February 24

Dear Family Friends,

We had a really small group at church yesterday.  Only 35 in the little meetinghouse.  That was because it was raining all day yesterday.  Literally all day.  Turns out rain is a great excuse for not coming to church here.  At church, I was playing the opening hymn on the little electric piano and then the power went out, or as they call it here "Brown out." The power stayed out for all the meetings.  The little old meeting house, has a lot of holes in the roof. It was quite the sight watching all the buckets fill up with water. We would have to empty them throughout the meeting.  But you know it was just one of those things that you say the church is still true-even in the old building house that we meet in.

It was kind of a rough week. We are still are working to get our area to the standard of excellence.  I don't know  this week has just been a hard one for   me.  I am not sure why, but sometimes I just feel really alone because it is hard to communicate with my companion. I am just trying to figure out how best to do help this area and our companionship.

We were going to go on exchanges on Wednesday with the Sorsogon Sisters, but then the Finance Elder called and said that we needed to go to Legazpi so that Sister Iqbal could sign some forms she needed for her exit clearance.  So we spent the day traveling to and from Legazbi.

We did finally find a apartment.  It is a  nice bright pick house right next to the beach.  So now we will be able to enjoy a nice sea breeze as we study each morning.  I hate figuring out all this apartment stuff.  We spent a lot of time on the phone with the finance elder to figure out the contract and things.  Our new apartment is even equipped with a catholic idol.  So just in case you wanted that.  There is one inside and as a bonus they also have one outside.

We have such a busy week.  The Philippines area president is coming for a mission tour and so we have leadership training tomorrow, zone conference/mission tour Wednesday and moving day on Thursday.  So maybe we will have a little time to do some missionary work.


We also had a great week teaching and things.  I was a great week.

-Sister Richins