It's a beautiful Day! -- Mission Birthday and random answers

Sister Cestona and Sarah

Sarah and Sister Mower

Sarah and Sister Mower - they made matching shirts

September 29, 2013  It’s a beautiful Day!

it's a beautiful day! lookin for something fun to do, hey baby, i think i'll turn 22!!! 
yeah that song plays a lot here...... also! mimi the dog died.... it was her time to go.... like a year ago. 

anyway back to beautiful days! my birthday was one of those. the sisters went out early and got 22 pieces of pan de sal and taho!!!! malinamnam for sure. (that is a real word ps and it means delicious. my life became complete the day i learned that.) then we opened my package!!! it was very pink!! lolz

then we studied. and did weekly planning. and got punted from a few appts. taught some munchkin RC/LAs, actually, told them they were lame and we'll come back when they stop being lame. came home and went to bed! 

Me on my birthday with my stuffz

Birthday poster from my comps

All four of us (companion and house mates)

juuuust kidding! well, all of that is very true. before we left for work the zone leader called (he was in the office for some unknown reason) and they all sang happy birthday to me! it was very sweet! then i came home and the other sisters had made a beautiful spaghetti dinner and we played games and ate spaghetti and had a party :) and they gave me all sorts of fun stuff. like! a jeepney shirt that glows in the dark. awesome. and headbands and earrings that have a face on them of some famous dude here... and a coin purse... lots of fun stuff! best part was most def the super hero birthday poster :) it was a lovely day

other things that happened this week........ our stove died and was started a perpetual shocking fund for us every time we cooked..... we got a new one this morning :)

also...... this week was family week! go philippines, they have a whole week to celebrate the family. astig. so! we had a family day celebration at the church for our ward and the other ward that meets there... we were supposed to get there in time for lunch and to hand out family proclamations to the world to errybody... but we lucked out and caught like two hours of instruction on how to prepare for natural disasters and whatnot. that was cool too i guess. good for people to know cuz we get floods every few years... or weeks :)

Making-Angay family

Response to Lindsay's dear elder! random things!!! 

first off. every day i feel like i'm living the Truman show. for reals. cuz everything just happens the same way every time!!! it used to be we walk out of the house and someone would comment on how mimi needs to die... but then she died.... we're gonna have to find new out of door conversations..... 

People wake up crazy early here! and every morning without fail you will see some crazy old grandma sweeping up leaves on the road... leaves are obviously the absolute worst thing you could have on the road in front of your house and an absolute disgrace. the dog poop, (hopefully it's dog....) however, can stay. 

Karaoke is all day erry day. like for reals. and usually involves drinking.... luckily, however, because people wake up so dang early, it usually doesn't go super late and we can all sleep peacefully. until it starts again in the wee hours of the morning! 

Every morning people walk around selling things that they carry with them till they sell them. sometimes this makes sense and is actually quite genius. like when they are selling delicious things, like taho. other times however, it just seems exhausting! like when they are selling something quite large, like a couch.  

Everyone yells at us, after we walk by. not when we smile and say hi buuuut like two mins later when we're way far away they yell at our backs, "hey! wash your name!!!" or another favorite "where you going!" which could be interchanged with "Where you from!" in tagalog these greeting make much more sense and are frequently used..... these are children by the way, people speak english quite well, once they've gone to school. my favorite thing ever though is still when my companion tells me about our living frophet..... so great :)

Well that's all folks! 

good morning!     and in case i don't see ya,    good afternoon,     good evening,    and good night!

-sister jones

Bowling as a zone

Ants for breakfast (warning: not to be read by the faint of heart or stomach) & "Finding" Stories

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 a while when......." thing. 

[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!!!!!

Mini MTC, District Boodle Fight, and a Baptism!!

this week was chill.

On sat we taught at a "mini mtc" for the youth preparing to go on missions! we thought it would be like 18-19 year olds that have everything ready except their call..... nope. definitely all the young men ages 12-18! it was still really cool though. and the little ones were way legit! they're gonna be ridiculously ready by the time they're 18.

Sister Cestona and Sarah Teaching at the Mini MTC

 Then we had a .... wait for it..... boodle fight!!!!! yes i was just as mislead as you are by the name. i thought we were gonna have a food fight with banana leaves as our only defense..... whatevs. i guess this was cool too ;)

District before the Boodle Fight

Our district and the Boodle fight

joke lang, it was totes awesome. so they just put a bunch of food on banana leaves (rice and ulam) and then it's a race to see who can eat their section the fastest with their hands..... except we weren't very intense about it so mostly it was just all of u eating with our hands off of banana leaves..... still cool.

 Then we went to two baptisms!!! the first one was for our darling relamie!! she got baptized!!!! and two lil 8 year olds that were tiny!!!!
We went to a baptism for a kid that sister mower oym-ed on the bus!!! and he's awesome!!!! so we went to support him cuz he has no family support and sister mower and i sang a lil something for him. it was good.
and sister cestona spoke, sister chamberlain prayed, and i was the chorister.... there were also four elders there whose baptism it actually was.....

Sis Mae

Two random little 8 year olds

This week is our meeting with elder echo hawk. that'll be exciting. we all get to prepare a lil talky talk and then he's gonna call on randoms to speak. keepin us on our toes :)  (Sarah is also singing in the choir for that)

The Certeza family is amazing. everyone that meets them is like "that right there is a golden family" or sometimes, "you got yourselves a golden family right there!" these are direct ish quotes btw.... and it's true they're so amazing.
 and the only thing that is keeping them from everything is they're not married!!! but no worries, we got some solid info on how to fix that. sana this week. and it will only cost like 400 peso. that's like.... 10 dollars. they have been waiting for over 12 years to get married because of a lack of 10 dollars.
yep. that's gonna change.

church is true.
hayaan mo, lahat ay magiging makatarungan sa wakas.

-sister jones

September! Short update and pictures! New companion...

Three Generations!  Daughter, Mom and Grandma:)
Sisters Chamerlain, Jones and Garcia
August 2013

Elders at the temple - August 2013

Certeza Family - Jeepney

Certeza Family (minus Brother) at the temple tour
 Saturday August 2013

Soo this week was cool...

Got a new companion! sister cestona!! she's awesome!! great missionary! and connects with people super well! it was her first week in this ward and she was already hugging and giving cheek kisses to all the ward missionaries... the girls at least ;) so that's cool. maybe they'll actually work with us if she's buddy-buddy with all of them!

Ano pa.... we went to temple tour! it was great! we took the certeza family! except brother couldn't make it... but that's because he got a job!!! yay!!! they can go to church again!!!!!!

 ummmm my favorite breakfast in the world is taho and pan de sal.... imma work on getting the recipe so i can bring it to the states.... but it's kinda like a trade secret..... we have connections. i'll get back to you.

 (taho is like soy bean based..... that's all i know really.. it has a syrup on it... it kinda tastes like oatmeal.... and pan de sal is a kinda sweet bread roll thing. they're both waaaaay good!)
Elder EchoHawk is our new area authority and temple tour is next week and they put a choir together for it and im singing alto and it's actually really fun to sing alto again cuz it's been foreeeever. We're singing Hark all Ye Nations, and it's way fun.

yeah this week way pretty chill.                 iyon lang! peace out!

Sister Jones with Housemates
Sister Chamberlain and Sister Mower
August 2013

From Last week:  August 28, 2013

this week was super weird.

announcements:

a. the wedding did not go through. lame. oh well, it'll happen soon :)

b. we did not starve to death. we were only grounded for like two days. apparently some missionaries in manilla got electrocuted walking through a puddle.... details. anyway, we were grounded. it was a party. 

c. transfers are here!!! sister loo is leaving me. lame. my new companion is sister cestona! (not quite sure on the spelling...) she's great! Filippina!! we were in the same district in SJDM. she'll be awesome to work with. she's still kinda new in the mish... (batch ni sister chamberlain/loo) speaking of sister chamberlain! she got transfered here! we're gonna be house mates! super stoked. also speaking of old comps, this is sister garcia's last transfer!!!! what the fast! 

d. the long anticipated pan de post-it is for dinner tonight.... get excited. we didn't have an egg on sunday.... 

e. Relamie has a bap date and is still working with us weekly.... if not more.... but is not a member present and it's super hilarious to introduce her in lessons... as an investigator.... basta. she's awesome. and wants to go on a mission! 

f.  We threw a totes awesome farewell surprise party for sis villaruel. had a winnie the poo cake and everything! (she's obsessed with winnie the poo.....) that was cool....

g. i'm out of things to say...... this week was kinda boring.... barely any work cuz of the rain... oh when we finally got un-grounded we went to the church to cheer up all the munchkins/familys that were stuck there cuz their houses were suuuuper flooded! we made them a noah's ark puzzle/scavenger hunt and played games and told scripture stories! it was cool. 

iyon lang. peace out!

ps. it's raining again. surprise!

-sister jones