4.25.11

Hello Family!

What a wonderful week it has been. I love my companion. She is incredible. I love her sooo much! We are similar and understand each other incredibly. She is an awesome person and missionary. I love this area too. It needs a lot of help, but it is great. We worked and worked this week and some very spiritual experiences as we taught the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I remember a specific lesson being amazed at our ability to speak Cebuano and remember words. I flow went really well and we knew who was helping us. We make a really good team and have had a blast together doing the Lords work. We had a lot of opportunities to teach this week and got to teach a lot of new investigators which is what our mission president is really pushing for right now.

One lesson was with Sister Babin. Her husband and daughter are a member and she has listened over and over again to the missionaries. We got to her house around 7pm and they fed us some delicious Filipino food that i've really missed. Didn't get tons of that in Tacloban. All the Filipinos there tend to feed you more americanized food...trying to impress you or something...Basta, it was delicious. We weren't sure what we were going to teach her, but we knew it had to be different than what had be tried before. We had prayed and thought a lot about what we could do to help her realize how hungry she was for the truth. I was excited to see where the Spirit took the lesson. And. It was incredible. I started and said that we wanted to talk about Joseph Smith and as I said it I knew that was wrong and we needed to change to Jesus Christ. So that is what we did. The lesson was one of the best I've ever participated in. We let her talk and listened . And we were both praying really hard. She explained she was content with her life and the good blessings she had received from God. She saw no need to change. God loved her and blesses her often. She explained she had listened to the missionaries and felt no need to change. We focused on how the Spirit testified to her and helped her understand that was God inviting her to learn more, to know more about Him and His plan for her. My companion did a great job and talked for a bit and the Spirit told me it was time to get out the scriptures. I knew we had to read from the Book of Mormon, but I had nothing. I took it out and started praying. And then, very clearly the Spirit told me exactly what she needed. I love it when that happens! We read from 2 Nephi 28:29 and 30. The Spirit was so strong as she realized what the scripture meant for her as I asked her questions and explained it. Those verses are about ' wo be unto him taht shall say , we have received the word of God, and we need no more of the word of God, for we have enough." and it talks about how we learn line upon line and we can learn wisdom from God, but if you say you have enough or you are content with what you have, God will take a way that which he has given. . .
I knew she understood. My comp knew. And she knew. Her daughter was really excited too. It was the exact verses that woke her up. My companion then talked about prophets preparing the people for the coming of Christ and related it until now, the book of mormon and bible, living prophet prepare us for the 2nd coming of Christ. We must follow them . We must be prepared. Our purpose is to continue to grow and learn and allow God to guide us. We promised her there is so much more to God's plan.
She is an awesome lady. One that is kinda hard to read and doesn't show much emotion ever. She was trying to hide the fact that she knew what we were saying was true...but she couldn't. She let out this big smile that I will never forget. She was trying to hold back the tears. And she was excited about our message. It was awesome. I can't even explain to you how strong the Spirit was . Her heart was completely softened, maybe for the first time ever. We left that lesson excited and so pumped for anything! We loved being the Lords missionaries. That was one of the times when we knew that we had said everything our Savior would have said if He had been the one teaching. Such a special, sacred lesson. She is awesome and we are excited to go back. She's been out of time this past week so we only saw her one time.

We had another great few lessons with our new investigator Crispin. He came to church this week and we also taught his neighbors. Heavenly Father is really helping us with this language...of course He would, these are His children and we are His messengers. But still, its nice to feel and recognize that.

Tony Capon. Saddest lesson this past week. We taught him the Restoration and he liked it, accepted it. But when we taught about prayer and invited him to say the closing prayer he refused. I'd gotten that several times a day even on the mission but he was different. He was not shy to pray...he refused to pray b/c he felt unworthy. He said that he drinks and smokes and hasn't gone to church in a long while...he said he wasn't god's son and wasn't worthy to pray to Him. He had no hope. He was truly devastated and disappointed in himself and he just kept saying i can't talk to god, i won't talk to god, i'm not worthy to talk to god. I'm a sinner, i'm not his son. It was terrible. We talked to him about it for 20 minutes and nothing we said or tried worked. He was completely convinced he was nothing. It was realllly hard to deal with. I felt God's love for him and I had just met him. We tried to help him understand it was Satan lying to him and telling him he wasn't allowed or worthy to pray. . . but nothing we said or testified helped. It was a very empty sad feeling that was coming from him. We pray for him daily and have searched for him since that lesson, but haven't been able to find him. :( i'm really worried about him.

Easter was okay.

They are HUGE here about Good Friday. We actually didn't go out of our apartment b/c it gets insane...the reenact the crucifixtion, etc so President told us if we felt it was wise to stay inside, do it. I think most of the missionaries did. Especially in southern leyte where it is extremely intense Catholic. We were productive though , so it was good.

It is init season...or HOTTTTT SEASON Now.
I know its hot season when:
my face has heat rash and wounds and will not and CAN NOT HEAL. i am officially allergic to my sweat. its terrible and i look like i have leprosy. :(
my whole body has heat rash/sweat rash.
lots of random bites that get infected.
you sweat as you take a freezing cold shower.
you take numerous freezing cold showers a day and you still can NEVER cool down.
you stand in your towel after your freezing cold shower in front of the fan hoping it will cool you down. it doesn't.
you go through more than one sweat rag a day.
you go no where with out your hand held fan.
you get really cranky cause you can NOT breathe in your own apartment. but then you laugh a lot with your companion...so you don't cry. :)

Life is good. Just sweaty!

love you all.
love, your missionary,
Sister B.