February 3

Dear Family and Friends,

Wow looks it is February! I think the Groundhog must not have seen its shadow here yesterday because it is super hot now.  It is okay though, I think I have just been a little spoiled lately in the colder weather.  This morning we had a zone activity with President and Sister Guanzon. It was crazy that is the second time in a row that Bulan zone has won.  I just love being around President and Sister Guanzon.  They are so great!

So of course we had a crazy week this past week.  I love sister Flake so much, she has such a strong testimony and passion for the gospel.  She is great.  It will be interesting to see what happens next week with transfers.

So this whole transfer we have been teaching the Casals Family, they probably let us into their house at first because we were two white Americans, but they kept on letting us back.  It is always so crazy when we go there.  When we first started teaching them.  They were okay, not super receptive, just amazed that we could speak Tagalog. They never really progressed very much until finally this week, when they started to read and pray as a family.  Sister Dolores finally said that she read on her own and prayed.  She is still waiting for an answer, but she says she will continue to pray.   The kids on Sunday came to church. Slowly, but surely they will come to understand that this gospel can bring greater blessings than anything else in the world.  Winston and Dolores still haven't come to church, but they are starting to understand, so hopefully the branch can fellowship them and help them come to church.

So I don't know if I won't about it but we have been teaching brother Renatto who was a street contact that we had.  He is seriously so prepared by the Lord.  We taught him about the Book of Mormon and he starting reading it.  Even though he is super super busy with school, he still makes time to read the Book of Mormon every morning after he wakes up before school.  He is a college student, studying criminology.  It was so crazy on Wednesday we taught him about the Word of Widsom and it was so crazy because he had no problems.  Almost every single college ages lalaki here has a problem with something in the Word of Wisdom.  Brother Bunso, our Branch Mission Leader, was working with us and was shaking his head the whole time-like he couldn't even believe it.  Rennatto was truly prepared by the Lord and it is so great that we were able to find him.

Well this week should be exciting Brother Rodel and Brother Ceriel have their baptism on Saturday.  Brother Christian was suppose to be baptized too, pero he is still struggling with a few thing so we postponed it, but it should be good because now Brother Rodel, his best friend, will be able to baptize him in two weeks.  He was a little disappointed, but he is still excited.

Also crazy thing, we taught a lesson in complete English on Saturday.  It was a weirdest thing.  Because here the upper class doesn't use Tagalog, they use English.  We had a refferal from a member of a rich teacher.  We we got to the house she was speaking to all her kids in English and she said she preferred English so we taught it English.  It was so hard to speak so much English. I don't know if we will get to go back, but at least we got to talk to her.

Well it is the start of a new week.  Have a great week.

-Sister Richins