Dear Family and Friends,
Well I am glad that everyone had a good 4th of July. We had an exciting 4th of July here. Well actually it turns out they don't celebrate it here, who would had thought? Anyway though it has been an interesting week.
So first off on Friday night we were walking home after our last appointment of the day, it was about 8:55 and we saw this lady walking down the street, it was funny because we almost know everyone that lives next to our apartment and have ended up teaching them one time or another, but I didn't recognize her. But she was kind of caught off guard because we were two foreigners walking in the night. But we stopped to talk to her and about the church. It came to turn out that her and her husband own a lot of the land next to our apartment, they live in Manila, but are here to harvest the coconuts. She was staying in one of the many resorts next to our apartment. We set a return appointment the next day. On Saturday we taught her and it was a really great lesson, it turns out that she was inside her guest room the night before and had been praying to know what to do to help her family. She then had gotten a little bored so she went for a little walk at 8:50 at night. And then she met us. She was like, I don't think it is a coincidence that we met last night. We were like no of course not it was not a coincidence. I am so thankful that we stopped to talk to her. She is leaving for Manila tomorrow, but we gave her a Book of Mormon and we will pass her contact information to the missionaries in Manila. What a miracle.
On Tuesday we also had MLC in Legazbi. It was great. We talked about how to help our investigators attend sacrament meeting, but working to get the members and missionaries on the same team. President was talking how in the weekly letters that he gets from missionaries, everyone's happiness is related to if their investigators attended sacrament meeting. "None of our investigators attended sacrament meeting, we are so sad." or " We had lots of investigators attend sacrament meeting, we are so happy." President was like what are we doing here, letting someone control our happiness. He was like, we have been sent to earth to be agents of our own selves, not to be acted upon. (2 Nephi 2:14, 27). He was like we have the power to change, we have control over IASM. We can carefully plan so that our investigators will attend sacrament meeting. It was a really good workshop and it got everyone fired up to increase our IASM.
In not so exciting news, this week one of our Less Active/Returning member that we had been teaching passed away. It is really unexpected, especially because we say him the night that he passed away and then in the morning we learned that he had had a heart attack and passed away. He had just started to become reactivated in the church. Brother Pedro Betichadio, he was 65 years old. So on Saturday, President Desuyo called a meeting for us to plan the funeral service. They decided that Sister Amato and I would be the speakers. I am not going to lie, I was really nervous to speak at the funeral service. It is hard to know what to say at a funeral. I just made and plan and prayed that the spirit would take over. We prepared and got ready and on Sunday night we had the service funeral service in Sorsogon. How blessed we are to know about the Plan of Salvation. The plan of salvation is such a perfect plan. I am really going to miss him, he lived really close to our apartment and we always saw him at least 5 times a day, he always had a smile and his face and was always "Hello Sisters! "
We also had exchanges with the other Sister's in Bacon. I was with Sister Erickson from Holliday, UT. It was fun, it was back to two white Americans. I love going on exchanges and getting to see the miracles that happen. Something really funny that happened on exchanges: We were going to one of their investigators they had been teaching the mom, but they had just started teaching the dad. The Mom was washing clothes and was busy at the moment so she told her husband to tell us to come back later that day. I guess was he really shy to talk to us, and later that day his wife told us. That he was so shy to talk to us because we were both Americans and that we didn't know Tagalog, He was like you just tell then, and she was like they know Tagalog, but I guess this dialog went back and forth and then he came out and did an action with his hands "Maglaba" (She is washing clothes) and "Mamaya" (Later). It was really funny.
Well another week, can't wait to see what it brings.
-Sister Richins
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