All I Feel is Gratitude

Oh my family!!! Another week gone by. We went to the temple today, which was awesome. I haven't been since august so it felt so fulfilling. Love it. One of the perks of being in the city, right :) About the clothes being made in Mindoro, I left the material there and hopefully (as in seriously hopefully!) she finished them and sent them up with president this last Saturday after Mindoro's zone conference. I went shopping at the mall today too. It's officially decided. I hate malls. I hate shopping. All it does is make you want all this stuff that you don't need and i just wanna go sit on my kawayan floor in a Philippino shack to remind me none of that matters. It's slowly breaking me in for sure so I'm not in complete shock in the states though. Good news though, I bought 4 pairs of shoes today! For a total of about 40 dollars. Haha, love it. I felt like pretty woman with all these service ladies bringing shoes to me. ahah. You think I'm kidding, but the service in the Philippines is pretty much top notch. But SO excited to get my hair cut!! Thanks for making the appointment ma :) Mom, I really don't think you need to worry about the ear. I've gotten this awesome cold this week that's just been draining everything out. Truly, don't waste the money. I'm pretty sure it's ok now. 

Thank you for the packages! I loved the letters. They're always my favorite, of course. I think Tyler’s was the most funny, but that's no surprise. And the milk. I've already drank half of it. Haha, and I don't feel a bit bad. And the countdown Joan sent was so stinking cute. We've been loving it. You guys are the greatest. 

Ryan's new ward sounds about like the entire Philippines. Haha, welcome to my entire mission. Maybe he's starting to see now why it'll be super important to make sure all his investigators are strong with their testimonies and that they're getting baptized for the right reasons, because sometimes, the wards can't hold on to them. Their testimony is the only thing that'll keep them going. 

I don't have a ton of updates, so I'm just gonna spill out whatever comes off the top of my head. 

This week was crazy. As in, I've never experienced an area like this. We're opening area right now. There's a total of 6 member families in our area, 2 that are active and 4 that are less active. And we have about 4 investigators.  No joke. Add that up, and then how many hours we have to use in a week and it makes for a lot of blank time. I've never tracted so much in life. As in, my mouth hurt at the end of each day because my companion knows how to say about 4 things in Tagalog. But Saturday I just couldn't help but laugh. The hard part is they're all INC and Baptist and they won't even give you the time of day. They just say, go to someone else (rough translation). I wanted to tell them, that's like me saying I hate Philippinos when I don't even know a Philippino. Come on people. This is not working though so it's time to take a new approach. Tonight we're going to go talk to a few members and find out who has contacts with the barangay. Then tomorrow we're going to go to the barangay and see if we can do a community activity on Family History, and/or service activity. Even pair up with some other churches. Try to just get people to open up a bit. This door to door thing is ridiculous and super ineffective.  

We have a sweet new investigator right now. He's a Baptist pastor and understands the atonement and other doctrine better than most members. Wowsa. He even asked us if we believe that Christ went and taught the spirits in the spirit world for the 3 days he was dead. And that there are actually 2 kind of deaths, a temporal death and a spiritual death. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit it was a spiritual death, not temporal, because they became separated from God. What the?! Next lesson is the apostacy. 

I talked to a few of my fellow Mindorians at the temple today....we're all missing Mindoro. Elder Quinton was hilarious. He goes, "Just kill me. Seriously. You're so lucky you're just going home. I told president, just to drag my face to the box back in Mindoro. I'm trying to figure out a way to get emergency transferred that isn't too disobedient". Bahaha, I laughed so hard. So apparently it's not just me. 

I've been super lucky to be here for the last few weeks. Like I said, there was a greater purpose in this and it was all for me. Just to help me out. I don't feel sad anymore, upset, nothing. All I feel is gratitude. And I love Sister Lorente. She told the ward her "twin" finally made it back to the main land. Haha. Pretty much every night I go over to their apartment and we just sit and talk to 10:30. She is my blood sister, I swear, even if we're different colors. 

For Christmas, I think I'll just call you. It's cheaper that way.  I'll probably call around 7 am here I think, so like 4 pm there. Will that be ok? Hope so. And Yay, there's SNOW!!!! Just praying it's stay and gets added to. Love you all and talk to you soon! Have a fab week!