September 17, 2013
Story time.
So there are a ton of ants here. like a ton.
mostly we just ignore them. sometimes they get annoying and we kill them. but
most of them are so tiny, you can literally blow them away. but if you leave
food out for five mins, when you return, there will be ants. they have mad
skills.
Anyway i bought some cereal the other week and
i hadn't opened it yet so i left it in the cupboard. then i mixed up my
powdered milk (yes mom, i drink powdered milk now.... you can die of shock
later lolz) and then poured my cereal straight into the milk, after having JUST
opened it. mistake.
Apparently it had a hole somewhere in the bag
cuz there were lots of little ants swimming around in my cereal that
morning..... back to the not germaphobic part....... i just had a lil extra
protein in my breakfast that morning..... and then next few morning till that
cereal was all gone.... i guess that's a "you know you've lived in the Philippines
[Mom's note: Blaaaaaaahhhh]
This week was... interesting. a lot of meetings.
so not a ton of work. i've found that not teaching puts you (aight, me) in a
slump. it's rough to get going again, even though all the meetings motivate and
inspire you... it's really the good lessons that keep me going. when you really
connect with the person you're teaching and you can just feel the words the
Lord wants them to hear filling your mouth and soul. those are the best. for
reals.
Sister Sperry challenged us to give Books of
Mormon to the members and have them give them to friends and then follow up on
those people as new investigators. so that was cool. plus i randomly felt the
need to change up our area. hard core. like stop our schedule. break it. get
rid of it. start anew. keep the few gems and scratch the rest. ibig sabihin!!!!
we spent a good amount of time the last few days pounding the pavement. we hit
the CMIS hard. found less-actives i didn't even know existed and found members
i had no idea lived in our area.
We had a lot of cool experiences come from it.
including!!!!
1. the realization that i love finding people
here. maybe anywhere. but especially here. cuz it just seems so impossible and
then you just ask. you ask the most random people and they just magically know!
and then you find them! even though there are no street signs and no phone
numbers and madalas, we dont even have house numbers! but you find them because
they are not lost to the Lord. i love it.
2. we have an entire family of super active
people that are almost all endowed that lives on the outskirts of our area...
only problem is, they are active in a different ward! (this was by far the most
random find everrrrrr)
we were walking to the barangay hall to see if
they had an address for one family of less-actives, but the barangay hall
turned out to be wicked far away. we still walked the whole way there.... and
back.... sorry companions..... (we had relamie with us and it was raining all
hard... she's a lil trooper) anyway as we were walking i looked up randomly and
saw the street sign! it said...... susano street! and remembered writing down
an address from our CMIS on susano st! (i had never seen slash walked this
street before and thought it was on the opposite side of our area....)
So after majorly failing at the barangay hall
we decided to find this family! so we are asking all the lil tindahans what
there address is and we get to where it should be and stick our heads under the
tarp and out of the rain and ask what the address there is and it was the right
one so we asked it the ...... ___ family lives there! (i can't remember the
name now...) and they were like why? are they not going to church???? and we
were like wooooaaaaah calm down there kid. we don't even know who they are! and
they were like oh. well they need to be going to church, imma call em later and
ask.
long story short, they're a super legit family
that works at the temple weekly, and should be in our ward and they gave us two
referrals!
3. One day we got punted alllll day.
literally. that doesn't happen to me a whole lot. it was lame. but it had a
purpose! so finally at the end of a very long day of walking, we go to visit a
semi-active family to do the BOM challenge with them. we walk up to their house
only to see a "for rent" sign on the gate and absolutely nothing and
no one inside. laaaaaaame. they moved. so im like well, that's a bummer. and im
ready to go to our next apt. sister cestona was like nope. not happening. so
she starts asking allll the neighbors where they are. on the third try we
discovered that they moved two doors down!!!!!! so close! so we went and taught
them and they gave us a referral too! of their new house help :) stoked.
4. Then! we went to our returning
less-active's house, way later than usual and halfway through the lesson on the
10 commandments, her husband who is not a member and a bit hostile most of the
time walks in!! i didn't really know how to treat him but i was sitting on the
floor in the way of him getting to the rest of the house so i kinda leaned
forward so he could pass if he wanted to but instead! he just sat right with
us! in our lil circle! coooooool. still a lil confused at his intent. so we
slowly worked him into the discussion so as not to scare him away and it was
great! he talked about how the gospel has blessed his family so much and how he
used to read or pray or go to church or whatever and it was good and he knows
it was good and that he needs to do it again and all this awesome stuff. it was
super cool. definitely needed to be there then. and we totes wouldn't have been
were we not punted alllll day.
those were just a few, with i am sure, many
more to come.
The Lord's thoughts are not our thoughts,
they're better. always. Trust Him. even with your life.
have a great week!
-sister jones
lil tidbit of my email to president :
Our amazing golden family didn't come to
church this week because they don't have any money or jobs. It's so sad to see
them so close to great changes in their lives but held back by such small
things. Like pamasahe. In our lesson last week we were talking about the Holy
Ghost and we asked the 19 year old boy if he's felt the Holy Ghost and he told
us as he read the Book of Mormon he just felt that it was true. He just felt it
so strongly like someone was telling it to him. Then the father told us that as
they pray as a family, he just feels that what they're doing is good. That he
is teaching his children how to be good people.
The Sister was a bit quiet, but at the end of
the lesson she shared an amazing experience with us. Background, her father
hung himself last December and she had and is having a really hard time with
his passing. She frequently has dreams of her father that he is unhappy now in
the after life and it troubles her greatly. The night before our lesson she had
another dream, but this one was different. Her father came to her in her dream.
He was so happy. He told her how happy he was that she was accepting the gospel
and joining this church. He was finally at peace and able to progress in his
state. Sister woke up and told her husband how true the church is. We had taken
them to temple tour a couple weeks before that and as she was sharing this
dream, the kids and the nephew are all teaching about baptisms and other
ordinances for the dead.
All the kids and the nephew want to serve a
mission. This family is amazing. They will get to church!!!!!
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