A Solid Week

Sister Wood and her companion designed these t-shirts for their district. She was pretty proud of how they turned out

Sister Wood playing basketball with her district. She gets frustrated because the Sisters can only guard sisters. She's toooo competitive. hahaha.

 

 

Hello all. :)

This week has been pretty solid. I have loved every second of it and am so grateful for all of the little miracles that Heavenly Father has put in our path. I started a Miracle Journal and I love updating it every night and reflecting on even the smallest little miracles that happened!

 

So the photo at the fabric shop. So hilarious. I couldn't believe it when I walked in. Well you know we are having one of the Less-active ladies we teach make us a couple of skirts, so we got to go pick out the fabric. It was so crazy inside of that store, as you can see. Haha it was so chaotic, and that is why I loved it so much. :) It will be exciting to see the product at the end of the week! If they are cute, AWESOME. If not, that's okay. It will be a fun thing to remember. :) 

 this is a fabric shop in the philippines. there is no organization whatsoever. no board for cutting, they just eye ball it. fabric on the floor you just walk on. this is their best seller fabric. dollar signs. the guy said they like to make sheets out of this on their bed so that people can feel like they are sleeping in money. i bought fabric for p55 a yard. a dollar and twenty cents hahaha. 

 

 

Oh my, I was so excited to tell you about the other day when we were sitting in the jeepney waiting to leave to La Paz. A lady climbs in and is wearing this familiar bright blue shirt thing. She sits down, and I get a better look. She is wearing a blue nike penny just like we wear at practice. Hahaha I just sat and laughed! She had this tiny little shirt under it and then just was wearing it as a fashionable shirt or something! I am telling you, everything gets dumped here in the Philippines!

Last monday on our way home we were riding in the tricycle and sister fuchs was on the back. I was inside the little metal box haha and for some reason the driver drove too close to the gutter. Well the gutters here are like canals. Not like the ones at home! Well, the tricey wheel went inside the canal, so we tilted sideways because the wheel wouldn't come out of course! so i was in the contraption sideways, and I went to climb out and the driver said no its okay i will get it out! So he starts reving the engine like he is going to be able to drive out of it!!! Yeah it was going nowhere. Haha everyone was driving passed laughing, and finally I just got out and he lifted it up out of the canal. Oh man. 

One of our lessons this week was hilarious. We were teaching the family in their family room, and just to the side of it, their dad was passed out drunk. On the floor. It was really strange and awkward, and then I just kept thinking to myself haha I would only experience this here! During the lesson he kept making the gargaling noises and at one point tried sitting himself up, and then he would just fall backward again. He tried a few times, but it wasn't happenin! It was funny to watch, but I feel really bad for his family. 

We got a new schedule for church for the new year! We have 8:00 church now! At home this is a big deal, but as a missionary you have to wake up at 6:30 am no matter what, so no big deal! We got to church at 8:00 and NO ONE WAS there. Okay, 2 people were there, but still. We knew this would happen! Haha after about 30 minutes people started rolling in slowly but surely. But also from ward 1. So we were confused because why were they coming too? Well for some reason they thought it would be a brilliant idea to have ward 2 start at 8:00 am and ward 1 at 8:30 am. Ward 1 has sacrament first, and we don't. But still. The timing of things here is always off so I am sure that we will have some issues with scheduling! haha. 

Our solid week contained 34 miles total of walking! YAY! Haha we walked a ton, but it is always more fun to walk a lot because then you get time to just sit and talk to your companion. We have been on the quest to flood the world with the Book of Mormon, just like everyone should be! This week I have really come to fully understand the power inside of that book. I know that just as Joseph Smith said, that it is the most correct book on earth. This week we met a lady named Sister Sebastian, and she was 85 years old. Her son was a preacher for some other church, but she let us share a message with her. We quickly found out that she could not speak any tagalog and only knew ilocano. And a tiny bit of english. Like a tiny bit. The lesson started and she just kept saying she didn't understand us. I was throwing out any and every bit of ilocano that I knew, but it just wasn't cutting it. Finally I just said get out the ilocano book of mormon, it is all she will understand. We read some of the paragraphs to her in ilocano and then told her that it is for her to read. She lit up and was so happy. She grabbed the book and held it to her chest and said "I love this book!" I don't even know if she knows it is true yet, but I know that the Book of Mormon speaks to people way better than we ever could.

Sister Sebastian

 

Next, Papa Erman Javier that we have been teaching forever. He is now on page 103 of the Book of Mormon. He loves reading it. He knows it is true. We had bishop give him a blessing the last time we were there teaching because he has bad health issues and can hardly walk, so he can't go to church. The Spirit was so strong. The room was filled. All of his kids could feel it. It was amazing. The book of mormon has changed their life and is the biggest instrument (along with the spirit), in their conversion. :) This week I met someone that I will never forget the rest of my life. Her name is Joylyn Antonio. She is 17 years old. We were up in her neck of the woods finding people to teaching because less active families live up there. We were on the road and a group of kids had been following us everywhere. We had stopped to decide what to do, and she came out of nowhere. This one kid I could tell had been teasing her cause she was trying to chase him. (I will send pics of her next week). I told her not to listen to whatever they were saying. Somehow she asked us if we were mormons. She told us that she had a Book of mormon! I asked her if she could show us and she leaded us to her house. Her mom and sister were there and she went and grabbed it. Her mom was so happy to see us and told us that SIster Joylyn was autistic. Of course that made me fall in even more love with her. She grabs her book of mormon, and we find out that the sister missionaries taught her back in 2011-2012. Taught her and her mother. They went to church every week! But for some reason, one day, the missionaries never went back to their house. At this point, Sister Joylyn couldn't get the smile off of her face. We got to know her a little bit and she showed us pictures of the missionaries and all of the things that they wrote to her. She never was baptized of course, and I asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She said yes! I don't know why the missionaries just never went back to this special daughter of our heavenly father, but i know that i was supposed to meet her. It kills me to know that there is a chance that I won't be able to be there to see her baptized. Her mother told us that in her free time when she has nothing to do, she just picks up the book of mormon and tries her best to read it! There is SO MUCH power in that book. I have a very strong testimony of it. I am not a book of mormon scholar,and I don't know it from front to back, but I know that it is true, and I know that I can feel the spirit when I read it. I have a goal of reading the standard works before I go home. So reading the bible, and the book of mormon and doctrine and covenants again, and the pearl of great price. I know that these are the words of god. We get closer to him by reading them. As we CPR every day/week, we won't fall away. We will continue on our path of enduring to the end. :) I am so grateful for God's plan for us, and his love he has for us. I am grateful that he has given us the scriptures as evidence of the gospel and his plan. My testimony is growing every day and I want you all to know that this church is so true! Even when two wards are scheduled to have church at the same time! Haha it is still true! God loves all of us. Ay-ayaten na tayo ni Apo Dios. Have an amazing week. :) 

Love, Sister Wood

xoxo.