were written by this german dude who was walking home in the middle of a huge storm and when he finally made it home, the storm cleared and he looked out at his backyard (which just so happened to be this awesome lake/forest area) and it was so beautiful and clear and he was so struck by the beauty of the earth and the powers of God that he wrote verses 1 and 2! cool, huh? you can totally feel that too in the first two verses. it is super earthy and awesome.
So that song wandered around eastern europe a bit amongst the Christians (what few there were) and it got pretty popular!
Then, a bit later, there was a dude who was a missionary in Russia and he had taught himself that song and Russian and stuff like that and he had dedicated his life to missionary work. so he would travel around Russia and every time he got to a new village he would ask if there were any Christians and he would gather them all together and teach and preach and edify and it was great! so he got to this tiny little Russian village and he went to a house and asked if there were any Christians there and they told him that the husband and wife down the road are Christian, so he wandered on down there and as he got closer he heard someone reading the bible. This was amazing because at that time, no one could read in the Russian villages, so he was super intrigued! and as he got closer he saw that there was a group of Christians and non-Christians alike gathered in this home to hear this woman read the bible! and she was reading about the Atonement and these people were so struck and amazed by what they were hearing that they were exclaiming as she read (which i guess is normal in other countries to comment while people read) and so this man just sat on the doorstep of the house (not wanting to go in and disrupt the wonderful spirit of the room) and wrote down everything he heard the people exclaim as they heard about the Atonement for the first time! and that is verse 3! how amazing is that!
k so this same guy was serving in a prisoner of war camp as a preacher or something and after a sermon/lesson/religious chat a man came up to him and started talking to him about his wife. This man's wife had been a christian for quite some time, but the man had never joined her in worship, he was not converted to Christianity until he was in the prisoner of war camp. and he had no expectation to ever see his wife again (either because he thought she was dead or he didn't expect to live through this ordeal). His only desire and greatest hope, was to worship the Lord with his wife. and he knew that that would only happen when he was reunited with her in heaven after this life. So! this preacher man went home and wrote verse four from that story. so beautiful. and the arrangement we are singing is amazing. it has the women and the men singing separate praises at the end going back and forth and then finally they join together in praise at the very end. just like this man and his wife will when they are reunited in heaven. its so beautiful!!!
the director told us to write verse five about what we see and find on our missions and send it to him. kinda a cool challenge.
ok story 2!
so on friday i think (all the days blur together) we were sitting at lunch and the MTC director (Brother Richard Heaton) was sitting next to us and chatting with us about the MTC and everything and he asked us if we have any questions and we asked him about our investigators and how we can help them and we kinda outlined our situations and everything and he gave us some really great advice! so that night when we taught Toni, we did what he told us to and it was great! then we didn't really think about our conversation with him after that, only what he had taught us. so then on sunday right before the fireside, a man got up to the podium and asked where the sisters going to the Philippines were, and we all raised our hands of course and he looked around and was like ok. and then he made his way around to each group of us and he asked us if we ate lunch with Brother Heaton, and we were like uhhhh no? (cuz we thought he meant today and can't remember what happened that morning let alone two lunches ago, and we had no idea who brother heaton was by name....) anyway he continued his search but then came back to us and was like umm im pretty sure its you sisters. so we went behind the stage thing and there was brother heaton! sure enough, it was us. so he asked us if we had done anything with what he told us on Friday and we said we had and told him a lil bit about our experience and he was like perfect! thats gold! and then he told us that conversation with us at lunch has turned into tonight's fireside! so he asked if we would share our experiences during the fireside! so we agreed and they led us out to the front row reserved seats. then a bit into his message he brought a mic down and had each of us share who we were, where we were from (he said he was in ventura a couple months ago) and where we were going and how his advice affected our teaching and what we learned and whatnot. super cool! so now everyone is like HEY! you're the philippines sisters! every time we say hi to anyone (which is always cuz my companion is the most friendly person in this world and yes i have met mom) so that's a party. we're famous. lolz. ps can you watch those firesides?? one of my elders said they're online somewhere... we're singing for the musical number in a couple weeks so you might want to check that out to see if it's true :) our district has an awesome bass, tenor, alto, and then two of us make one good soprano lolz and an awesome piano player! so we're putting together "come thou fount"
We're not supposed to speak English at all anymore. it's bawal. which is forbidden. which is funny cuz banal is divine or holy. interesting language. the word for monster (specifically bigfoot) is really close to the word for spouse too.... interesting... anyway its interesting cuz sometimes we chat away in Tagalog, no bd, and other times we are just really quiet for extended periods of time... but no complaints here about that! too much chicka-chicka usually if you ask me lolz anyway my english is already terrible so have fun with that.
sooo pananampalataya (emphasis on the T and not P like mom had it) is a cool word and all but that's just it. it's a word. it would be naming my blog "Faith!" sooo maybe we could name it Itago ang Pananampalataya! (which means keep the faith) i like that actually, let's do that :)
Thanks to everyone that wrote me!! it was so fun to hear from all of you! i'll try to write back this week, but let's be honest, it might not be till next week :) but i loved reading the letters and especially the pictures!! so thank you!!
things are great! i have to be (i mean get to be of course) senior comp one more week, (i thought we were switching this wednesday) so that's a party! we're getting two new districts on wed with four sisters and like 7 international missionaries which is the Best!!! we had a bunch in the district that left and they make it sooo much fun so we're all excited about that! but then the group above us is leaving and we'll be the only ones left!! (besides the new-bies of course)
anyways loves and hugs
mahalkita!
-sister jones
No comments:
Post a Comment