Love, Laughter and Learning

This week has been amazing! For the last two weeks I think I was drowning in a sea of Tagalog, but this week I started treading water! I can feel the Lord’s help all the time. I am so grateful for the growth we have had this week!

We are teaching new investigators. (By the way, these are teachers pretending to be people they interacted with when they served their missions in the Philippines. The life stories are true; our interactions with them are not staged.) One is named Lester and the other is Kenneth. Lester is great; he is just not interested in what we have to say AT ALL! His wife is working in China and she met the missionaries and loved them. She is the one who gave us the referral. But our other investigator, Kenneth, is amazing! We have had great progress this week, even though we only taught two lessons.

When Kenneth was in college he was in a motorcycle accident and is now paralyzed. Shortly after (or right before...language barrier) his dad passed away. He just found out that surgery will never make him walk again. He told us that he doesn't believe that God loves him, because of all the terrible things that have happened to him. And the one time he prayed was to ask God to save his dad, and God didn't answer his prayer. My heart just goes out to him! I know that the gospel will help him so much! We were a little over whelmed by all this in our first lesson, but our second lesson went so well! It was amazing! In our first lesson we challenged him to pray. We followed up on this challenge in our second lesson. He told us he prayed and didn't feel anything. I asked him why he thought he didn't feel anything. He said he doesn't think God will answer him, but he wishes he could have faith. I asked him to read Alma 32:21-22. I told him that his desire for faith will grow into faith with the help of the Lord. I promised that if he prayed again and had faith that he could receive an answer to know if God loved him, that he would get that answer. Then, the pamphlet I had been searching for earlier LITERALLY fell out of Sister Golightly's scriptures into her hands. It was amazing - such an inspired lesson.

The teacher that acts out Kenneth is also the teacher that acted out Roy, our very first investigator. So, he has pretty much seen all of our mistakes. He told us he was super proud of how far we have come, and that Kenneth can feel our love for him. And that is what is helping us teach by the spirit. No wonder why Christ said, "By this shall man know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." I am so grateful that the Lord has blessed us with love for Kenneth, and continues to bless us with guidance in our lessons, and with the spirit.

This week my favorite personal study time was reading about Humility in True to the Faith and reading all the scriptures referenced. It would be an awesome Family Home Evening discussion topic, if you get a chance. It was great to dissect this virtue.

The funnies this week are pretty long:

Our teacher told us that the MTC is making us "loco" because our whole district laughs at the dumbest things now :)

-Nagsisipagsisinungasinungalinyah is the longest word in Tagalog. It means "to tell fake lies," which doesn't make much sense to me. How would one “tell a true lie"?

-Last Saturday Sister Golightly and I were standing outside the gym waiting for it to open. I saw a cute little bird, chirping and flying across the sky, toward the gym. It kept going, flying really fast, then, SPLAT into the brick wall! It fell to the ground and Sister Golightly and I ran over. She said a tender prayer for it, and we watched it take its last shallow breaths, feet twitching as it died. 

A few days later we found out 

the word for wall in Tagalog is "dingding." 

-My roommates and companion are so cool! 

We have picnics on the floor at night and chat. 

It’s the little things in life that count here at the MTC.

-Last preparation-day doing laundry guess what I found in my dryer. Men’s underwear. Yuck! Super unexpected.

-Our first lesson with Lester, he asked us if we could speak Tagalog. We said a little bit. Then literally right after that we asked him to read a section of a pamphlet we brought. He started reading, and then looked up very confused and said, "This is Sebwanu, not Tagalog." I have no idea how we got a Sebwanu pamplet, but how ironic was that?!

-While teaching her lesson to an investigator, my roommate introduced "The First Vision" as "The First Ugly Poop." 

Language mistakes are the best!

Mahal po ako ninyo! Magbabasbas ang Diyos!

T-shirt Thursday with my roommates. 

(T-shirt Tuesday would have sounded better, but I thought of the idea on Tuesday night, 

and we all really liked it so, we couldn't wait!)

The first snow fall! We were so cold. 

We took a picture with a previous missionary who starred in "The District" (reality show on BYU-TV).

#mtccelebstatus

My kasama and I with our Sister Training Leaders. They left the MTC on Monday. They were fantastic!