Temple day...Russell M. Nielson

Hello my family!! 

Oh ma, can I just say it actually feels like it's been a month since we talked on the phone. Last Friday I told Sister Shumway, so this is day 12 of the week. Haha, for reals though. Sometimes that just happens. This week just happened to be one of them. So you wanna hear my cool story today though! About 3 hours ago, I shook Russell M. Neilson's hand! Sweet right. We had temple day so we were just waiting to get everyone gathered together, and what do you know, up comes Russell M. Neilson and Elder Neilson from the area seventy. They had a training meeting, so they were at the office buildings. Such a cute little old man. He was very nice with us. Temple day was great as always. I literally froze the entire time; I was shaking I was so cold. I was just waiting to get back into the heat and humidity. I'm gonna die in Utah.  Sometimes I just want to sit in the celestial room for an hour or so. Take a nap or something. It's so peaceful. We had to get up at 3 am to get there though, so I'm pretty much dying right now. 3 hours of sleep because I had to wash clothes, out of garments. Shoot. Never fully appreciated a washing machine like I should have. 

So updates this week! I have a lot of random ones. I'll start with the weird ones. So you wouldn't believe how much attention we get being 2 white girls walking around. It's absolutely hilarious. The other day in the tricycle, the driver was so excited he's yelling at people on the side of the road and other tricycle drivers, "Hey look! 2 white ones!" and the whole ride he's going, "ang ganda ninyo" which is like an emphasis of "you're so pretty", which is just super awkward. At one point I thought he was going to start caressing Sis Shumway's leg. Bahaha. We laughed so hard. 

So we met a guy from Cali. He's philippino, but when he was 6 he moved to the states and grew up there. He's like 45 now or something and he just barely came back a few years ago to take care of his parents. He's totally Cali gangster, which is just hilarious. Did care detailing for his job. You can just picture it right? Anyway, can I just say it was the weirdest thing doing missionary things in English. As in, I can't do it. I don't know how to be a missionary in English. I can do a regular conversation, but if it's missionary, it's immediately in Tagalog, seriously struggling. He's kind of interesting though. But the point of this story is, it just made me realize the faith that philippinos have. We were just talking to him about religion, nothing big and he starts going into exorcism and all this weird stuff and you can tell he just doesn't have a firm foundation of faith in Christ and God. But any philippino you approach, as in every one of them, they have faith in Christ. They know he is their Savior and he will help them through trials. It's not a complete faith, but they have the foundation. Meeting someone who grew up in America just put it into contrast for me. In America, you see more dependence on self than on God so it doesn't get stressed. Here it's just opposite. You don't have to teach belief in Christ because they already believe.  I love it. 

So we have a new investigator that is progressing like crazy. We've taught him for 3 weeks and the change is already visible. Ha, so funny. His 3rd lesson he asks us what the bawals are in our church because he wants to get baptized and he wants to start now. p.s., that doesn't happen very often. So awesome. But get

this. This is how we found them. I met a random guy on the street and just started small talk. Anyhow, the street ended, he went one way, we went the other. But the whole time I just felt like we should go to his house or something.  So the next time we had some extra time to track I just said, hey, that one kid came out of this road, lets see if we can find him. So we tracked over there and didn't find him, but found this new guy we're teaching, and his family. And turns out, there next door neighbor is the random kid, who's aunt is a less active that's been wanting to come back to church but just hasn't found the strength to do it yet. So we found 2 in one. I remember a quote by Elder Bednar from the MTC about the Holy Ghost and he just said, “Stop worrying about it. Just be a good boy or a good girl and the Spirit will guide you". So true, and most of the time you don't even realize it until you look back and see the effect. So cool. We're way excited for them. We really are starting to see progress in this area. A lot of our less actives are coming to church. It just takes time you know. They just have so much baggage to deal with; it just takes a while. I'm just so proud of them all though. Love these people here so much. 

I have a ton more, but this is way long right now, so that's all for this week. I hope you all are having a fantastic week! Mahal na mahal ko kayo! bongga-bongga sana ang linggo ninyo! Haha, that's my new word. That and hanep. Working on my slang now :) Much love!