June 30

Dear Family and Friends, 

We are moving into the first week of July! I can't believe that you all will be celebrating the fourth of July over there on Friday.  I honestly feel that you all were just talking about the last 4th of July last year.  This week has been quite adventurous for me here.  I tried Octopus this week, ya I know that is crazy, but it wasn't so bad. Also it has started into the rainy season so it rains almost every afternoon with big thunder and lighting storms so that is kind of exciting.  It is great because it is not as hot.  

This week was a great week, we had exchanges with the Sorsogon Sisters.  I was with the trainee of Sister Flake, Sister Natarte, she is really sweet.  She is from Baguio, which is the only place in the Philippines to have Strawberries.  We worked here in Bacon, it was pretty exciting.  I love exchanges so much.  It helps remind me of the excitement of missionary work.  While on exchanges we were in one of our areas, where all of the houses are all the same and they all have tin roofs.  It turns out when it rains really hard, you can't hear anything in houses with tin roofs. We were teaching a lesson and then it started pouring and it was pretty soon it was useless to continue.  

We had a great week finding this week. On Tuesday we were working with some of the Branch Missionaries and our appointments fell through so we went tracting.  It was funny because one of the Branch Missionaries really didn't want to tract in that area because he was from that area and all the people knew him.  We would go to each house and he would say, oh they are not interested.  But yet we continued until we got to the last house and they let us in.  We taught Liro a 21 year old mom, with one little boy that has cancer and is blind.  She was great and really wanted learn.  Her question for us was when we were going to come back so that we could teach her more.  

We also taught the Dellosa Family, which is a new investigator this week too.  We taught them on Saturday night.  We had taught there daughter, Sailene, before and we were going back to teach her again, but this time her dad listened too and he was so excited, he felt the spirit as we taught about Joseph Smith and then we asked him how he felt and he said he felt so great inside.

I love finding, I know that the Lord's hand is in this work.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

-Sister Richins