Day 334 Allen, Philippines Blood tofu, jungle woman, and daily miracles :)

Soooo, If you were able to come pick me up in December by some miracle, you would have to schedule it right now and coordinate with the mission president and office to get permission and stuff. I’ve heard of people just being released through Skype by their stake president so they can do whatever after. But I’ve heard there’s tons of promo  discount things for December for international flights.

I’ve decided that I write my letters quicker if I just use bullet points. So here we go:

-I forgot to mention I met the mayor last week. I was on exchanges with Sister Bingham and she was like who lives in that huge house? I told her it was the mayor and she said cool let’s go meet him! So we talked to the house help (practically all the rich people here have house help who do their laundry, cleaning, etc.) and they told us to just go upstairs. So we just waltzed right in to the mayor’s house!! He was drinking, though but we set up an appointment. Also, on Good Friday it turns out there was a murder at the Catholic church of some counselor of the mayor. Someone whacked him in the head from behind during their celebration procession. So maybe this will be a good time to teach him about the plan of salvation. And forgiveness.

-I ate a fish eyeball. We were eating at a member’s house for dinner one night. We had fried fish, a usual dish---with plenty of rice, of course. I heard a weird sucking noise and I looked over to see my companion sucking the eyeballs out of the fish’s eye socket! YUCKS! Then all the little kids looked at me like what’s your problem? And then they made me try it. . . It tasted like fish of course, but there was a weird hard thing in the middle. Well, I’m never doing that again. Cross that off my list.

-HAPPY BIRTHDAY JARED! I promise your birthday thing is coming. . . soon. . .someday. . .eventually. . . If this island ever gets postage!!! Hahaha.

-Yay Alex and Jared for singing in church! Wish I could’ve heard it! You’ll have to sing it for me when I get back. J

-I learned something cool about babies and the resurrection. Joseph Smith taught that children who die will be resurrected as children and their mothers will have the opportunity of raising them so they can gain all the intelligence they need to inherit a kingdom of glory. Sweet! It’s amazing how perfectly fair God’s plan of happiness is.

-When I was riding to an appointment on a pedicab, a car pulled up beside us and a man rolled down the window to ask if he could take my picture. *Awkward*

-I almost ate blood tofu. We were at a BBQ thing and I saw what I thought was chocolate or something, but then my comp said, nope Sister Smith that is blood. I lost my appetite and didn’t buy anything.

-We had a weird CSP. . . We went out to Cabacungan, one of our farthest bukid areas to help find materials to build a meetinghouse thing for special sacraments. On our way there, I saw a lady in the bukid who had no shoes on and I was amazed. A true jungle woman! Well, we hiked for like 2 hours into the jungle with a  bunch of kids to find the men who had left earlier that morning. I only had flipflops, haha. After only 10 minutes I just went barefoot because it was easier and hiked for about an hour that way. Who’s the jungle woman now??? Haha But then my foot started cramping and my DL traded me shoes. Once we found the man who was going to help us, he told us to come back next week instead. Soooooooooooooooooo we helped bring back a few logs, but that was the extent of our service.

-We had our General Apartment Cleaning Day. We rearranged our room and brought in a tiny end table to use as a mini desk so we don’t have to put all our stuff on our beds to study anymore! But now we have no gas so we've just been using a rice cooker to cook stuff for the past couple weeks.

-We have a new investigator named Elvie. She used to have a live-in partner who was an inactive LDS, but now they’re separated. Even though she’s SUPER Catholic with giant crosses and relics and saints everywhere, she is thirsty for something more in her life. Hopefully we’ll be able to help her recognize her answer as we teach her the Restoration J She was kinda defensive during our lesson about her religion, but we could tell that she was deeply interested and touched by our message. I think something clicked inside her.

-Alma 37:40 How often do we fail the miracles that happen “day by day?” This reminds me of a talk by Henry B. Eyring “O Remember, Remember.” We need to take time every single day to look for the hand of the Lord in our lives and remember Him. God is actively involved in our day to day lives---even minutely. I know we are never forgotten by our Father. Every good thing comes from Him.

I LOVE YOU ALL!!! Let me know what the plan is for Mother's Day. :) :) :)

p.s. they're playing Christmas music in this internet cafe!!!

Day 327 Allen, Philippines happy Easter!!!

This week was full of adventures---from giant spiders on my bed to speedwalking next to Catholic priests, trying to get home during Good Friday processions/parades. (There was only one street to get to our apartment, and it just so happened that the Catholics were parading around with their “saints’” caskets and stuff. . . We walked right by the priests! We ended up going a back way to our apartment, just to be safer. . . Bonfires with priests dancing around them with what look like KKK hats aren’t terribly comforting at night, haha. Our town is small so we didn’t see any reenactments of the crucifixion or anything super sketch.)
Well, there’s no time left so it’s time for bullet points:

-I wore a long sleeve sweater for the first time.

-I met an American WOMAN (it’s super rare to see anything but old men here) from the Peace Corps. It was actually a kind of wake up moment for me. The past couple weeks, I haven’t had much enthusiasm for finding until this day. We went out to eat after district meeting with a bunch of missionaries. One of them nudged another missionary to go talk to the American sitting in the same restaurant. They all joked and said no way. I didn’t really feel like that was the right attitude, and then I was able to see that attitude in myself. So as we got up to leave, I went to talk to her. Turns out she has a friend who served a mission too and I just happened to have English pass-along cards with me!

-Sister Mier was my hero and killed a HUGE UGLY GREEN EVIL SPIDER on my bed, right by my pillow! Yucks. . . I love having Filipina companions who kill stuff for me.

-Exchanges with Sister Bingham! :) She is super awesome at finding and was also reassigned in Cebu so she helped me regain what I had while I was in Cebu.

-Mormons here don’t do anything for Easter. We didn’t even sing a single Easter song. So Sister Simkins and I are planning to buy some eggs and decorate them with crayons then make our companions go on their first ever easter egg hunt! Whooo!

-During a lesson, I saw chicken caught and butchered right before my eyes!  In a dirt floor house, chickens just live with the people, a man grabbed a chicken right in front of me. I’ll spare you the details, but a few minutes later, I see an old nanay plucking the feathers out in the kitchen. Whoah. Fresh chicken. The whole time, I was just like ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm k.

-oh yeah and we had 3 baptisms on Saturday! haha forgot the most important thing that happened!

How are my old piano students doing? Just curious about them. J

Also, can you DearElder me the talk about Joseph Smith’s experience with O God, Where is thy pavilion? I can’t remember who it is by. . .

Question: What keeps families apart if they aren’t sealed for eternity, even if they go to the same kingdom?
I love the 6th verse of Sweet is the Work! Read it! Or better yet, sing it! :D

Last thought: Alma 24:19 What would the world be like if everyone would rather DIE than commit sin? Can you even imagine? Satan would have zero, zip, WARAY power over anyone. I guess that’s what the Millennium will be like in some sense.

Do you know what Vine or Kakao Talk is? I’m thinking of using a member’s phone to call home for Mother’s Day and those applications are free! But transfer day is right before then, so I don’t know what time or anything yet. . .

Sorry this is so scrambled! But i love you alllllllll! :)

Sis Baylon, Sis Mier, Amanda, Sis Bingham, Sis Simpkins, Sis Cambell

HUGE EVIL SPIDER on my bed. Compare to the size of the suitcase wheel!

Day 320 Allen, Philippines Conferences galore!

We hardly had any work again this week, but it was super spiritual! Tons of conferences, trainings, etc. Love it. And I saw the Priesthood session of General Conference! Super powerful and inspiring! Probably my favorite session. We still watch General Conference on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, we went to Catarman to watch it on the big sceen (It was weird to see myself during the World Report thingy. . .), but Sunday we stayed with the ward to watch it on a tiny tv with failing speakers, haha. So i'd be grateful for a ensign sooner or later. :) The mission tour isn't til next week. :)

Soooo for everyone that's waiting for a letter, sorry there's no postage on this silly island. . . maybe next month??? (Sorry Jared, your birthday thing is going to be really late. Did Alex ever get his??) Also, turns out the typhoon hit the south part of the mission because it was mainly heading towards Mindanao, southern Philippines. But we still got plenty of rain. Hopefully the shelters people are living in in Tacloban are holding up ok. . .

For our Zone Training meeting, our ZLs trained from a talk by Ted Callister called Becoming a Consecrated Missionary. Awesome stuff. Go read it! Basically we discussed the difference between changing our nature versus merely our behavior. Do we wake up on time because our companion does or do we wake up on time regardless of our circumstances? Are we reverent in sacrament meeting because the leaders are presiding or because we want to feel the Spirit? They also talked about how we are not perfect, but that is no excuse for not striving to be perfect.

Also this week we traveled to the other side of Allen, to Calbayog for our combined Zone Conference with Catbalogan Zone. It was the first time we got to see people from another zone since we returned to our mission in February! We were sooooo excited to see old friends and companions--- I got to catch up a little bit with Sister Henshaw. :) (Also, Sister Zamora says thank you soooo much for writing her often. She really appreciates it, even if she sometimes doesn't respond. Please keep it up!)

Three kids/youth we have been teaching from part-member families were interview for baptism this week! They will be baptized this coming Saturday! I was hoping for an oceanside baptism, but Filipinos think it's cooler in the chapel. I'm really excited to see the changes in these youth, especially in Resabel. When we first started teaching her, it was hard for her to say much or read the BOM, but now she diligently reads and excitedly shares her insights and questions. Awesome to see youth getting exited about scripture study. ;)

I noticed for General Conference that one of the themes was being a light to the world. It is not enough for us to silently live our lives as members of the ONLY true church of Jesus Christ. We have too much happiness and truth to selfishly keep it to ourselves. We cannot be saved without helping our brothers and sisters---including our ancestors! We need to courage to boldly proclaim our faith and let our faith show, as we were urged by Russell M. Nelson. We hold in our hands the happiness of OTHERS, as said by Henry B. Eyring I also really loved how Neil L. Anderson said, "Families are the treasures of heaven!" I think my two favorite talks were by Dieter F. Uchtdorf and David A. Bednar. What were your thoughts about the conference?

Hope all is well! LOVE YOU GUYS! :D ;D :D Send me some pics ;)

This was P-Day with the zone. We had several activities and then ate Filipino style where we just put the food on banana leaves and ate with our hands.

Day 313 Allen, Philippines 10 months na. . .

I'm 10 months into the mission. . .Time flies. And Ashley goes home in JUNE! What is this??

This past week proved to be kinda sad and disappointing because soooo many of our investigators and members are leaving for vacation or permanently moving away. There's not much work here; it's hard to make a living in this town. Many members have sent their husbands abroad so they can support the family until they have enough money to send for the rest of the family. Now that school is out here, people are taking the vacation time to move. So we'll basically be starting over with our investigator pool, people who work with us, rearranging presidencies, etc. Everyone is leaving. . . :/

But on a more positive note, we have two youth from part-member families that we a preparing for baptism! If all goes well, they should be baptized on April 19th! (I was hoping they could be baptized in the ocean, but Filipinos think it's cooler to be baptized in the baptismal font since they go swimming all the time.) One of them is Julie (11) and the other is Resabel (15).

We've been helping out with special sacraments in our farthest areas in the bukid/jungle which has been pretty cool to see the faithfulness of the members in the middle of nowhere. The people there are so excited to have sacrament that they are willing to build a little hut thingy to have sacrament meeting without asking for any help, money, or materials.

I started the Old Testament again. I've been reading it alongside the Pearl of Great Price and it really puts significance into the Creation and Fall. I learned that the Spirit of Christ is the power by which the earth was created. I've been studying a lot about the Plan of Salvation during my mission and it totally blows open my perspective about how incredibly crucial our time in mortality is. Everything is depending on these few years we spend in this estate!

I was able to attend the General Women's Meeting in Catarman, the stake center. I loved how they focused on becoming covenant-keeping women. I really felt a desire and responsibility to help those younger than me along the covenant path. That's why callings are so important!! I can't wait to continue to serve in callings throughout my life. I loved how Henry B. Eyring stressed how we NEED covenants in order to make it through the difficulties of this life. God knew our challenges would be too difficult to endure without the strength that comes from cleaving to our covenants.

Well, not much else happened this week, and next week we have Zone Training Meeting, Zone Conference, and then General Conference! and we are having a Mission Tour soon!!! Super stoked.

I love you all! Thank you so much for all the support and love you have consistently shown me throughout my whole mission. It means so much to know that I have a family who is always there for me. LOVE YOU ALL!!! Stay strong. :)

Me and Sister Mier