Week 18: 4 MONTH MARK!

November 12, 2018

GUESS WHAT!! Sister Lelia Bucu, the 73 year old investigator that we had to stop teaching a couple weeks ago because she wasn't keeping her commitments and wasn't giving up her cigarettes, finally came to Church yesterday! We were able to teach her on Saturday night and her grandson who is an RM helped make plans so that she could come to church! Just seeing here come into the chapel (which happened to be during the sacrament, oops) and smiling so big, made me and my companion freak out because we didn't know if she would ever come to church! But yesterday we went and taught her again and recommitted her to a baptism in December!

Something that I have never experienced until coming on my mission is talking with preachers of other religions about the Gospel and a couple of weeks we talked with a preacher who all he wanted to do was talk about Joseph Smith and tell us that we are wrong. But all we did was let him know that we know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God and that we know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true church on earth today. But then this week while it was raining we found a guy taking cover from the rain under a shed and so we went to go and talk to him and we found out that hes a preacher too. Because of my other experience with preachers i was almost in defensive mood, but after talking to him for a little bit we realized he wasn't going to attack us. But instead we just talked about the importance of missionaries and he congratulated us for sacrificing our time that we could have been spending in school or doing other things, to be here sharing the good word of God!

Another thing that i guess i can say I've done is that I said the opening prayer for a Filipino wedding IN TAGALOG in front of everyone there for the wedding! it was the Bishop of our wards son who was getting married and the stake president performed the ceremony at the church. So me and my companion come and had just had sat down on the bench right before the ceremony was about to start and all of a sudden Bishop comes and he asks me if i can give the opening prayer! That's one thing here is that everything is last minute and everything starts late! So ya I gave the opening prayer and my companion was asked right after me to lead the opening hymn. So ya that's now somethings i can say I've done!

The Filipino people are so nice and I love them all, but the work is hard because even though they will let us teach them, they don't want to keep their commitments or come to church. So finding the Elect people here has been hard, but we're really trying to act and move forward with faith knowing that there are people here in the Ilagan Area that needs the Gospel in their life!

I love you all and I'm so grateful for all the prayers! i also hit my 4 month mark yesterday and its so crazy to think I've been a missionary for that long! Have a great week!
Sister Thayn