Dear Family and Friends,
Well transfers were this last week. My new companion is Sister Paraje she is Philippino. She has only been out in the field for three months, just like me. It is good because we are able to really learn from each other. What we liked that our trainers did and what wasn't effective. It is good because we are really able to become Preach my Gospel missionaries. It is also really nice to have someone not going home and is eager and excited about missionary work. My new companion doesn't know English very well so it has been good for me to have to always use Tagalog. If I ask her something in English she won't respond until I ask in Tagalog. Sometimes it is a little frustrating, but it is good for me.
Also the weather has started to cool down a little bit which is really nice and by cool down I mean it is now 85 degrees instead of 92.
We have been teaching one investigator named Mary Joy. She is so sweet. Her husband is a less active in the ward and we went to find him and ended up teaching her instead. She has a lot of trials in her life and was really discouraged and she met us. It is so cool to see her faith grow. She has so much faith and she knows that our message is true and the Book of Mormon too. She says it touches her heart when she reads. Sadly she gets a lot of persecution from her neighbors and friends because she is listening to the Mormon missionaries when she was born catholic. Hopefully her faith will carry her. Ah she is just so sweet and I hope that her faith in Jesus Christ will carry her.
We also taught a less active/part member family. We were teaching about the plan of salvation and we taught them about the plan of salvation and one little boy who is 10 years old joined our lesson. He was so cute and as we were teaching them from the Book of Mormon he was looking at it and started reading while we were teaching. At the end of the lesson I asked him if he wanted his own copy of the Book of Mormon and he got so excited. These are the moments that make all the hardships and hard days worth it.
Ingat! Mahal Kita!
-Sister Richins
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
July 8
Dear Family and Friends,
Looks like everyone had a great 4th of July! Sister Lang and I celebrated it here with a nice cake and spaghetti so that was fun. We even wore our blue skirts to celebrate. We are having a lot of fun here too after all if you aren't having fun, you are not doing it right!
It was really sad this week our investigator Sheena told us that we can't visit her any more because it is just too much for her to endure with her dad. Her dad hates the church and doesn't want her to get baptized. We told her that we will always love her and care about her. Sometimes it is just so hard, when they are so many negative feelings about the church. But hopefully someday she will have the faith and courage to come back.
We also met our new mission President this week. He is super nice and his wife is so funny. I was worried that he wouldn't know English very well, but turns out he was really good. He is from Quezon City. His family is really sweet. They are two children that are still living with them. One is 18 and just got his mission call to Boise Idaho. The other daughter is 19 and is working of her mission papers. I was excited because the Mission President's wife said that she was planning on proselyting with the sisters 3 days a week if at all possible. That was exciting for me, it would be so great to have her strong testimony. President and Sister Guanzon are both converts to the church and have been members since 1981. They told us their touching conversion story on Friday. It is exciting time.
President gave us some great counsel as well. He said that there is about 700,000 members of the church in the Philippines and only about 150,000 that are activated. We talked about what happened to those people that were baptized, but are not active now- they were not completely converted. He emphasized teaching for understanding and teaching for conversion. He also said that the Philippines need more leaders so to seek after the middle class and in his words "Talk to those with cars, dress a little nicer, use English."
We were able to teach a lot of investigators this week and a lot of them are progressing. I still think it is such a miracle to see the change, we have so many people to teach now. After the missionary broadcast we have a lot of members wanting to work with us which is great! Our bishop is also all of the sudden really interesting in missionary work. Yesterday in Ward council and Ward coordination meeting we came up with a list of 15 names of less active members that the entire ward is going to work to reactive this year.
We have three investigators that are high school students. They are so sweet there names are Princess, Gema, and Michelle. We had a great lesson with them on Tuesday about Joseph Smith. Before we even got started she asked us, how she could know which of all the many churches were true. Wow it was a great lesson! She also lives really close to the church house! This week we have some YW coming with us to teach them! Astig!
This is Sister Oberia's last week and she is committed to work hard until the end! Transfer announcements are this Saturday!
-Sister Richins
Looks like everyone had a great 4th of July! Sister Lang and I celebrated it here with a nice cake and spaghetti so that was fun. We even wore our blue skirts to celebrate. We are having a lot of fun here too after all if you aren't having fun, you are not doing it right!
It was really sad this week our investigator Sheena told us that we can't visit her any more because it is just too much for her to endure with her dad. Her dad hates the church and doesn't want her to get baptized. We told her that we will always love her and care about her. Sometimes it is just so hard, when they are so many negative feelings about the church. But hopefully someday she will have the faith and courage to come back.
We also met our new mission President this week. He is super nice and his wife is so funny. I was worried that he wouldn't know English very well, but turns out he was really good. He is from Quezon City. His family is really sweet. They are two children that are still living with them. One is 18 and just got his mission call to Boise Idaho. The other daughter is 19 and is working of her mission papers. I was excited because the Mission President's wife said that she was planning on proselyting with the sisters 3 days a week if at all possible. That was exciting for me, it would be so great to have her strong testimony. President and Sister Guanzon are both converts to the church and have been members since 1981. They told us their touching conversion story on Friday. It is exciting time.
President gave us some great counsel as well. He said that there is about 700,000 members of the church in the Philippines and only about 150,000 that are activated. We talked about what happened to those people that were baptized, but are not active now- they were not completely converted. He emphasized teaching for understanding and teaching for conversion. He also said that the Philippines need more leaders so to seek after the middle class and in his words "Talk to those with cars, dress a little nicer, use English."
We were able to teach a lot of investigators this week and a lot of them are progressing. I still think it is such a miracle to see the change, we have so many people to teach now. After the missionary broadcast we have a lot of members wanting to work with us which is great! Our bishop is also all of the sudden really interesting in missionary work. Yesterday in Ward council and Ward coordination meeting we came up with a list of 15 names of less active members that the entire ward is going to work to reactive this year.
We have three investigators that are high school students. They are so sweet there names are Princess, Gema, and Michelle. We had a great lesson with them on Tuesday about Joseph Smith. Before we even got started she asked us, how she could know which of all the many churches were true. Wow it was a great lesson! She also lives really close to the church house! This week we have some YW coming with us to teach them! Astig!
This is Sister Oberia's last week and she is committed to work hard until the end! Transfer announcements are this Saturday!
-Sister Richins
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