Area: San Marcelino
Companion: Sister Rowley
Sister Pilkington is a
trainer and a Sister Training Leader
Monday,
December 9, 2013
Magandang umaga po (Good
Morning)!!
Grabi ang linggo na ito. I
really have no idea what to say about this week, it seriously just FLEW by and
I don't even know what happened. I have been so busy that I've somehow even
been missing days in my journal, I'm not really sure where the time went.
However, masaya parin ako (I'm still happy) and excited to serve the Lord! Christmas
is almost here and I am getting so excited, the only thing missing is SNOW
& of course my amazing family. However, things for the week...
As I'm sure my parents
have informed you all, I have been called as sister training leader, I was
shocked when I got a text from Elder Gorringe saying "Do you know your
travel plans to the mission home tomorrow?" I had no idea what he was
talking about..only sister training leaders and zone leaders were supposed to
go to the mission home.. I responded "I'm not a sister training leader..so
no?" A few minutes later the phone is ringing and the AP's are on the
other side, they say, "Sister Pilkington, I think President Querido forgot
to call you, but you have been called as the new Sister Training Leader for the
San Antonio Zone!" I laughed, and that was it, I'm now a STL. We had an
AMAZING leadership training at the mission home on Friday, it was extremely
inspiring and made me want to be the best missionary I could possibly be. We
had mission business discussed by President and his wife, then we split up into
groups, zone leaders, and then sister training leaders. In our training, the
sister training leaders that have had their calling for quite a while stood up
and talked about the things that they have learned, pieces of advice they had
for me and Sister Mack (we are the only newbies) and bore their testimony of
their gratefulness for their calling. I was scrambling to take down notes on
everything that they said, of course I want nothing more than to fulfill my calling.
At the end we discussed ways we can better help our zones to be obedient and
how to work better with the members. Some of the things that I really took away
from the training was that we can do hard things, referring to 1 Nephi 3:4-7
4 Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me that thou
and thy brothers should go unto the house of Laban, and seek the records, and
bring them down hither into the wilderness.
5 And now, behold thy brothers
murmur, saying it is a hard thing which I have required of them; but behold I
have not required it of them, but it is a commandment of the Lord.
6 Therefore go, my son, and
thou shalt be favored of the Lord, because thou hast anot bmurmured.
7 And it came to pass that I,
Nephi, said unto my father: I awill go and do the things which
the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no bcommandments unto
the children of men, save he shall cprepare a way
for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.
Pretty sure most of you
have these scriptures memorized, but it talks about how with every commandment
or calling that the Lord gives us, He also provides a way for us to accomplish
them. To close the meeting Elder Doyle, one of the senior couples, gave a
spiritual instruction. Something that he shared really stuck with me, "If
there ever was a time to be an example of the believers, the time is NOW."
How true this statement is. I love the word example as well, as a leader I know
it is now my responsibility to now only be an example through my words, but
through my actions as well. I hope to be able to fulfill my calling and am
extremely humbled for this calling from the Lord. In my zone there is six
sisters, me, Sister Rowley, Sister Lim, Sister Wagner, Sister Panal and Sister
Ah Hong. I am excited to work with them and to do the best I can to help them
be the best missionaries possible.
As for the Sevillaga
Family, they are doing wonderful, they are the definition of one BIG HAPPY
FAMILY, despite all of their problems and trials, they are power houses and
have so much faith. The oldest brother AJ is a rockstar. He isn't even baptized
yet and asked if he could work with us yesterday, of course we said yes! He was
incredible and is extremely smart, future missionary no doubt. He can almost
find scriptures faster than me and he has only had a Book of Mormon for a week,
and he was able to connect soo well with our less actives and bore a beautiful
testimony, we are super excited for him. He is definitely the leader of his
family. The Sevillaga boys are also extremely talented singers, Nanay is
getting baptized on Saturday, so I printed out the lyrics to Be Still My Soul
in Tagalog and we practiced at the church this week singing, we are going to do
a musical number for her baptism, we are super excited, and so are they!
Mangga (mangoe) and pacuan
(watermelon) season are now officially here, STOKED! Mangoes are pretty much
the best fruit in the entire world. Wilma sends us home with seriously three
watermelons EVERY TIME we come visit her, at one point we had 10 watermelons at
home, we could practically start our own business selling watermelons! We gave
them out to our Elders and some of our other investigators, they were extremely
happy, talk about some re-gifting, whoops haha. Something random for the week,
one of the less actives in our branch's dad worked for Osama Bin Laden, he was
the driver for him! Not exactly something us Americans loved hearing from him,
hahah creepy!
We have 8 progressing
investigators as of right now and they are ALL the Sevillaga Family and their
cousins and aunt. We are having a little bit of a harder time to help our other
investigators progress, our area is extremely small now that we have 8
missionaries here so we spend our time going down all these random roads that nobody
would have ever found before. It has been adventurous to say the least, and we
are hopeful to find some families to teach!
All is going well here in
San Marcelino, we are getting ready for our Branch Christmas Party that somehow
we missionaries got put in charge of. We came up with the idea of having the
auxilary leaders perform a nativity and use Luke 2 scriptures, and sing some
christmas songs in-between as a congregation. It is this Friday, the 13, ooh!
I'm excited and hope we have a lot of investigators show up. I'm grateful for
my opportunity to serve, missions seriously just FLY by! I'm almost about to
hit my 6 month mark, one year left, crazy. I love serving a mission,
especially here in the Philippines, I wouldn't want to serve anywhere else. I
love this work, I have such a strong testimony of this gospel and all that it
can do for your life. Let us all remember the reason of this Christmas season
and take an effort to spend more time with our families rather than with our
electronics and material things of the world. We cannot afford to be content in
mediocre ways, let us always strive to be better than we were yesterday!
I love you all, have a
great week, be safe, & Happy Holidays!
Sister Pilkington :)
Mahal Kita (I love you)!
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