August 19

Dear Family and Friends,

This week has been interesting, but exciting.  This week was the Catholic's festival week.  Which has to do with the catholic idols that they have here.  So that was interesting.  It basically meant everything was closed and no one was home.  It was okay though we still were able to teach a few lessons and did a lot of tracking.

On thing that we have starting to really focusing on this week is to bear testimony when we first meet people on the street.  In Preach my gospel it says to bear testimony of the Restoration, in the first contact.  It is so effective because you can see how all of this people's lives can relate to our doctrine and you can share it with them with the spirit. As much as I hate the attention, people get really excited when I start talking to them in Tagalog and a lot of the time they will stop and talk to me.  It is funny because Sister Pareje always has me initiate conversation with people.  People are always amazed how well I know Tagalog and are eager to talk to me in Tagalog. I always tell them that it a gift and blessing from God to be able so that I can share our message with them. 
 
We were able to teach this one lady that it was a miracle that we were even able to teach her, because she told us she was catholic and was going to die catholic.  Her first question for us was why we don't believe in idols.  We explained that it was because the scriptures tell us that we shouldn't, we ended up talking to her about prayer and how we believe that we can talk directly with God.  It was really cool to see how the spirit guided the lesson and she was at a lost of words.  I don't know if she will allow us to come back, but at least we boldly through the spirit shared our message with her. 

Yesterday we taught Danny who we talked to one the street on Tuesday we wanted to teach him on Tuesday when we first met him because he had so many questions about why there were so many churches and about the bible.  We, however, couldn't teach him on Tuesday because we didn't have another sister with us.  But we came back yesterday and we were able to teach him.  He said he was really busy, but we asked for just 10 minutes.  We bore testimony about the Restoration and the next question he asked was what his purpose was in life.  He is great because he really wants to read and think about everything.  We told him also to pray. 

Today for P-day we went to Lauyin Hills for our district activity.  Which is basically a big hike and you can look out and see the Mayon Valcano and at the bottom there is a zoo.  It was fun to see all the different animals native to the Philippines.  It makes me look really adventurous to see all the animals that I saw.  Tigers, Giant snakes, native birds, I even found Rudolph's brother Dasher-looks like he got lost last Christmas! 

This week is the last week in the transfer so we will see what happens next transfer. I really have loved this transfer with Sister Paraje, I have learned a lot from her-especially Tagalog. 

-Sister Richins

Also cool experience this week, we went to this lady's house and she asked me to give the prayer in English.  It was a weirdest thing because it was so hard for me to do and I caught myself speaking Tagalog in the middle of it.  I guess Tagalog is coming!  President Blisner said that after 3 transfers you would be comfortable in Conversation, and after 4 you would be able to talk easily! Well I will keep on working on it.