Two more baptisms - hooray!

Area:  Mandama

Companion:  Sister Lim

Sister Training Leader

                                                               Monday, September 1, 2014

HAPPY SEPTEMBER! Wow time flies. Short and sweet this week. The sun has been shining, and every other day it will rain at night (a.k.a. everyone is sick, including my poor companion). But the work still goes on! I'm still confused of when rainy season is...it was supposed to start a month ago! haha 

Joanne and Jenny Sanchez were baptized. Their aunt that hadn't been to church in 20 years came, she also came to church. AWESOME. Jenny bore her testimony after her baptism and started crying, which obviously made me cry too ( I love her like a little sister ) and then Joanne and ther mom Nancy all bore testimonies as well. Everything was just perfect. 

Baptism Time

A little excited for their baptism day!
Joanne and Jenny

Jenny, love her like a little sister

I went on exchanges with Sister Makihele. Since we re-split our area she was able to take me around her old area that is now ours and show us where some less actives live. The area hasn't been tracted very much so we did some finding there this week. We do this thing called no fear finding, where we just walk up to any house and yell "tao po" which means there's people here outside. I randomly walked up to this one house, and this family just says "it's the sisters!" I was confused about why they knew who we were. They immediately let us in, and after talking with them for about five minutes, Sister Lim finally blurted out, "are you members?" they all laughed and were like "oh yeah sorry we should've said that!" The feeling in the room was as if we knew them, we just had to ask. And of course, they were. Turns out they are inactive though and just moved into this house days before. (Talk about timing!) We are super excited to work with them. We had an incredibly good lesson with Chona (14) and her 3 younger siblings, (9,8,&7). They live with their grandparents, their parents are separated, and Chona has basically taken on the role of big sister/mommy. She cried as she explained her situation to us, but has such a strong testimony. When you are talking to her, you would think she is like 17. Hoping to get this sweet family back and active, and get grandma and grandpa sealed! (They had plans to do so but it all fell through).

Arnold and Leslie Ocampo came to church this Sunday! Along with their three adorable kids, Owen (14), Oliver (11) and baby (1). Leslie is still searching for the truth, trying to help her testimony grow to know if this is where she should be baptized through her reading, prayer, and church attendance. Owen and Oliver want to be baptized, but we will baptize all three of them together, as it only makes sense. Their dad is a less active as I've said before, and we are continuing to work with him to return and get more active in reading his scriptures as well. The Sanchez family all came to church as well (including their dad!). So we had two families of 5 at church on Sunday, it was a happy day. 

owen & oliver ocampo, rowell avencena (the two on the left are Arnold and Leslie's children), 

the one on the right is Alma Avencena (Arnold's sister's child)

family home evening with the ocampo's/avencena cousins! :)

avencena kids, they're thee best. :)

Can't be a good week without some laughter. It poured rain one night as in we were soaking wet, even the rain boots couldn't keep the rain out. We went to visit one of the sisters recent converts, Ronalyn...as her husband was letting us inside the house, I took of my rain boots and stepped onto their tile floor..within seconds I was face down, full body out, arms extended, supermanning it across the floor. I just laid there laughing amidst the pain thinking how ridiculous I probably just looked, even cuter in a skirt, and the fact that this poor little 23 year old man, the size of a 10 year old in America trying to help me up. He helped me up and I slipped, AGAIN, but luckily was able to catch myself. Oh goodness..poor Sister Lim looked like she had just watched a horror movie, she was so concerned and speechless she didn't know what to do. Good thing Gemma wasn't there or I would never hear the end of it. Ronalyn's husband didn't say a word about it when we came back three days later. I think he's just as embarrassed as I was. 

a rat bigger than my foot right by our house..ew.

All is going well here in little Mandama. The sun is still shining, smiles still gleaming, and flowers still raging in beauty. Love you all.

Sister Pilkington