Dear Family and Friends,
Well we made to through transfer day which basically means a lot of traveling. We left Guinobaton at 7 in the morning and then we went to Sorsogon where they read transfer announcements. And Sister Eracho and I are opening an area in Bulan! Bulan is about 3 hours away from Sorsogon by the time we got to our Area is was 5 pm. Our apartment is a new missionary apartment so we had to buy food and put together our table and everything. It was a pretty tiring day.
So Sister Eracho, if you remember, trainer of Sister Lang in our Guionobaton Apartment. So she was assigneed to Guinobaton ward 2 and I was in Guinobaton ward 1. So it was really funny when we found out we were companions because we had been joking that we would be companions after the transfer announcement was made.
So the area... We are opening an area here in Bulan Branch which is right next to the ocean. Literally some of the members houses are on the beach. It is a lot different than Guinobaton- the people are a lot poorer here, but super nice. The Branch is really small...the branch president said there are about 300 members in the records, but maybe 60 attend.
It has been somewhat challenging this week because of course both Sister Eracho and I are new to the area. The history of missionaries in this area isn't the best either. The Elders that were here got pulled out because of disobedience and now we have to fix the relationships between the Missionaries and Branch Leaders. But the branch is really excited about having sisters here. We were given the Elder's old area book only to find that it wasn't updated and it all the information was incomplete. But we are optimistic about the future and we were able to find a few of the Elder's old investigators. The members have been a huge blessing in giving us referrals and helping us out.
We also found out that next transfer 2 more sisters will be coming to Bulan Branch and we are in the process of looking for an apartment for them. So after this transfer we will probably split the area Sister Eracho and I will split and lead both areas.
Of course they are challenges, but it is nice that Sister Eracho and I already knew each other really well which has been really nice.
Well we are looking forward to this next week we are starting to get more familiar with the area. Of course I get a lot of attention here being white, but it is sometimes a benefit because the people get really excited when I start to speak Tagalog.
Well thanks for all your love and support!
-Sister Richins
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