Miracles!

Area:  Floridablanca

Companion:  Sister Echon

Sister Training Leader

                                                                                    Saturday, March 29, 2014

Hello Friends & Fam,

Well we are emailing home early this week because we have a mission wide activity at the mission home on Monday which I am SUPER excited for!!! I will get to see ALL my batchmates and my ANAK Sister Rowley!!! Yay :) Well this week has been a week of MIRACLES. Surprise, we had 3 baptisms! 

The Uy family consists of Genelyn (mom, member), Angelo (investigator for 2 years), Ren Ren (11 member), Seth (8 investigator) and Shine (8 months). We have been working with Angelo for who knows how long, and finally the spark just clicked for him. He was been working REALLY hard to get rid of his coffee drinking habit, and with special permission from President, he was BAPTIZED this morning along with his youngest son Seth. The baptism was simple, yet beautiful. Angelo and Seth both gave heartfelt testimonies, in which Angelo thanked all the missionaries up until now that have taught him. I wish Sister Genelyn could have been there to witness her family being complete, she however is working abroad in Africa. But before she left, Sister Echon and I promised her that when she returned, her family would be complete. Now that brother is baptized we are going to work on keeping him active, getting him a calling in the church, and preparing to go to the temple so that when sister gets home they can be sealed :)   Miracle.

Kristine Cunanan has also had a baptism goal date at least six times now and we have had to continuously push back her date. However, we had an extremely spiritual lesson with her and her aunt Karen this week that made her 100% sure that the church was true and soo excited to be baptized. She finally did it,:)  Miracle.

Kristine's has an aunt and cousins that are members of the church, her Aunt Karen and Uncle Sean (they are married) have been investigators of the former missionaries, but were dropped because they weren't progressing. However, Sister Echon and I have been praying for them lots in hopes that we could somehow find a way to start teaching them again. We had an FHE with them a few weeks ago but that didn't seem to do the trick. However, this week we had an awesome discussion with Karen about prophets, general conference, and temples (she knows a lot of deep doctrine because her sister is a member). The hairs on our arms were standing the whole conversation, every single person in that room commented on the spirit that was present, it was incredible. Sister Echon and I then went for it and told Karen that we would like to start teaching she and Sean again. We sat down with them and their kids, their friend Sarah (new investigator,19) and (Kervin) the father of Chelsea (member), her mom is also a member but is abroad. We extended baptismal goal dates for April 26, they have some things such as word of wisdom issues that we will need to help them work out, but we are hopeful and excited to help them to be baptized. Miracle.

Sister Echon and I set an hour aside for finding earlier today in Resettlement, one of our farthest areas. There are TONS of streets there and it is super easy to get lost. We had no idea where we wanted to go finding so we just got off of our Jeepney and just started walking down a street looking for people to talk to. I kept pointing to random streets to walk down and we came across this one house where we felt like we should approach the family sitting out front. We did so, and wow were we amazed at what happened next. As we were giving them articles of faith and told them that we were mormons, this young man walks out the front door and goes, "SISTERS!" as if he knew us or something. I was shocked and excited at the same time. He said he was just sleeping but that something woke him up, he felt the urge to go outside and then he saw us. He then told us that he is a member from Davao City, Mindenao. He moved here to Floridablanca last June and has yet to find the church. Sister and I were so excited and gave him our number, taught him a lesson, and are going to meet him in town tomorrow and go to church together so that he knows where it is. What are the odds that Sister and I would just aimlessly walk down streets and feel to go up to this random little house, low and behold to find this young man that has been searching for the church. Miracle. 

We had our cooking demo earlier this week on Tuesday which was a blast. We made chicken curry and fruit salad. Interviews with President were awesome, he is such an awesome President, I have learned so much from him and will be so sad when his time here in the mission ends. The work continues to press forward here in Floridablanca, Sister Echon and I are always blown away at the end of the day, there is not enough hours in the day to get everything done and visit all the people that we would like to in the time we have. I think that's a good sign though :)

The church is true. I love you have a great week!

Sister Pilkington