September 9

Dear Family and Friends,

Well it's the second week in Bulan.  It has been a busy, but good week.  We continued to work with the branch leaders and get them excited about missionary work.  One of the biggest challenges in this area is that there are not ward sisters to work with us.  We have a lot of brothers that they elders taught before, but we can't teach them without a sister present.  It is frustrated sometimes because there are a lot of RM brothers that want to work with us, but if we don't have sisters they can't help us.  Of course there is power in following the rules and being exactly obedient.  It used to be that we could teach males if we taught them outside, but President Blisner told us that we need to make sure there is always another sister present.  It's okay there is power in obedience. 

This week we were able to teach the Taboong Family.  They were taught last year by the Elders, but then the first Elders that taught them got transferred and they next elders stopped teaching them for some reason. But they are a golden family.  All the kids still read the Book of Mormon and they have family prayer each night.  We had a family home evening with them.  We also taught them last night and it was so great.  It was so cool to see how happy the mom has and thanked us last night and I thought she was ready to cry! I am excited to continue to teach them. 

We also find a lot of part member families that were really receptive to us and one even came to church on Sunday!

Sister Eracho is a great missionary.  She is from Angles Philippines.  She was a convert when she was 14 and she and her sister are the only members in her family- such an example of faith.  I have learned so much from her.  She is really good at relating the gospel to people and helping them see how it connects to their life.  It has been a blessing that she is my companion now so that I can really develop those teaching skills now that I have a grasp on the language.  Sister Eracho really likes to talk during the lesson because her last companion from pakistan didn't say very much in lessons. We have been working on it though and practicing teaching in unity and it is coming a long.  We trade off leading each lesson and it has really helped. 

Oh funny experience this week--- I saw all these little boys at a members house playing with empty match boxes.  My companion said they were playing gagamba.  I said oh how do you play thinking is was some kind of native game or something.  Turns out the word for Spider in Tagalog is Gagamba.  They little boys had spiders in their matchboxes.  Lets just say I was really surprised when they pulled the spiders out of the boxes.  haha! I guess I won't forget that word.

Well have a great week everyone!

-Sister Richins