Doing service on the beach.
Hello
all!
What
a week! So much happened this week, I don't know if I can get it all out, but
I'll do my best. :)
Okay,
so maybe "invasion" is a bit of an exaggeration, but we did find two
baby snakes in our apartment this week and one of them was on the
COUNTERTOP!... we're not sure how that happened, but we just hope the mama
snake doesn't come and eat us for killing her two babies...
The
rain POURED on us on Friday. We were walking and walking and walking and no one
was home or they were asleep or their houses were flooding and they didn't want
to be taught. So I told Sister Lapura that we had to sing :) We sang hymn after
hymn after hymn as we walked through the ankle deep flooded streets, trying to
avoid getting splashed by the passing tricycles. We were soaking wet for the
whole day, first from our sweat and then from the pelting rain, but as we
walked and sang, we just laughed :) Singing hymns is a really great way to turn
cloudy rainy days into sunny ones! And one thing I realized this week is that
even the rain comes from heaven. We may not always enjoy it, but remember
challenges help us grow!
We
had a great branch conference yesterday and all of our investigators with a
baptismal date came to church! Brothers Arcenio and Ronell and Sister Delia
were all there! What a happy day when investigators come to church! They are
all working on word of wisdom problems, but have strong desires to stop and we
know Heavenly father will help them :) We are seeing miracles in their
progression towards baptism!
Dugupan Zone passing out water.
We
had the opportunity to do two community service projects this week. The first
was on Tuesday at the Dagupan Bangus Festival (a type of fish- sooo goood!). We
served with the Dagupan Stake members handing out water to the dancers in the
parade. The parade was probably one of the coolest things I've seen
(culturally) in my life! The ornate, colorful traditional costumes were so
amazing and the traditional dances and the drums were so cool. I couldn't stop
beaming as we handed out cup after cup of water. The service project took on a
new meaning to me when I realized about halfway through that there were a lot
of parallels to missionary work. As missionaries, our job, our purpose, our
goal, is to invite others to receive salvation by partaking of the living
waters of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are thirsty and hot and need the
saving waters of the gospel and the ordinances associate with it, but they
don't always realize it. I noticed as we handed out water, some of the people
readily took the water. Some even came under our tent and asked to fill their
water bottles. Others didn't want the water, despite the heat and their full-
body costumes. We see this every day in our work as missionaries. The elected
souls want more and are thirsty to know more and partake of the living waters
of Christ's gospel. Others, not so
ready. They may not realize that they are thirsty until they partake of the
waters. But our job is just to offer it to them. It's clean, it's refreshing,
and it's free. We just have to partake of it. And it's the only way to be happy
in this live and achieve exaltation :) I am so blessed to be able to offer people
this saving, living water every day! :)
That's
all for this week!
Mahal
ko kayo :)
Sister
Gustafson
Dagupan Bangus Festival
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