Nov 18

Dear Family and Friends,

First off I just want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! I am so grateful for all of your love and prayers. I am so blessed.  Of course they don't celebrate thanksgiving here, but I will be thinking of you.  On the bright side at Jollibee they have a limited time special that includes Mashed potatoes so that is fun.

Wow from the sound of it, it sounds like we were truly lucky here not to be affected too much from the storm.  It is so crazy that it wiped out the whole tocobalon mission.  On Tuesday one of the zones from the Tacloban mission came by barge to Matnog, an area in our zone, and President Guanzon went and picked them up.  We will probably get some of those missionaries in our mission.  It will so so crazy to hear their stories.

Well the first news transfer announcements came and I will be training! Crazy! Actually Sister and Eracho and I will both be training.  We go to Legazbi tomorrow and then the new missionaries come on Wednesday.  So we will see who my new companion is then-philippino or American.  It is defiantly a little scary to train and humbling.  I know that the Lord trusts me and with his help I will be able to do it.

Of course that means we will be splitting our area.  It was a hard decision to decide what area each of us would get.  And we also realized that now that we have more time to dedicate to each area we can work on really finding less actives and finding new investigators.  Our current apartment only have one bedroom so the other there is a new apartment is next door. So we spent the morning moving all my things into the new apartment and getting ready for the new missionaries.

So in our district now there will be 8 sisters an 2 elders.  Isn't that crazy! We are a sister's district!

On Saturday we had a lovely Baptism for brother Tamboong.  He is so amazing and he is now inviting his friends to church. So awesome.  I am really sad that I won't get to continue to visit them because he is not in my part of the branch.  But at least I will get to see them every Sunday.  So a lot of change this week, but change is good.  President Guanzon always reminds us to always remember that your area is the best area and you have the best companion.

-Sister Richins