Mindoro!!!

Holy flip my family, it has been quite the last 4 days!!! I feel like I have a million stories to tell you and I'm not quite sure where to start, so first off, I didn't get assigned to the city (thank heavens) but Morong's level of isolation is now a joke compared to this.....I'm in Mindoro!! That's right, I switched islands! Didn't think I'd be getting on a plane til I headed back to the good ol' U S of A, but I was wrong. Ha, I wish you could have seen my face at transfers. Remember my face when they called my name at that dumb beauty pageant?? Yeah, it was something like that. Haha. Absolutely shocked.

 But yeah, I'm in Mindoro now! Little tiny branch, pretty much in the middle of nothing, but bonus, there's a beach! So pretty. The best comparison I can come up with is that if Morong is like Kamas....small, but you can still get everything you need and if you need anything else, not too far to the city....Mindoro feels like I just got thrown into the middle of Wyoming. Haha, isolation for real. But no worries, I’m in isolation with fun people! Sister Shumway is here, one of my old companions, Alvarez from Morong, Elder Quinton from my MTC district, Sister Madelo, my old kabahay who is now my new companion, and a ton of others that served in Morong including Lynn who apparently is supposed to be my sidekick for my entire mission. Haha. So I'm super excited! It seems like it's going to be a fun zone and there's a lot of work to do here. I've decided I'm not meant to be a baptizing missionary, but a reactivate-the-less-actives missionary. No joke. It's what happened in Morong...got the LAs coming, just started getting investigators (which ps are all getting baptized this month) and bam, transferred to a new area with a bajillion less actives all over again. Shoot, guess that's just my calling here. I feel like I have a million stories to tell you that have happened in the past few days, but I'll just give you a list of highlights so we can talk about Elder Bednar!

Here's the list:

-Got my camera fixed (yay!), waited in rush hour traffic for 2 hours just to pick it up, then lost it, then found it again. They're sending it down this week.

-Had to pack my 3 pieces of luggage into 1 suitcase that could only be 40 pounds. Bahaha, talk about a joke. I left so many important things that I didn't even realize til I got here. 

-Worked in the city for a couple days. Worst. Ever. So glad I'm in the province still. It's so dirty and noisy and stinky and busy and all cement and did I mention noisy? Hate it. Thank you province. 

-Everyone here is shocked I can speak Tagalog. Hahaha, it's hilarious. I'm the 2nd white sister to actually come to Mindoro so I think they just assume. 

Ok, now we're going to talk about Bednar. Shoot, it was so awesome. Not what I expected at all. I'm not going to be able to put even 1/10 in here, but I'll just touch on some of my favorites. First of all, he is BOLD. Shoot, as in super bold. He just says it how it is, no apologies. And Iove it. Surprised me at first though. We talked about D&C 88:122 for the first hour or so and being agents not actors and learning by faith. Then for the last part, it was just a question and answer session. Favorite part by far. One of my favorite questions was, "what does it feel like to be an apostle of the Lord". And he goes, well this has 2 parts to it. The first is that it is crushingly overwhelming. He said, right when he was going to get sustained, he was back in the conference center behind where the choir is and everything and Elder Holland was back there pacing back and forth. He was the first speaker of the session. And then he said, he just heard his name, "Dave, Dave", and Elder Holland came up and just gave him a huge hug. He said they both just had tears in their eyes. And Bednar asked him, Does it get any easier? and Holland said, I've heard after 22 years it does, but from my experience, it just gets worse. And he said, it has. If you understand your responsibility and the trust that the Lord has given you to fulfill this calling, it is overwhelming because the more you learn the more accountable you are. Then he said, if you feel more confident as a 20 month missionary than you did as a 10 month mission, you're doing something wrong and you're relying too much on the arm of flesh. You should be more overwhelmed now than you felt as a new missionary. I loved that he said that because it is SO true! It's what I said with your worst enemy on the mission being yourself...You know the gospel and the responsibilities you hold and it is honestly crushingly overwhelming to think of everything you know you should do but just feel you can’t. I can't even imagine what it would feel like to be an apostle. Talk about refiner's first 24/7. The second part though was he said it was a privilege. "I get to do what every worthy priesthood holder wishes he could do....bear witness of Jesus Christ and his gospel". Shoot, it was so awesome. There were a lot of other good things, but some other time. Can't type it all here. But one cool thing, at the end they all bore their testimonies...Elder and Sister Ardern, Callister, Sister Bednar and then Elder Bednar. There was honestly a noticeable difference in all of their testimonies and the testimony of Elder Bednar, a tangible, physical difference. Shoot, it's hard to describe, but it was incredible. Way awesome. 

So that's the news so far! I don't really know what else to update you on because I'm still trying to figure it all out myself. Haha. But that' missionary life. I got the letters from Chanae and Tate and sounds like they're doing great. Super excited for them. They're going to love it. And thank you, thank you for the presidential update! I've been dying over here. Ha. Love you all and I'll talk to you next week! Magingat kayo!