Sister Flores helping make lunch.
I pulled out the picture of my family that I carry as we taught the
Escano family the other night. We were discussing family prayer and I
got emotional as I showed them the picture and told them how grateful I
was that we always had our family say family prayer, even when it wasn't
convenient. I told them that one of the reasons I could bear to leave
them for a year and half was because of how grateful I am for the
gospel's influence on our family. The spirit was so strong! we extended
baptismal invitation to the mom, for December 21st
and she accepted. The husband is really accepting as well, so we're
going to give him a date soon. They have two gorgeous little kids. I
love the Escanos!!
Okay, The Ward! We are over the Lingayen 2nd ward along with
the other sisters that we live with. They are such a great ward! We love
them!! Bishop Dapadap is the son of our ward mission leader and is
probably one of the smallest men I've ever met in my life. He's only in
his late twenties and he's a great bishop! The ward is about 100 people,
there are a lot of part member families and less actives that we're
working to reactivate. We're not allowed to only teach less actives, so
we're working to get them to help us fellowship our investigators and
reactivate them at the same time.
I play the piano in sacrament meeting and RS every week. The
culture here is sooo different from the states. The kids run wild and
free during sacrament meeting, going in and out, running up and down the
isles, eating, talking, and even yelling! It's a little crazy. My first
week I was so frustrated because I couldn't hear the speaker and we had
all these little kids trying to climb all over us. The parenting for
the most part here is so lax and kids are used to running free. We're
going to try to work with bishop on teaching the parents to keep their
kids in their seats during the sacrament meeting. It's hard to bring our
investigators to church and help them feel the Spirit in an environment
like that.
Funny thing- it was my first week in Relief Society. I walked into the room and
saw a lace tablecloth on the table with a picture of Christ and vase
of fake flowers. The teacher was taping typed phrases on the board with
masking tape. As the lesson started someone passed chocolates around. It
was just like any other RS meeting I've ever been to. You RS sisters
will know what I'm talking about! No matter where you go, the Church
(and Church culture, I guess!) is the same :) I love it!
Trykes! Trykes are one of the very best best things about the Philippines. Barely anyone can afford a car here so everyone uses trykes
to get around. They are motorcycles that have these side cars attached.
They are so so efficient! Trykes are every every everywhere and you can
always just signal one and go where ever you need to! (See the attached
picture for a tryke selfie of Sister Gallego and me :)
Your long Tagalog word of the week is brought to you by Ang Aklat
ni Mormon. It's... ready? ...pinakamakapangyarihan. Tada! It means "all
powerful". Whew. some of these words are such tongue twisters!! Grabe!
The Lord is helping me so much with the language. A lot of times during
lessons I'll have no idea what to say and then I'll just open my mouth
and words come out that I definitely did not put there. The promise in Doctrine & Covenants 100:6 is true. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father knows what
the people we are teaching need to hear and that He trusts me with His
work. I know that He puts the things in our mouths that we need to say.
If you were to visit the Philippines, you would notice a lot of
things right away. The heat. The smells of trash and sewage and burning
plastic and cigarette smoke. You would see houses that are made of
cardboard and cinderblocks or plywood and tin. Walking down a typical
street you would see naked children and drunk people on the side of the
road. You would see black rivers of water with green slime. BUT if you
were looking at these things you would most definitely miss the bright
pink flowers blooming in the tree above you. You would miss the little
kids flying colorful homemade kites. If you entered the home of a
family, you might be distracted by the dog barking outside or the smell
of smoke coming from the fire in the corner, but if you did that, you
would most definietly miss the sweet Spirit that enters as this family
testifies of their experience with family prayer strengthening them. you
would miss the gorgeous little four year old eyeing you shyly in the
corner. if you were watching the lizard eating the cockroach on the
wall, you would miss the chance to look into the eyes of the mom as you
explain how her family can be together for eternity because of God's
plan for them.
Sometimes it's so hard to focus on what's really important amid the
distractions and noise of the world. When we focus our minds and hearts
on those things of eternal importance, we are blessed with an increased
capacity to bear trials. We remember that the trials and problems in
this life are but a small moment compared to eternity. Try to see the
good in the world and focus on the things of true importance!
I love you all!!
-Sister Gus :)
Sister Gustafson in front of the Urdaneta City sign, but you can't see the words. haha
No comments:
Post a Comment