Another week in the best area in the Philippines
Date
November 11, 2017
Area
San Fernando, La Union
Companion
Sister Ellsworth
Another week in the best area in the Philippines
Wow I'm so happy. Missions are great.
This week was insane. I got my new companion! Oh my goodness she is fantastic. She loves planning, salad, exercising and a bunch of other things that make us the same person.
We had another musical devotional this week. We went around inviting many investigators and members. One such investigator was Romelyn. She is so, so great. Sister Zander and I found her a few weeks ago almost by accident. We were watching the sunset in an area full of grass, trees and a big lake, it's on the outskirts of our farthest area. There was also a small path. We decided to see where it lead. Lots of trees and two separate meadows later, we ended up at a house with a whole lot of dogs and a couple of kids. A woman walked out toward us and in essence said "How did you find us?". The woman's name is Romelyn. We have been back multiple times to teach her. Every time we are in view of the house we can see her walking out with stools for us, ready to hear another lesson. This week while teaching, she took interest in not only attending the musical devotional, but church as well. We were more than excited to accompany her to both. Then we remembered we had made the same promise to Wilma, the one whom we had brought to church last week. What we had on our hands was the best kind of problem. As Saturday rolled around we decided to first pick up Wilma and then Romelyn. Unfortunately, Wilma was not home and time was running out. The devotional was to start at 5:00 and it was already almost 4:20. We decided to leave a note with Joy, Wilma's daughter, and booked it to Romelyn's. And I mean booked it. We were supposed to meet her at the waiting shed off the highway and she wasn't there. We started with a brisk walk but eventually broke into a run through all the trees and meadows and fields to her house. We were greeted by her mother-in-law who informed us that she was at the waiting shed. So we ran back. We were very sweaty and panting-y by the time we got back to the waiting shed we were originally at. Still no Romelyn. Then we heard "sisters!" and looked up to see Romelyn smiling and walking towards us with her niece! We all headed over to the musical devotional and it was even more beautiful than the last. Also, side note,they invited me to be in the core group for the Christmas devotional! Anyway back to Romelyn. We asked about picking her up for church and she said she could get there on her own now that she knew where the church was but would only plan on coming to Sacrament meeting. which is third hour for us. Once again, we didn't see her so we took our seats. And once again we just didn't look hard enough! Abigail, her niece ran up and told us to move to the back where Romelyn was. At the end of the meeting Romelyn was like "I'm set to get baptized in December, right?" Sister Ellsworth and I kept our cool responded that that was the plan. Then after she left we started freaking out, understandably.
Mini stories:
-I went to my first baptism, well actually our district had three this week. Right after an older gentleman was immersed into the water, a bunch of people went "iyon" which translates to "that"
-At another baptism, the other sisters and I impromptu got up and performed a church song I have never heard before, even now I don't know it's name
-While on the jeepny, we casually started speaking to Tagalog to each other(It's coming!) and the guy sitting next to me was so shocked, according to Sister Ellsworth, his jaw almost dropped
-While out finding we met a lady who works at the market. She isn't interested in hearing the lessons but she is interested in giving us free okra if we see her while shopping.
-The group of teenagers we are teaching, the ones we met a few weeks ago are giving me one new word to remember each week. They chose the word for jump, a word I thought to be kind of random and probably useless but I went with it. Then a few days later while we were teaching a group of kids "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" and jumping is very integral to that song so it ended up being a way good thing I knew that word to teach it as apart of the song!
-At an FHE some members were teaching me some Ilocano phrases. The crazy thing is that they were translating the words from Tagalog, a language I didn't know the first thing about a few months ago
This week was insane. I got my new companion! Oh my goodness she is fantastic. She loves planning, salad, exercising and a bunch of other things that make us the same person.
We had another musical devotional this week. We went around inviting many investigators and members. One such investigator was Romelyn. She is so, so great. Sister Zander and I found her a few weeks ago almost by accident. We were watching the sunset in an area full of grass, trees and a big lake, it's on the outskirts of our farthest area. There was also a small path. We decided to see where it lead. Lots of trees and two separate meadows later, we ended up at a house with a whole lot of dogs and a couple of kids. A woman walked out toward us and in essence said "How did you find us?". The woman's name is Romelyn. We have been back multiple times to teach her. Every time we are in view of the house we can see her walking out with stools for us, ready to hear another lesson. This week while teaching, she took interest in not only attending the musical devotional, but church as well. We were more than excited to accompany her to both. Then we remembered we had made the same promise to Wilma, the one whom we had brought to church last week. What we had on our hands was the best kind of problem. As Saturday rolled around we decided to first pick up Wilma and then Romelyn. Unfortunately, Wilma was not home and time was running out. The devotional was to start at 5:00 and it was already almost 4:20. We decided to leave a note with Joy, Wilma's daughter, and booked it to Romelyn's. And I mean booked it. We were supposed to meet her at the waiting shed off the highway and she wasn't there. We started with a brisk walk but eventually broke into a run through all the trees and meadows and fields to her house. We were greeted by her mother-in-law who informed us that she was at the waiting shed. So we ran back. We were very sweaty and panting-y by the time we got back to the waiting shed we were originally at. Still no Romelyn. Then we heard "sisters!" and looked up to see Romelyn smiling and walking towards us with her niece! We all headed over to the musical devotional and it was even more beautiful than the last. Also, side note,they invited me to be in the core group for the Christmas devotional! Anyway back to Romelyn. We asked about picking her up for church and she said she could get there on her own now that she knew where the church was but would only plan on coming to Sacrament meeting. which is third hour for us. Once again, we didn't see her so we took our seats. And once again we just didn't look hard enough! Abigail, her niece ran up and told us to move to the back where Romelyn was. At the end of the meeting Romelyn was like "I'm set to get baptized in December, right?" Sister Ellsworth and I kept our cool responded that that was the plan. Then after she left we started freaking out, understandably.
Mini stories:
-I went to my first baptism, well actually our district had three this week. Right after an older gentleman was immersed into the water, a bunch of people went "iyon" which translates to "that"
-At another baptism, the other sisters and I impromptu got up and performed a church song I have never heard before, even now I don't know it's name
-While on the jeepny, we casually started speaking to Tagalog to each other(It's coming!) and the guy sitting next to me was so shocked, according to Sister Ellsworth, his jaw almost dropped
-While out finding we met a lady who works at the market. She isn't interested in hearing the lessons but she is interested in giving us free okra if we see her while shopping.
-The group of teenagers we are teaching, the ones we met a few weeks ago are giving me one new word to remember each week. They chose the word for jump, a word I thought to be kind of random and probably useless but I went with it. Then a few days later while we were teaching a group of kids "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" and jumping is very integral to that song so it ended up being a way good thing I knew that word to teach it as apart of the song!
-At an FHE some members were teaching me some Ilocano phrases. The crazy thing is that they were translating the words from Tagalog, a language I didn't know the first thing about a few months ago
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