Area: Floridablanca
Companion: Sister Matelau
Sister Training Leader
Monday,
April 21, 2014
Hello family and friends.
It's so true what they
say, the longer you are in the mission, the faster time goes by. I am starting
to hit the reality that this mission is actually going to end at some point. I
feel like i'm just going to be a missionary forever. Sister Matelau and I keep
running out of time to go to all the places that we have scheduled for each
day. Which I guess is a good thing, but it's stressin your girl out!
Anyways, this week was
"Holy Week". Yeah not so holy here in the Philippines. It has
consisted of crazy traffic, people walking up and down the streets with
bandanas covering their faces, carrying huge crosses like Christ did, and whipping
themselves in the back spilling blood all over the streets. You know you are
de-sensitized to things when that really didn't even phase me. I was traveling
with the White Couple, Sister yells, I wanna go see some crosses hunny! Take us
to the city and lets get some pics! Well she encouraged me to take a pic, so I
snapped a couple for you all to get a little taste of what it was like this
week.
As far as teaching
lessons, everyone became super active Catholics this week so that was super
difficult to try to find people to share with. We however were able to find 14
new investigators. On Tuesday I made a bet with Sister Matelau, I give her 10
articles of faith, and I had 10, I said whoever can hand them out first and get
names written down has to buy the other one halo-halo. She agreed and the game
was on. Well turns out we ended up talking to this family who invited us in, we
scored free halo-halo and seven new investigators. Double whammy baby.
We have a baptism this
Sunday, April 27! Sister M.S. will be diving into the waters, we are SO excited
for her. This girl has been through just about any and every trial possible.
She has changed a TON, and she will then be going with our youth to the temple
the following Wednesday to do baptisms at the temple and to start some temple
work for her ancestors, she is very excited.
Karen and Sean David are a
couple that we have been working with that we have scheduled for May to be
baptized. They have very strong testimonies and REALLY want to be baptized. We
just need to get them to church a few more times and get sister to stop
drinking coffee and brother to stop drinking alcohol. Neither of them are
addicted, they just get tempted when their friends do it. With some good
lessons this week and a game plan we will get them baptized in no time. They
are awesome. Probably the family I am closest to here in Florida.
The sisters I live with
here in Floridablanca and I have come up with the idea to hold our own little
FHE monday nights after we all get home from work. We did so last week and it
was a blast, even if it was just four of us playing games and indulging on
mango floats. Love house unity and these crazy sisters.
Sister Manilingan and I
went on exchanges this week and we worked in a newer area, San Jose in my area.
We decided to go finding down this one street and to talk to everyone that we
saw. Well this one cute old little man was sitting on a bench and I decided to
talk to him. We go over and I didn't even have to say anything before he shouted
mormons! I was a little surprised because most people mistake us for Jehovah's
Witnesses. I then said yes and asked how he knew. He grabs sister and I and
pulls us into his little house, he opens this cupboard and about 7 book of
mormon's fall out, and they weren't just little paper ones, they were nice book
of mormon's. Turns out his WHOLE FAMILY are members except for him. The
missionaries in the angeles mission baptized them 20 years ago but when they
moved here to Florida they went back to Catholic because no missionaries came
to visit them. We set up a return appointment for this cute little old family
on Tuesday, I'm excited to see what will happen. Brother will be baptized, we
will complete this family no doubt.
Sister Matelau and I are
going to find God's street this week. We are going to pray every night about
our different areas that we have and make a list of the areas we feel impressed
to go to. Then we will compare our two lists together. If we wrote down some of
the same areas we will select those and then pray again about which area is
right until we get it down to one area. We will then pray about which streets
to go down and write them down again and then compare. Once we narrow it down
to one street, it will then be called God's street. We will knock on every
single door and try to teach them, we will let them reject us twice before we
leave. We will ask if we can teach them now, if they say no, we will ask if we
can come back tomorrow, if they say yes we will schedule an exact time and come
back, if they say no we will move on to the next house, until we do that at
every single house. I know that there are at LEAST 5 people in our area that
are ready RIGHT NOW for this gospel. And this week we are going to find them!
:)
We are having a family
home evening at a less active home tonight, the Beltran family. Brother used to
be in the Branch Presidency here, he was offended by the President 20 years ago
and went completely inactive. When we first started visiting their family they
were super hard headed and wanted nothing to do with us. Slowly but surely they
are starting to soften up and open up to us. Hoping for some miracles tonight
to really bond with them and get them to return to church.
Happy Easter to all of
you, have an amazing week! Love you all, thanks for the constant support!!
Mahal Ko Kayo!
Sister Pilkington.
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