Week 63: mga kwento ko

September 23rd 2019

This last week was a great week to be alive!

*We have been able to teach Sister Grace (the wife of a member) now twice. We teach her at her job, and it just happens to be on the third floor of SM (super mall) and it has really good air conditioning. Which is a blessing and a curse because we just come from outside and being sweaty, and then we go into a really cold building and then it turns our sweat cold and then during the lessons i'm like shivering because its so cold. Ya i don't know how i'm going to handle winter when I come home. But Sister Grace is awesome, in our first lesson after we asked if she had any questions or expectations for us she told us that she wants to know why everyone keeps saying that this is the "True Church". She also told us that he Husband is a Return Missionary and that they want to get sealed in the temple and that family is really important to her. So we are trying to really help her to understand how this is the true church, because this is Christ's church and that we have the Priesthood authority to seal families forever within in the temple.

*This week we had Zone Conference with President Schmutz (the Philippines area president). Me and my companion got so lucky to attend both conferences of the mission because i played the violin during our missions musical number. I was so lucky that a member from my first area let me borrow their violin, it felt so good to share my talent, and my mission President told me to thank my mom for making me practice when i was younger. Thanks mom. Also if you want to watch a video of it one of the senior sisters took a video of it and posted it on Facebook, my mom knows where you can find it, if you want to watch me play the violin in the Philippines.

*We travel lots this week, which meant we gave up about 5 hours of sleep and traveled about 9 hours on a bus. We also got to stay one night at my last apartment with those sisters and then another night we stayed the night in the other STL's apartment. And that night as i was putting my sheets on the mattress pad i thought it felt a little wet and smelled kind of mildew, and then a sister told me that their house flooded one time and that they thought they let all the mattresses dry out, but apparently that one didn't all the way. So we were already cutting it on time to go to bed on time and so i didn't have enough time to do anything about the mattress, so i just slept on it. And I actually slept great that night because i was too exhausted to care but in the morning i woke up with a wet spot on my side and smelled horrible. But then when we were putting the mattresses away i lifted up the mattress and leaned it against the wall and like a liter of water just spilled out of the mattress! So ya know i know i can literally sleep anywhere.

*We talked to a random lady on the street on day and she didn't really have any interest in us, but she told us to go and teach her friend and pointed to her house and so we did. We got to her house and she let us in and talked to us and we tried to teach her, but she was like 80 years old and couldn't hear like anything we were saying because her hearing was so bad. But we tried our best to talk to her, and we got to the point that we thought we were going to teach her because we just sang a song, but instead she invited us inside her house (because we were just sitting outside). When she got inside she just started offering us basically all the food in her house and then mentioned how she used to rent out the extra rooms in her house, but that the people moved out and then kept talking about how we are girls, and then was asking where we live. So after eating this ladies snacks she gave us we tried one more time to see if she would lets us teach her, but then she told us she was busy. So we think she tried to entice of to rent out her extra rooms. Haha its crazy how often we have random experience like this!

*Our first morning back at our apartment this last week after traveling we woke up a found massive spider on our wall! It was about the size of my hand, and i have a big hand! My family would be so proud of me that i didn't scream or cry when i saw it, but i told my companion that shes on her own to get rid of it. So she caught it in a container and slid a paper under it and then we let it go free outside. Haha and this old lady came up to us while we were outside in our pajamas trying to get this massive spider out of the container. She said that she came over to see what the noise was because she was washing her laundry next door.

*We saw a random guy on the street and we past him and he looked like he was going to just ask for money from us, and i just try to avoid those situations because i hate haven't to tell them we cant give them money. But for some reason we looked back after we past him and all he sad to us was "water" and then i saw his eyes wander to my water bottle in my bag. And so i realized i had the opportunity to help this man and so i grabbed my water bottle out of my bag and i gave it to him. And lucky for him because we just barley left our house and so the water was still cold. It made me feel good that maybe there was a reason for us to walk down that specific road for a reason and that God really is guiding us in our every action if we left Him.

*We taught a lady this week after we just talked to her on the side of the road and by the end of the lesson she was telling me that she wants to feed me my last meal here in the Philippines before i go home at the end of the year! Filipinos are so giving and caring! She also told us that the Elders used to teach her husband before. But she then went on to tell us that her husband had died about 10 years ago. And the story of how her husband died is one i have only seen in movies. She said that one day her husband came back from the river next to their house saying that he saw a "ista ng babae" (that's Tagalog), which we had to clarify in English what that meant, because if you were to translate that directly into English i means "girl fish", so i asked the lady if she was meaning to explain a mermaid? And she was like yes! and me and my companion just looked at each other and couldn't believe what we were hearing. Anyway so her husband apparently met a mermaid at the river and he told his wife this and the next day he said he was going to go back to see her again, but his wife told him no because she would take him. But her husband went back anyway and she told us that that day he drowned and she believes it was because the mermaid took him!

*I talked to a guy on the road named Ellie this week, but its spelled Ely and he said he was 83 years old! He was gardening and said that we can come back and share with him another time.

Well this time is an amazing time to be alive, hope you all understand my stories i wrote them as fast and clear as i could, but i just want you to know I love my Savior and I love you all! Have a great week

Sister Thayn

-Me and my mission family