Hello Fam,
Ether 12:6 stood out to me last night as I was reflecting on this past week. I mentioned last week that no one came to church that we visited last sunday and it was quite disappointing to say the least. But, this week I learned a lot about what it means to "receive the witness after the trial of your faith." We didn't give up and we worked so stinking hard this week! On Monday we went to the Maunes family for family scripture study and prayer...Brother Maones just started talking and we just listened for a long time. (He was a past counselor in the branch presidency, but got offended by the branch president...long story/ really bad situation...) It was a direct answer to our pleading prayers. He said Sunday night he prayed all night long until morning. He said Heavenly Father told him to let go and forget what happened because he needs to focus on his family. His family is more important than the wrong that happened to him personally. He finally understood that his role as father and husband was crucial for the salvation of his family and he was not fulfilling his responsibilities and his family was suffering. I know that Heavenly Father had Sister Ghouri and me focus on the family and family scripture study with this family in particular because that is the only thing that would bring this man back. He had a truly life changing experience as he poured out his soul to God and God answered him exactly how he needed. It was so incredible! And later that week another man, Brother Maones friend, was at their home for family scripture study. This man is also a member and was offended and has stopped coming to church. Brother Maones was able to share his experience and said, 'lets just go back. together, this sunday." WAS I SERIOUSLY HEARING THIS!?!? WOW. Miracle! Brother Maones was completely different than the first time I met him 3-4 weeks ago. I love the gospel and I love family scripture study and prayer! We have gone to his house every night and they have 5 boys. They are 4 months to 9 years old and they read with us and kneel in prayer. ITs adorable. There entire family came to church yesterday. And so did his friend.
In fact, it was a great sunday. The sunday I got here the attendance was 67. Yesterday it was 110! :) We were so happy to see many of the less actives we have visited and a whole group of members from a very far away barangay came. As they entered the church it was just like seeing one miracle after another, one by one. So awesome.
On Saturday we went party hopping (not planned!). It seemed that most of the people we visited that day were celebrating something so we got to benefit from that. Delicious Filipino food. and free! We had to attend a wedding at the church as well. Weird feelings about that, but still good.
So yesterday was a wonderful Sunday and everyone at church was smiling and happy. The talks were about charity, the atonement, and a high councilor gave an excellent talk about the importance of member ship in the church. The chapel was full and everyone was happy to be there...There really is strength in numbers, I think.
WEll, This week will go by very fast I'm sure. We got to Tacloban for 2 days and we have our last interviews with President Malit.
Here's to a new great week. Love you all and thank you so much for your emails, love, and support.
Love, your missionary,
Sister B.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
6.13.11
hey fam!
So, my subject of the email is my new phrase of this "final phase" of the mission. Daily this is me, " HELLO WORLD! HELLO COMPANION. HELLO APARTMENT MATES. I KNOW, I KNOW, "I LOOK LIKE I JUST FELL OUT OF A TRAIN!" Come talk to me. I'm a representative of Jesus Christ! Yeah! "
Don't get me wrong. I love life! I love Hilongos. I love my companion and i love the other sisters I am living with. I am stressed and worried all the time and thats FINE WITH ME. It is not however, fine with my physical body, i guess. I seriously look like I fell out of a train. ALL. THE. TIME. I didn't, don't worry. I just look like I did. I emailed mom earlier and said sorry if your daughter comes home a fat, zit faced, ugly, swollen eyed, crippled, hunchback RM! You are my family so you still have to love me, right??????? I don't know whats wrong with me, but despite it all, we just keep pluggin along. Needless to say my testimony of ENDURING TO THE END has grown. :)
We worked hard this week. We pleaded in prayer. We fasted. We sacrificed. We taught great lessons guided by the Spirit. We gave it our all. It was a great week of doing the Lord's work. My companion and I are learning a lot about love and charity. I can honestly say that I know my Savior better because I have loved my brother's and sisters here as He does. It's awesome and exhausting.
None of the less actives we visited, and read the scriptures, and felt the spirit with came to church yesterday.
It was a lonely Sunday, though our attendance was better than normal. My heart hurt. You give and you give and you give.....You have faith in these people...You love them soo much...You serve them... You sacrifice for them....You support them and listen to them...... and their fear still overwhelms their faith.
But, we keep going strong. We have another great week ahead of us and there is no way we are giving up on them. This is not the time for spiritual weaklings. This is the time to be strong! And that is only possible through the restored gospel of our savior jesus christ. It does not matter what others have done to you....what does matter is what Christ has done for you. So, that is our purpose and focus. Helping others REMEMBER HIM.
We focused a lot on family scripture study and prayer this week. And we will continue for the rest of my time here. I have such a testimony of this. Thank you noel and urs for doing this in our home. I promise you all that that is the best thing mom and dad ever did for me. I testify of that every single day here in Hilongos as well.
There are two families: Maunes and Cinco family that we literally go to every single night for family scripture study and prayer. Please keep them in your prayers.
Well, i love you all! I love being the Lord's missionary! (even if my physical body doesn't seem to be in agreement with all this stress...)
love, sister b! :)
So, my subject of the email is my new phrase of this "final phase" of the mission. Daily this is me, " HELLO WORLD! HELLO COMPANION. HELLO APARTMENT MATES. I KNOW, I KNOW, "I LOOK LIKE I JUST FELL OUT OF A TRAIN!" Come talk to me. I'm a representative of Jesus Christ! Yeah! "
Don't get me wrong. I love life! I love Hilongos. I love my companion and i love the other sisters I am living with. I am stressed and worried all the time and thats FINE WITH ME. It is not however, fine with my physical body, i guess. I seriously look like I fell out of a train. ALL. THE. TIME. I didn't, don't worry. I just look like I did. I emailed mom earlier and said sorry if your daughter comes home a fat, zit faced, ugly, swollen eyed, crippled, hunchback RM! You are my family so you still have to love me, right??????? I don't know whats wrong with me, but despite it all, we just keep pluggin along. Needless to say my testimony of ENDURING TO THE END has grown. :)
We worked hard this week. We pleaded in prayer. We fasted. We sacrificed. We taught great lessons guided by the Spirit. We gave it our all. It was a great week of doing the Lord's work. My companion and I are learning a lot about love and charity. I can honestly say that I know my Savior better because I have loved my brother's and sisters here as He does. It's awesome and exhausting.
None of the less actives we visited, and read the scriptures, and felt the spirit with came to church yesterday.
It was a lonely Sunday, though our attendance was better than normal. My heart hurt. You give and you give and you give.....You have faith in these people...You love them soo much...You serve them... You sacrifice for them....You support them and listen to them...... and their fear still overwhelms their faith.
But, we keep going strong. We have another great week ahead of us and there is no way we are giving up on them. This is not the time for spiritual weaklings. This is the time to be strong! And that is only possible through the restored gospel of our savior jesus christ. It does not matter what others have done to you....what does matter is what Christ has done for you. So, that is our purpose and focus. Helping others REMEMBER HIM.
We focused a lot on family scripture study and prayer this week. And we will continue for the rest of my time here. I have such a testimony of this. Thank you noel and urs for doing this in our home. I promise you all that that is the best thing mom and dad ever did for me. I testify of that every single day here in Hilongos as well.
There are two families: Maunes and Cinco family that we literally go to every single night for family scripture study and prayer. Please keep them in your prayers.
Well, i love you all! I love being the Lord's missionary! (even if my physical body doesn't seem to be in agreement with all this stress...)
love, sister b! :)
Monday, June 6, 2011
6.6.11
Hello Family!
What a wonderful week it has been! It was hard to leave Sogod, but I know that there is purpose for me here in Hilongos and I started to see that a lot this week. My companion is really doing the best she can and I love her for that so much. We have had some pretty hilarious moments together. Like just now actually, walking through the market in the rain we had to cross a little canal/trench thing across this bridge made from wooden slabs and guess who broke the bridge and fell in the trench?! Yours truly. I smell really good right now and i'm all scraped up and a bit bloody. Sureeeeeee. No problem! After much laughter I started singing without realizing it... "Oh it is wonderful, wonderful to me!" My comp just stared at me and laughed so hard. This is my life. And i love it. She has a fever too since yesterday. But we just continue on. :)
This week we had some wonderful lessons with our progressing investigators. I was so excited and texted President about our new investigators as well (he's requested us to update him when we get new investigators and what day they have committed to baptism). And then tuesday morning we received a text from him requesting me and Sister Ghouri to only focus on REACTIVATION AND RETENTION. what? ... I thought we are supposed to find , teach , baptize.... WEll, He has assigned 8 sisters to this assignment this transfer. Interesting, eh? Sister Jones has this assignment up in Samar somewhere and then in Carigara and us two here. He is inspired for sure b/c the more I am here the more I am realizing how bad the situation is with the less actives. I realized that the branch here is wonderful and so supportive of missionary work, but they are not as supportive of the less actives. The member ship here is around 300, but the attendance is 67.....yeahhhh. Its a big area we cover though and a lot of different reasons for the less actives...a lot of it being, offended sila. So, we had some epic lessons this week guided by the spirit. The people we visited in a far away baragay all came to church! And our investigators did. (well, they are now the other sisters investigators, but we taught them this week.) Sister Alma and CArlito will be married and baptized july 2. They are wonderful and have such a strong testimony. Sister Alma bore her testimony on sunday about the power of the book of mormon and all the miracles she has seen since they started listening to the missionaries and started reading the book of mormon... Her husband has stopped smoking and drinking, took out his earring, and they are kind to eachother and not fighting. her testimony was so sweet and awesome.
We had another investigator, norberto that i was really excited about. We taught him and his family and they were progressing as well. But then on friday he told us he had to go to manila for work..school was starting and he had no money for his children. Sister Ghouri and I were sad, but there was also a weird, dark feeling about his decision to go to Manila. We could not shake it. So we told him this. He has heard from the missionaries before and then had to go to manila and that stopped his progression towards baptism... Sister ghouri told him not to go to manila b/c it was not gods plan and that there were no coincidences. god is giving him another opportunity to learn truth and he can't ignore it. I can't describe the weirdness of that lesson other than that...it was sooo weird. It felt so wrong for him to go to manila. His wife was ticked too. We urged him to pray about his decision and read his assignment from 3 nephi 13...We followed up the next day... but he was gone. :(
So, we focus on the less actives. Please pray for the Maones family and for Nanay Cinco. There is some serious issues here and it is quite the struggle, but we had some great spiritual experiences praying and fasting and studying for these families.
I love you all and I am doing well. Love, your missionary,
Sister B .
ps. crispin ( in sogod) had a hard week last week and broke down and smoked... but he seems to be doing better and watched the joseph smith movie and really enjoyed that and gave the best prayer ever according to sister schneider. please continue to keep him in your prayers. Salamat!
What a wonderful week it has been! It was hard to leave Sogod, but I know that there is purpose for me here in Hilongos and I started to see that a lot this week. My companion is really doing the best she can and I love her for that so much. We have had some pretty hilarious moments together. Like just now actually, walking through the market in the rain we had to cross a little canal/trench thing across this bridge made from wooden slabs and guess who broke the bridge and fell in the trench?! Yours truly. I smell really good right now and i'm all scraped up and a bit bloody. Sureeeeeee. No problem! After much laughter I started singing without realizing it... "Oh it is wonderful, wonderful to me!" My comp just stared at me and laughed so hard. This is my life. And i love it. She has a fever too since yesterday. But we just continue on. :)
This week we had some wonderful lessons with our progressing investigators. I was so excited and texted President about our new investigators as well (he's requested us to update him when we get new investigators and what day they have committed to baptism). And then tuesday morning we received a text from him requesting me and Sister Ghouri to only focus on REACTIVATION AND RETENTION. what? ... I thought we are supposed to find , teach , baptize.... WEll, He has assigned 8 sisters to this assignment this transfer. Interesting, eh? Sister Jones has this assignment up in Samar somewhere and then in Carigara and us two here. He is inspired for sure b/c the more I am here the more I am realizing how bad the situation is with the less actives. I realized that the branch here is wonderful and so supportive of missionary work, but they are not as supportive of the less actives. The member ship here is around 300, but the attendance is 67.....yeahhhh. Its a big area we cover though and a lot of different reasons for the less actives...a lot of it being, offended sila. So, we had some epic lessons this week guided by the spirit. The people we visited in a far away baragay all came to church! And our investigators did. (well, they are now the other sisters investigators, but we taught them this week.) Sister Alma and CArlito will be married and baptized july 2. They are wonderful and have such a strong testimony. Sister Alma bore her testimony on sunday about the power of the book of mormon and all the miracles she has seen since they started listening to the missionaries and started reading the book of mormon... Her husband has stopped smoking and drinking, took out his earring, and they are kind to eachother and not fighting. her testimony was so sweet and awesome.
We had another investigator, norberto that i was really excited about. We taught him and his family and they were progressing as well. But then on friday he told us he had to go to manila for work..school was starting and he had no money for his children. Sister Ghouri and I were sad, but there was also a weird, dark feeling about his decision to go to Manila. We could not shake it. So we told him this. He has heard from the missionaries before and then had to go to manila and that stopped his progression towards baptism... Sister ghouri told him not to go to manila b/c it was not gods plan and that there were no coincidences. god is giving him another opportunity to learn truth and he can't ignore it. I can't describe the weirdness of that lesson other than that...it was sooo weird. It felt so wrong for him to go to manila. His wife was ticked too. We urged him to pray about his decision and read his assignment from 3 nephi 13...We followed up the next day... but he was gone. :(
So, we focus on the less actives. Please pray for the Maones family and for Nanay Cinco. There is some serious issues here and it is quite the struggle, but we had some great spiritual experiences praying and fasting and studying for these families.
I love you all and I am doing well. Love, your missionary,
Sister B .
ps. crispin ( in sogod) had a hard week last week and broke down and smoked... but he seems to be doing better and watched the joseph smith movie and really enjoyed that and gave the best prayer ever according to sister schneider. please continue to keep him in your prayers. Salamat!