How's everyone? Kamusta kamo? Happy Valentines Day!!!! What did you
all do to celebrate V-day? I hope you spread the love:) They celebrate
V-day here pretty much like we do. All the red paper was sold out and
bakeries were selling cupcakes with hearts on them. One of our cutie
bum investigators, Cyrell, the little sister of RC Welche, gave us
each a Valentine's card that she made. It was the cutest thing ever.
She wrote mine in English and Sis Parada's in Tagalog. I will
definitely save it forever. We also had a member give us these little
fake roses. So cute! We cut out some hearts and stuck them on our
glass door to add to our Christmas snowlflakes that are still up.
Maybe I'll still be here for Easter and we can add some eggs!
We had another awesome baptism this week! Ruel, who is dating a
member, got baptized. He's 19 and super awesome. We had exchanges this
week so Sister Shakespeare who is a STL, came to work with me in our
area. We went to teach Ruel earlier this week and she asked him why he
was getting baptized. He then bore his testimony that it's because he
knows this church is true and that it was restored through the prophet
Joseph Smith. It all goes back to the restoration:) I love how pure
and simple and beautiful his testimony is-- Like, of course I will get
baptized because I know this is the true church! The baptism was
pretty small because he was the only one getting baptized this week
but we had some members come support and it went really well.
Every third Sunday in this ward, the missionaries are supposed to
speak. So this month was the sisters' turn. Yesterday Sister Parada
gave an awesome talk about the Book of Mormon and how important it is
that we read from the Book of Mormon everyday. I decided to sing
instead of speak this time:) Sister Shakespeare was super awesome and
played the piano for me and we performed the "I Believe In Christ"
arrangement that Mom sent me. It turned out really well even though we
only got to practice once. Because we were bearing testimony of Christ
through the song, Heavenly Father helped touched people's hearts
through the song. Our RC, Pamela, told me it brought tears to her eyes.
She's so sweet and so receptive to the spirit. It's so great. Thanks
Mom for the music!
One more spiritual experiece and then I'l share a funny story. So when
I was on exchanges with Sis Shakespeare, which I really loved, we went
to teach the moms that I talked about quite a while ago. They came to
church one time, the three moms with all their kids. Anyway, we
haven't been able to visit them in a while and this time when we went,
the only one there was Sister Rowena. She was doing laundry on the
river so we just called from across the river and said we'd come back
in a couple days. We started to leave and then I had this feeling we
should go back, cross the river and share with her while she was doing
laundry. So we did! (I've been working really hard to pay more
attention to the spirit and follow it's promptings lately.)
We got a banana leaf to sit on and told her she could keep doing her laundry if
we could just share with her. Oh my goodness, it was such a testimony
to me that I need to always follow the spirit. She opened up and told
us all about a couple weeks ago when she had to go to the hospital
and she thought she was going to die. She told us about how she was
just praying so hard and God spared her life. We talked to her about
the doctrine of Christ, faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift
of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end and it was just what she
needed. The spirit was so strong and we felt prompted to commit her to
baptism. We found out that she has her daughter read to her the Book
of Mormon every evening. She can't read so she encourages her kids to
because she wants them to be smarter than she is. She is so
amazing and I'm so excited to help her progress to baptism!
The gospel is so beautiful! I love the hope and peace it brings into
our lives, everyone who humbles themselves, to accept the glorious
message into their minds and into their hearts.
Real quick, just last night, Sister Parada and I were getting a ride
home on a tricycle. So we were sitting int the little side car, in the
front with the plastic window of the side car right in front of us.
There was this HUGE spider seriously as big as my fist, on the plastic
window right in front of our faces, maybe a foot away. But then it
started climbing up, getting closer to our faces because the front is
slanted. And then it dropped! We were freaking out but trying so hard
to be quiet so that we wouldn't disturb the driver. It was night and
super dark, so we couldn't see where it went. I just started shaking
around hoping that it wasn't on me anywhere. It was so freaky. Finally
we shone our flashlight and we saw it crawling out through a crack
under our feet. Oh my goodness, it was so terrifying.
Fun times in the Philippines!!!! I love being here, but I also miss
your cutie pie faces! I love you all so much! Have a fantastic week!
Love, Sister Malyon
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