Shinguards to Sandals: It's Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas

I love this picture of Sister Wood and this cute little old lady

No, it is not too early to think about Christmas, because I am in the Philippines, and Christmas starts the first day of September. :) Okay yeah, it is a little ridiculous, but we just gotta deal with it alright? Haha. We were in a recent converts home this week and the Christmas music was just a blasting! Ahhh they just thrive to have it be Christmas time.
Oh and I said it is beginning to sound a lot like Christmas because here, it never looks like Christmas haha. But I will let you know when we start to see Christmas lights! So, Merry Christmas everyone.

Alright, so lets talk about this week. But wait, before I do that, I completely spaced to talk about transfers last week! Yeah, I am still here and there was no changes in our apartment with companions or anything.... so that was simple enough. Except, I know I always talk about elder castillo cause he has been my leader my whole mission, but he got transferred, so that marks the end of the year he was my leader. Yeah as you can imagine I was sad. But I was over it after 30 seconds. Haha I am just going to come out straightway and say that I am really tired of my clothes. I think this last week was the last set of combinations I could make with my shirts and skirts haha. I am sure a lot of you laugh at some of the outfits I have put together. I am thinking and pondering about doing what some of the other sisters have done and get rid of all your clothes with like 1 month left of your mission and live off of 3 outfits and wash them everyday. We will see, I say that I could do it, but I don't know if I really could. Hey it might be an adventure to try though. Haha so I don't know if you have noticed, but we look different when we are out proselyting verses at church or a meeting. One of the recent converts made it clear this week that I only look pretty on Sundays. You learn to just take the blows hahaha.

So, lots of good happened this week out in our far area of Sarrat! I will start by saying that we went to another big house and a lady was there. I pulled out the same "Romero" name and with no coincidence again, their name was Romero. Yeah I am not kidding. They wouldn't let us teach them then, but said that we could go back this week. There is obviously some Romero family that needs to be baptized. We will keep finding. The next thing, which I hope you saw the photos of those kids with 6 fingers and 6 toes. We found this family on Saturday. I was BLOWN AWAY by this. l got videos and stuff of it because I couldn't believe it. I had never seen anything like it in my life. We were so excited though because we found that family and they were amazing. We taught the mom and dad, and they were so great! SO receptive, and said they could go to church next week. We had been praying for a family to teach and Heavenly Father blessed us with one! We are excited to go back and teach them again. These people are all from way far away. But, one of our most progressing investigators is named Monica Ramos. She is a tomboy. But we have seen some amazing changes in her as she has come to church. She refused to wear a skirt, but she says in her own time she will try it again. She has a baptismal date for November 1st. It is far away, because it is going to take some time for her to prepare. When we started teaching her she always had to wear her glasses to read, but now she doesn't need them anymore, and she recognizes that as a blessing from Heavenly Father for keeping his commandments! :) All of the baptismal dates we have are really far away. We have really been focusing on the recent converts like I have said before. Haha out in this far away area we walked back more to "civilization" and my companion realized the perks of having an american companion! Haha we found a woman and wanted to ask if we could buy some papaya (we noticed they had a lot on their trees), but she ended up giving us tons of papaya and then took us back into her huge garden and we left her house with 2 huge bags full of vegetables hahaha. We didn't even teach the lady! My companion said that would have never happened if there were just two filipinos. Yeah so we are blessed with the gulay. With all of the vegetables here, it has kind of put me on this kick of wanting to plant a garden when I get home. I am going to try and buy some seeds here and grown them inside. But we will see if they make it through customs first. I don't know if that is allowed or not. We are missing out on some amazing vegetables! On the mission you realize a lot of things that you want to do in life and you want to do when you get home that you never did before. Gardening was one of those things I hated to do, but I have realized how reliant it is! I mean why not? Alrighty, life is going good here. We have exchanges on Wednesday and I get to go with Sister Shrack again. :) In my area this time. I am excited. Make sure everyone stays safe!

Lots of love,

Sister Wood

xoxox