tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74667077216930463962024-03-05T04:35:22.782-08:00Sister Mikella EldredgeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-11394106459199316162017-08-07T08:18:00.000-07:002017-08-09T09:27:12.694-07:00Week 75: You Don't Mess With Momma Cows, They Mess You UP!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tINfGLKfLMlTTgCTzLf2RsyyfKbQznorc-OmFmihNBK-EUn0dBfSUnNKQnLq7vK1Y4C0M14R0gFM3ckORxICoph4GH1j4Y7xZ6NIwK_esefb_RQ1M_EIVe46-53W__i4DHx-54o5lyG5/s1600/DSCN1029.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tINfGLKfLMlTTgCTzLf2RsyyfKbQznorc-OmFmihNBK-EUn0dBfSUnNKQnLq7vK1Y4C0M14R0gFM3ckORxICoph4GH1j4Y7xZ6NIwK_esefb_RQ1M_EIVe46-53W__i4DHx-54o5lyG5/s640/DSCN1029.JPG" width="430" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-03d6b750-c79e-e1f7-7730-6ec33fdb0e80"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-size: 9.5pt;">*The following statement must be read with caution by the members of the arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as symptoms may include finite trunkyness and desire to go home.*</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> WHAT TIME IS IT ITS UWI TIME WHAT TIME IS IT ITS UWI TIME WHAT TIME IS IT ITS UWI TIME</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">(UWI is Tagalog for ‘going home’ pronounced oo-we) and if you haven’t noticed I am absolutely and COMPLETELY terrified. Its unreasonable for me to be this scared but it feels like I have a chunk of ice in my gut. You would think that would help me stay cool in the Filipino heat but it's not doing me any favors. Its unreasonable to be so worried as I have plans and I have goals and everything so I'm not entirely sure where the feeling of foreboding is coming from but… *shrugs* ce la vie. (French for ‘thus is life’) or ganun siya (Tagalog for That’s how it is)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">I take life by the horns… literally. Background; our investigators live behind a few houses where we had to walk between some alleyways to get to the house. No problem on the way in, the coast was clear. When we came out of the teaching appointment there, standing in the middle of the alleyway was…. Not a thief or a murderer, but a momma cow and her baby.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">You don’t mess with momma cows, they mess you up.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> Luckily it was tied so I got close-ish to it and insulted it and its baby so it charged at me, bringing itself to the end of its rope. Its head at a slight angle because the rope went through its nose, it tried swinging its horns at me so I did what any reasonable person does- grabbed it by the horns and made it so it could only see me. Sister Latu was able to squeeze past it without a problem as I stood there with its horns in my hands. Sister Pamugas, however was frozen in place and refused to move, By this time the momma cow freed her head from my grasp and saw that we had it surrounded. Big mistake. She started pawing at the ground and bellowing and flames came out of her nostrils (I’m kidding she just started pawing at the ground.) But by then there was NO way of getting sister Pamugas to go past the cow, Sister Latu pointed out that the neighboring wall was tall and that we could climb on the fence bit which is solid and had plenty of foot holes (see attached picture, it’s a bit lie that but the concrete part was higher and didn’t look that fancy) I'm all about finding my inner spider-man so I jumped up on the wall with the baby cow licking at my feet (he wasn’t tied up) and made it safely to the other side… with Sister Pamugas stuck on the wall. By this time our investigator noticed we were having a hard time and just walked right up to the cow and she moved out of his way. But at least I can say I fought a cow and turned into spider-missionary for one day!!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;"> Then this Sunday a few of the girls from Batac came to visit me, they came for the Sunday services and got to hear my farewell testimony!! Seriously made my day, my week, my mission. Im seriously going to miss this place. I cried when they left.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> But that’s all I really have to say about this week besides how sad I am to leave this area.My companions Sister Latu and Sister Pamugas are incredible and not only are they dedicated to the work (which helps keep the trunky cloud from hanging over your head) they are outright hysterical! Since its rainy season it rains daily, and since I have holes in both of my shoes I’m wet once I step out the door. I like to thrust my umbrella towards sister Latu and cover her with the rain drops that have collected on top as she always makes the best faces. Then scraping ice out of the freezer to wake them up on time… it's been good times. I'm going to miss them and all the incredible members that I've met here and not to mention the 3 upcoming baptisms I'll miss. Shout out to Hery Joy who passed her Baptismal Interview last Saturday!!</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-86337663042986609402017-07-31T16:21:00.000-07:002017-07-31T16:22:35.469-07:00Week 74: It's All Your Choice<div class="m_-8843080751175369040gmail-MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">So because I didn’t email last week it's two emails in one day!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">And the computer crashed so I have to type all of this all over again. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">I just want to focus on one experience I had. We have a lot of members in this area who have fallen behind in their attendance (we call them Less Actives or LA) and one LA stands out to me above the rest. He is about 80 and has been LA for several decades. Sitting next to him and discussing a simple gospel doctrine was humbling to me as I saw a man who could have been a spiritual giant in his area and be a strength to hundreds if not thousands but the cares of this world overcame him and he convinced himself out of the church due to ‘more interesting’ pursuits. If we sin we are damned, damned in the sense that our eternal progression is halted. Like flowing water you just remove the barrier and the water will flow again. We repent and the dam is removed, thus allowing us to progress. This is the same in nearly any context. We can fall behind in talents and in relationships and it's not until we prioritize better that we will continue to progress. Otherwise you miss out on so many blessings. You miss out on helping others, but it's all your choice.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">Funny story for the week: My new companion, sister Latu seems to have upset all the flora in the Philippines. If a leaf falls from a tree it hits her in the face, if there is a swinging branch it hits her in the face. If she doesn’t look where she is going, you guessed it, she gets hit in the face by a nearby bush. It's quite hysterical to count how many times this happens in a day.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">From the sister who does not have a problem with running into plants,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-75216538404011219722017-07-31T07:00:00.000-07:002017-07-31T16:11:15.475-07:00Week 73: The Walking Dead Gets Transfered<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">(This is my letter I would have sent on 7/24/17 but I wasn't able to email)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This last week was crazy both because it was busy but because I didn't even email last Monday! Yeah, I was transferred to a new area, Bacarra, and I was involved in the ‘farewell exercises’ of the missionaries going home in july. Due to this fact I had no time to email.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">That’s alright. The funny story of this week is also a kinda sad story. I was not feeling good one day but I assumed the upset stomach would go away as I figured it was due to stress. We got to our appointment which turned out to be a lunch appointment. I’ll just jump to the chase - I threw up - in the middle of the lesson. I jumped up to run to the restroom and I guess all the blood rushed to my head because my vision turned black and I got dizzy and nearly fell flat on my face but my companion and Brother Robert caught me and I did not spew all over them, just in the toilet, for which I was grateful. Then we sat down for a minute and then I insisted that we continued the lesson and I was feeling better and was certain it would not happen again. But it did. The exact same thing happened. And when I came out of the bathroom the second time my companion said ‘you look like the walking dead.’ To which I responded ‘I always knew I was going to be famous.’ She didn’t get it so I explained. ‘the walking dead... that is a tv show.’ She didn’t think I was funny.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">After that Brother Robert had his employee take us home. When we returned a few days later he told us that after we had left he had cried because of the dedication that we showed to our work.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Only I would be able to help someone feel the spirit of God by vomiting…</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then later after we finished the lesson he cried again, but this time because he had prayed to know if our message about life after death and the purpose of life were true and wanted to be baptized. He chose to be baptised on September 2, which is the day that my proselyting licence expires. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The rest of this week was a blur due to the fact that I was off and on sick and then got transferred and I am now in Bacarra.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-88953096991448823462017-07-17T13:25:00.000-07:002017-07-19T14:05:24.184-07:00Week 72: ER, Teaching Jun Jun & Chicken Feet <div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9lubnaNWcY9Y3uiNP46nE_lvnF51D_ys_I5JytU7SBSQUgiYD2TK8hyFhtd6tMV-IjtC3lLKT4LMASagfcKCIHaRq97GvJeOxXtV2DTcW9GSjpluuGHo30gEI1DoVj2kBVYHocX3_9aPg/s1600/DSCN1484.JPG" imageanchor="1"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9lubnaNWcY9Y3uiNP46nE_lvnF51D_ys_I5JytU7SBSQUgiYD2TK8hyFhtd6tMV-IjtC3lLKT4LMASagfcKCIHaRq97GvJeOxXtV2DTcW9GSjpluuGHo30gEI1DoVj2kBVYHocX3_9aPg/s640/DSCN1484.JPG" width="480" /></span></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life has been… supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. That is the word for when you don’t have anything to say, isn’t it? Been bit of an emotional roller coaster this week with busy days, working as hard as we can and finding out people hate me. Its fine, I'm after quality not quantity in any case.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We did our best to start the week on a good note but ended up in the hospital. Yup, exactly a year after I was confined for 4 days in a hospital I spent the night in an ER… but I was on the floor… not in the sick bed. Honestly that was terrifying. My companion got sick- we are still not sure what it was- but we had to take her to the ER. So, the first time in about a year and a half that I stayed up past 10:30 and it was wild! I'm kidding, but now everything is all good. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We also ate chicken feet this week which actually was incredibly tasty. Sister Hicks could not finish one foot but I ate 4 of them and would have eaten more if we had more, all I'm going to say about that is: it was sanitary, and it was tasty.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We spent a good portion of this week walking around trying to meet people, a few people running away, and some spiritual moments. Jun Jun and his girlfriend Girly are the ones who don’t run away. We have been teaching Girly for a few weeks (she was almost baptized when she lived in Manila a few years ago) and her boyfriend joined us this last lesson and boy did they have questions!! Jun Jun wanted to know about authority and priesthood and literally one of his questions was: “So let me get this straight, if I'm baptized then I could baptize our daughter when she gets old enough?” “How will I recognize if I get an answer from God if this is all true?” and “When does church start?” So we are hoping they will start to progress, Jun Jun just has to try and get work off Sundays but they have the desire, they have an understanding, and they feel the spirit. It was really fun, when Jun Jun asked about recognizing the spirit we showed him a few bible verses and a few from the Book of Mormon. After he read them he paused before saying, “That’s true.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And you know what? It is.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the sister trying her best,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sister Eldredge</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuslXXXUhtu8pk-dcMwvLtvPpzoMZ620utDkU-m1cjYL4dAyo9aJ_RXdJRI3CM8C_SKppD1qL0fsGKNpDKH-wx72b0SBZu9TAEuj3h_U5hm3RH9zPW1S6pZxTvwEduSElG1BAkrnRtegCD/s1600/DSCN1482.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuslXXXUhtu8pk-dcMwvLtvPpzoMZ620utDkU-m1cjYL4dAyo9aJ_RXdJRI3CM8C_SKppD1qL0fsGKNpDKH-wx72b0SBZu9TAEuj3h_U5hm3RH9zPW1S6pZxTvwEduSElG1BAkrnRtegCD/s400/DSCN1482.JPG" width="331" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">Chicken Feet (and Head) Before Being Cooked...</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5z8deIUsiCtQjiRgTuDf-hKP8x331v8bP7WufCXxxiNEOr5olIWngh9IxIzpO4QClIXghMkyHCZ86tKB38tnIWC1a_Zm8u7nxAUOdn0YXSrsRbhKcUDagvXUnnDCt5Ox1eWbXxpluH7lS/s1600/DSCN1483.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5z8deIUsiCtQjiRgTuDf-hKP8x331v8bP7WufCXxxiNEOr5olIWngh9IxIzpO4QClIXghMkyHCZ86tKB38tnIWC1a_Zm8u7nxAUOdn0YXSrsRbhKcUDagvXUnnDCt5Ox1eWbXxpluH7lS/s320/DSCN1483.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">...and AFTER! YUM!!</span></td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-19211064965660960242017-07-10T18:06:00.000-07:002017-07-19T14:01:26.660-07:00Week 71: Rolling With the Punches<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIBtn9jR28oo6hOX5QiKnRcsvgFx6FMuDWJ8VF2wyJ8Opj9SS7IBKRtnOGC_iN1gFdgtwnKrq96c40Iik7rj8j63Pt7bsiEQiMRpZZlevP9ZsI1QjCJA-Y3ycOqKZlQdhBqJ939OApvx9X/s1600/IMG_7675.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIBtn9jR28oo6hOX5QiKnRcsvgFx6FMuDWJ8VF2wyJ8Opj9SS7IBKRtnOGC_iN1gFdgtwnKrq96c40Iik7rj8j63Pt7bsiEQiMRpZZlevP9ZsI1QjCJA-Y3ycOqKZlQdhBqJ939OApvx9X/s640/IMG_7675.JPG" width="480" /></a></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-4031cd56-5861-8533-c283-85032b4559c5" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not much I really want to talk about this week, as I allowed myself to stress myself into being sick, but I’m all good now. Life is tough and sometimes we get a sucker as compensation and sometimes we get a sucker punch. Depends on how Life is feeling. I just didn’t dodge the punch. But Life has got a weak arm so I'm back on my feet and ready to place a few punches of my own. Funny story of the week:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr124u6zYf_Sa7FbrufiQSTaboAxrLubx5FbVd2YTYTvf6A-mwS0IhlXCj0fWnjvDdVX7_nfq4OHt5Mq26Mgmc1Hl0_glBBGNrb6k38tWu2yLOnJopuTAmqdFfYBS0Za5aiIkZfiJh-538/s1600/DSCN1405%255B1%255D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr124u6zYf_Sa7FbrufiQSTaboAxrLubx5FbVd2YTYTvf6A-mwS0IhlXCj0fWnjvDdVX7_nfq4OHt5Mq26Mgmc1Hl0_glBBGNrb6k38tWu2yLOnJopuTAmqdFfYBS0Za5aiIkZfiJh-538/s400/DSCN1405%255B1%255D.JPG" width="358" /></span></a><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have a bowl outside for the cat (that is supposed to stay outside) and I went to put food in the bowl and its dark, you can't really see the contents of the bowl (an old ice cream tub) so when I picked it up I was not expecting something to jump out. I ‘quickly’ put the bowl down (ie I threw it) and went back inside to do my ‘very upset dance.’ Which is not attractive. I then went inside to tell my companion I will now be officially excused from give-the-cat-food duties, she couldn’t believe that within 4 weeks I had two encounters with a rat (for that is what I believed it to be) so she went outside and turned on the light. AND IT HAD RETURNED… but it was not a rat. It was a GIANT toad that apparently enjoyed bathing in food. So no it was not a rat, it was a toad. But it was a very big toad.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is basically this week. The area is still small, but we are doing our best to focus on the moments. “Moments are the molecules that make up eternity.” Dieter F. Uchtdorf and I believe that is true. I WANT to be 100% busy going from appointment to appointment and really giving it my all and collapse from exhaustion after a good full day, but the Lord is teaching me to still have a full day even if it means not a jam packed schedule.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The work is progressing and that is truly what matters.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From the sister who is giving it her all,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sister Eldredge</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-10332949419866626382017-07-03T10:22:00.000-07:002017-07-07T10:24:37.463-07:00Week 70: I’m here in the Philippines with no AC and all that comes with a 3rd world country because I know that people can have their minds cleared, their souls calmed and to feel the love of deity.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg25lAgO-ecpqJo6LSqr-hGDkYBMd8LhSHI3D44OsbAmJv520XwZfs5A7RRwiNvGC5nMBboKmxDgLykR8XA93Kygojnz1s9SWOQK7zuCHL7tU2iuZlqtH9492GNJPZ8meRWoAG6Wnw866J_/s1600/DSCN1326.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg25lAgO-ecpqJo6LSqr-hGDkYBMd8LhSHI3D44OsbAmJv520XwZfs5A7RRwiNvGC5nMBboKmxDgLykR8XA93Kygojnz1s9SWOQK7zuCHL7tU2iuZlqtH9492GNJPZ8meRWoAG6Wnw866J_/s640/DSCN1326.JPG" width="480" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">Preparing a Chicken for Dinner</span></td></tr>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-4031cd56-1e12-e22e-36f8-45ff18075063" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not going to beat around the bush, this week was hard. Hard emotionally, but mostly just in enthusiasm (no I’m not sick don’t send me vitamins haha.) Starting with Monday, as we have a curfew here in Cagayan (so the witches don’t carry us away when they come out at 6pm) we have to be creative with our p-days and teach during the day, and we had an appointment to teach a group of college students but it fell through because of a schedule mix up because I am soooo good at planning... so when we got home at about 5ish with no lesson and all the people near our house busy I flopped on my bed and felt like turning into a plant because plants have no responsibilities and don’t have to schedule things and try to teach people when there are only like 100 houses in our area, and we have already knocked door to door to them all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tuesday was nothing as well. We went out and had plans and still only ended up finding as all our appointments fell through and finding is so hard here because it’s a small town so they already know us and about 80% of the people we found were previous investigators... so we are trying to be more creative with our time and how we find and teach to still have things to do no matter what happens. And it’s all fine and dandy for me to say ‘yeah missionary work! All my life has been a series of doors in my face!” (name that movie)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By Wednesday I lost nearly all enthusiasm for work so I did cleaning and reorganizing until my companion dragged me out of the house. That day was actually a good day and when we met with our most recent convert Tatay Perpicto and his wife, who normally hides from us was very chatty and welcoming and even sat in on a portion of the lesson!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the week progressed my enthusiasm for the work decreased and I was doing my best to just get out of the house and I want so bad to have the enthusiasm for the work but it's honestly just hard right now. However I have noticed that I truly love fasting. I honestly do believe that out of all the commandments (besides the obvious Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity) that the ones people have the hardest time with is keeping the Sabbath day holy and giving a full fast. I can’t say I love fasting, but I love the blessings I see in my life and I know that if you give a generous fast offering (even if it's slightly painful to donate that much) that the Lord will not leave you and He will support you.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our investigator, Robert, has now listened to the first lesson (the Restoration) about 3 times as he 1) just loves the spirit he feels as we quote Joseph Smith’s telling of the 1</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">st</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> vision, and 2) he always has referrals for us who want to hear the lesson as well... soon we will have taught his whole company! We are excited for his progression and he can already recognise the spirit and last lesson with him he said: “wait, why is it that when you guys are here teaching me that my mind feels so clear and choices are so easy to make, but once you leave my mind clouds over...it’s the spirit isn’t it?” and so then we got to tell him that he can have the ‘enlightenment’ he was talking about as he continues to read his scriptures daily, pray and regularly attend church so as to invite the spirit into his life always. It was a big moment for him and he just wanted to sit and think about it for a minute before saying. “This is why I have to be baptised. I always want this feeling.” Stuff like that is what helps you remember what you are doing here. I’m here in the Philippines with no AC and all that comes with a 3</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">rd</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> world country because I know that people can have their minds cleared, their souls calmed and to feel the love of deity, if they just try.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As for funny stories we have a cat who eats the scraps (that we leave outside for her) and this morning about 6am she jumped on my bed and poked me in the face as if to say ‘where is my food?’ so she somehow found her way into the house!! So now we have to find out how she did that so she won’t do it again but needless to say I’m no longer accustomed to cats waking me up so not only did I know that the cat was inside but the neighbours might have heard as well due to my scream of surprise.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-22655800880119194642017-06-26T09:36:00.000-07:002017-07-07T10:21:25.456-07:00Week 69: Tatay Perfecto Agular's Baptism<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT1-dueJSDWtL1-xb0Ix2igP2mKFvxjBVLKIKL3HU1P5Xi53dt24sBB90dHgqEMX2DQdSXMZOuBSeLPbSgljqk6z3eO-JIUp83PjiIQurr4CSu3mceHaFsx9jB78UE01eHONmWlZZCf_Xh/s1600/DSCN1317.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT1-dueJSDWtL1-xb0Ix2igP2mKFvxjBVLKIKL3HU1P5Xi53dt24sBB90dHgqEMX2DQdSXMZOuBSeLPbSgljqk6z3eO-JIUp83PjiIQurr4CSu3mceHaFsx9jB78UE01eHONmWlZZCf_Xh/s400/DSCN1317.JPG" width="300" /></a><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">H</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">ere in the Philippines we have decided ice cream trucks are too mainstream so we are going for the more useful fish trucks that sell freshly caught fish. Its an interesting way to wake up, before the alarm rings you hear “BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNGGGGGGGGGUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSS, FREEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH BAAAAAANGUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSS!!! And right after him comes the guy yelling ‘bote’ (bow-tey means bottle) but it sounds a bit more like ‘wookie.’ So we have wookies chasing after the fish here. As both my companion, sister Abdul-haq, and myself are very close to going home we have come up with interesting ways to not get trunky. This includes face spas, setting up activities at the church and having a baptism.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYwFJ85J02gfFNs_suBReIPjXJcfghq9oGkjnkV8NKPqHJEX-tb9oa9nx368csivtUU0YVG17TBA1WOdHeMQsLAMoRE4TQ7s-5x5VjQonwOYy2CTHnTz4SQAkfN9YWe_BxTFymvTCAAmX0/s1600/DSCN1334.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYwFJ85J02gfFNs_suBReIPjXJcfghq9oGkjnkV8NKPqHJEX-tb9oa9nx368csivtUU0YVG17TBA1WOdHeMQsLAMoRE4TQ7s-5x5VjQonwOYy2CTHnTz4SQAkfN9YWe_BxTFymvTCAAmX0/s400/DSCN1334.JPG" width="400" /></span></a><span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Yup! Tatay Perfecto Agular got baptized this week! He’s been investigating the church for almost 2 years now and is now ready for baptism! While there were only a few members there at the baptism the spirit was strong! When Brother Perfecto got up to bear his testimony it was truly powerful. To have a strong testimony doesn’t mean you string words together in a poetic way, it means the words are true to you. He practically shouted hallelujah that he had been baptized which was awesome. There are still some kinks we are working out in the branch but the members are incredible and have the desire. We are actually working on what is required to create a group (in the church the biggest congregation is called a ward, then a branch or a group. A ward is 100+ and a group is anywhere from 3-30 people) in a far area. There are a rather large number of members in this area, it's just so far out that they cannot afford to go to church every week- 100+ one way sort of things (the average is 20 pesos per trip) so we will see how this turns out!!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> We hope to be able to start teaching Tatay Perfecto’s son JR, but he works out in the rice fields and gets home super late and we have a curfew at 6ish so we will have to be creative about that I guess!! I was feeling really stressed my first week here as the area we are allowed to work in is so small but we are finishing little pockets of houses that have not seen the missionaries before and/ or had good relations with members and are interested. Its pretty much 50/50 with reactions from people here. Its either ‘don’t talk to me’ or ‘missionaries? I’ll listen to what you have to say.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">When I was at my most stressed I pulled out the scriptures and said allowed ‘please give me inspiration on what to do with this tiny area’ and then flipped open to D&C 54:7&9 “Wherefore go to now and flee the land, and take your journey… and after you have done journeying, behold, I say unto you, seek ye a living like unto man.” So the scriptures say I should go home and get a job. That’s comforting.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Honestly that is all I have to report on this week besides we did a mud mask as a way of distressing and we all tried to make each other laugh because when you laugh while wearing a bentonite clay mask (shout out to Grandma Awesome! Thanks so much!!) it crinkles and makes you look like an old lady. So we had fun looking like an idiot for a while.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-60333545412226030492017-06-19T09:53:00.000-07:002017-07-19T14:09:06.281-07:00Week 68: Transferred, to Magapit, Peeping Toms and Scary Rodents<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTP6oPXF9jyOwNa6yEcoUNuzCXC98Sh6Gjx3AxrL3feu4KzgAH68p24YM0p9UdldBsF3xhmaVVntu05gcaEVFdgW4lqRJnydguhFT95Yp63mWs1NcEwPJsvCsqV1t4TBSzEkvgD_s4W7MP/s1600/DSCN1319.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTP6oPXF9jyOwNa6yEcoUNuzCXC98Sh6Gjx3AxrL3feu4KzgAH68p24YM0p9UdldBsF3xhmaVVntu05gcaEVFdgW4lqRJnydguhFT95Yp63mWs1NcEwPJsvCsqV1t4TBSzEkvgD_s4W7MP/s400/DSCN1319.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sis. Abdul Haq (new companion) and Me Traveling in the Bus</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Elders Are Sitting on the Roof of the Bus as We Travel</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">This week took forever. So last Monday I was in Vigan, then traveled up to Laoag and stayed the night there, then traveled from there to the bus stop where I met everyone who would be traveling with me: Elder Anderson the new ZL, sister Hicks who will be living with me but will be Sister Ganaden’s companion (they will be opening a new area) and elder Wineberg from Vigan district, and his trainee Elder Saplan. We rode a hecka long bus ride that I'm sure could have been much longer but they played the same dumb Jurassic park rip off movie at least 3 times before they realized and swapped to a Marvel movie and a Korean movie. I wrote in my journal basically the whole drive and patted sister Hicks on the head because she gets car sick and the road was going up and down the tiny canyon road like no one’s business.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> Magapit, my new area, is actually just one road out of a whole town and this road has more rocks than people. I keep reminding myself that this is really cool that we get to see the work progress here because there are two (almost three) church buildings in this one town (Lalo) but I have about 20 people who live in my area and they have already met with the missionaries. So we are going to teach English as a second language here so that will be fun as three of the four of us are foreigners (two Americans and one Pakistani, and one Filipina) as a way to meet new people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I have two funny stories for this week. Our new apartment is incredible. I swear every time I move it's to a better apartment and this one is huge and easy to clean and has sooooo many windows. The funny parts of my week however have to do with the apartment so just realize that I’m not complaining about the apartment.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEZYEMYMGXHxYk0wNUV6vF5s9UoTNNfd12sywNzoc_VXxmNoHl7NA18tL-ANyNuAZDR0Gxh06UzYGV_kamvMmemhtz1b1UvsD30HDyhtjA_pQCJmTE8mrxw4TQcM8mXR4JeyMAvweOluw/s1600/DSCN1260+%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMEZYEMYMGXHxYk0wNUV6vF5s9UoTNNfd12sywNzoc_VXxmNoHl7NA18tL-ANyNuAZDR0Gxh06UzYGV_kamvMmemhtz1b1UvsD30HDyhtjA_pQCJmTE8mrxw4TQcM8mXR4JeyMAvweOluw/s400/DSCN1260+%25281%2529.JPG" width="400" /></a><span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I was doing my laundry as after transfers you always have a crazy amount of laundry left over and I’m sitting next to this open drain thinking about how I had just told Sister Banham- my previous companion who is now training- how rats can swim through piping and even come up through the toilet and how she didn’t believe me, when, I kid you not, a giant rat crawls out of the open drain next to my foot. I jump up and run to the door to escape inside the house (laundry room is outside) only to find that my companion Sister Abdul-haq had locked me out of the house!!! So I’m banging on the door freaking out and she finally comes and lets me in and she is laughing so hard at me and I can't remember any Tagalog so I throw my flip flop at her but she just dodges it and keeps laughing at me. So then I go back to finish my laundry BECAUSE I DON’T SCARE EASILY and so I sit down to finish and sister Abdul-haq starts screaming and pointing to the ground behind me and so I jump up again only to see it’s a sock so I chase her around the house with the other flip flop I hadn’t thrown at her yet. I locked her in the bathroom so I could finish my laundry in peace.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then the other story was just last night. Here in Cagayan we have to return to the apartment before the sun goes down so we do all of our studies at night. So we had finished our studies and were chatting in the other sisters room (all in our pj’s) when we hear rustling outside our window. I panic and tell everyone in a laughing fun voice in old English that there was someone standing outside the window and we needed to leave the room and go to my room because I have curtains. Im speaking like “Forsooth doth yonder window break a perv doth entrench there.” So only the other American understood me because I’m speaking nonsense English so if the guy outside the window hears me he thinks I don’t know he is there but I know he is there. Eventually everyone caught my drift and we all dragged their mattresses into our room and had a slightly scary sleepover where we called out leaders and asked what to do. They basically told us to do what we had already done and to text if anything changed. Oh by the way the power was out and had been out for two hours. So we are sitting in our locked room with all the curtains down and windows closed dying of heat when we hear “Sisters.” Out our window. I'm all primed to taze someone but I peek out the window and it's just our District leader who came all the way over to check on us because his phone didn’t have any calls or texts so he walked around the border of the house (I handed him my taser first) and didn’t find anything. So we all went to bed… kinda. But this morning I went outside to check if I could see footprints- because I took a forensics class so that must mean I’m a genius- but I found a huge depression in the grass (our house is next to an open field) and cow droppings. So we were all so scared because of a freaking cow. It was so dumb but looking back on it I was speaking Shakespeare so a cow wouldn’t understand my English. That is ridiculous.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Anyways this has been the weekly funny story with Missionary Mormon Mikella</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Till next time!</span></span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-4031cd56-18d0-afda-6b58-c6b14e39cfd5" style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7FTiRD21NwAltm4gB7jSmgoThrlNyRvENfwtEwG9OssUZnDSkfd51nHaloI6XpjNZLh8B3t4OfxugXwIBs-U2iZHa0WkiUVFcWdFvFyn9vmA7DoIADMgFgxlPpjTmqXQizGOiZwWIAuZZ/s1600/DSCN1402%255B1%255D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7FTiRD21NwAltm4gB7jSmgoThrlNyRvENfwtEwG9OssUZnDSkfd51nHaloI6XpjNZLh8B3t4OfxugXwIBs-U2iZHa0WkiUVFcWdFvFyn9vmA7DoIADMgFgxlPpjTmqXQizGOiZwWIAuZZ/s400/DSCN1402%255B1%255D.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our Peeping Tom</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-49541957296954107292017-06-12T14:51:00.000-07:002017-06-28T14:56:19.594-07:00Week 67: I Flooded the Font<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3fezjzVf8ic2WczfdhOyR5EhP2r5px3QjewAP4Qoz0Rwsqu1QIZ3k4qB3MECbVoSmV9txwtnn6ddH9XNbnFhw28YGhc5xQvasxY1E_wEErs8i-R6SqIdjT1V3MyhwnF1m5AiuRAuuUj8d/s1600/DSCN1151.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3fezjzVf8ic2WczfdhOyR5EhP2r5px3QjewAP4Qoz0Rwsqu1QIZ3k4qB3MECbVoSmV9txwtnn6ddH9XNbnFhw28YGhc5xQvasxY1E_wEErs8i-R6SqIdjT1V3MyhwnF1m5AiuRAuuUj8d/s400/DSCN1151.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This week went by very quickly… isn’t that what I said last week? My brain is just in a scramble right now, but it's all good. I got to start my week out with what turns out to be my last MLC- as usual it started about 5am as the sisters in the mission office apartment always insist on getting up early to shower… but being noisy about it. I got to see one of my utmost favorite people in the world, Sister Bernards who is working in the office. The meeting itself was incredible and I am going to really miss going to MLC, but I will not miss going on exchanges with all the sisters in the Zone! I love them but I have a happy place in my area- that I am now leaving. I’m pretty excited for my new area as Sister Banham served there in the past so she keeps telling me about all the things she loved there. I kinda felt this coming actually. The thought that I would be sent to Cagayan kept running through my mind all week so I know this transfer is revelation from God.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We worked with some incredible members this week and even extended 10 Baptismal Goal Dates this week which was NUTS. The members we worked with (Ritzmay, Daniel one day and sister Rabang and brother Florentine on a different day) were very in-tune with the spirit and honestly they were the best part of the lessons!</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We went to visit a 2-year investigator family of 6 who have been wanting and trying to join the church ever since they first heard it but due to some restrains have as of yet been unable to and were starting to loose hope. This week we got to meet with the whole family-which is rare as basically everyone but the youngest works- and in the lesson we talked about the story of Samuel the Lamanite and how despite how it was hard and sometimes scary he followed the commandments of God (see Helaman 13 in the Book of Mormon). But that wasn’t even the best part. The best part was how the members talked about how when they were baptized into the church all the things they had to overcome and were still going through but the strength they gained through the Holy Ghost, which they received after their baptism, and it was like a light switch went off. Where this beautiful family had been enshrouded in darkness of hopelessness they were filled with the hope and light of Christ and the best part was I had nothing to do with it. It was the members’ love for them, and it was God’s love for them. That is the coolest.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We also had a baptism this week- but not for us! It was for the elders who are also serving in the same branch as us. But we showed up early only to find the font empty!! So we started filling it and then went out to greet people. The baptism started and we had some incredible talks that were all in Ilocano so I have no idea what was said but I felt good about it. Then as we all went to the font for the actual dunking part we noticed a problem… I had forgotten to turn off the pipe!! The baptismal water was flowing in a river down the steps and into the hallway!!! So we had an impromptu team building experience as we scooped up the water with dust pans and paper towels after I shut off the water. After the baptism our investigator Michaella got interviewed for her baptism next week and it was great! We met with her before the interview to make sure she wouldn’t get scared of the District Leader- who is a very nice Elder. And she passed!!</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This Sunday we had so many investigators come to church and I’m pretty sure all of them will get baptized, the question is when. We Know Michaella will be baptized (she does a dance when she thinks about it) and Cherymay (who we found this week due to a referral from a returning Less Active) is waking up in the middle of the night to read and her husband is too, she was sick and the baby was sick but they came to church and she felt 100% better and her baby’s cold went away. She told us the church has power- and although we watched a broadcast in English she said she felt all warm inside like when we teach her and she wants to feel that all the time. So she’ll be getting baptized!! Ahaha Then Edita came her third time and was just as amazing and participated in the classes! Then two out of the 6 of the potential Abang family came and they were greeted soooo warmly by the members- brother Florentine about jumped out of his chair to greet them!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Life is good and it's sad to think I won't be here to see them all be baptized.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Ta ta for now!</span></span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-b241be9f-f0ae-46a5-bd10-725331e45646" style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-16795274035912421982017-06-06T14:30:00.000-07:002017-06-11T14:36:09.157-07:00Week 66: Intoxication 101<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi79FX474Xh9Cj2HDUZm7FPKVw7kIe8PA0aXk7_r1nwhacyCtE9nEABZg_6RuMjmVNlib9_pcVcfHy7Unw9VHEW_lpmx3vlJJygKkL359VfAawi4T6KnDFbjAK8LrPKidefjDBuvlUCYbBl/s1600/DSCN1150.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi79FX474Xh9Cj2HDUZm7FPKVw7kIe8PA0aXk7_r1nwhacyCtE9nEABZg_6RuMjmVNlib9_pcVcfHy7Unw9VHEW_lpmx3vlJJygKkL359VfAawi4T6KnDFbjAK8LrPKidefjDBuvlUCYbBl/s640/DSCN1150.JPG" width="480" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Good morning Neverland! </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">So because of MLC my letters are always late the first week of the month. So no I’m not breaking rules by emailing on a Tuesday. Anyways. This month went by really fast. I personally have never believed when people say ‘time goes faster than you think’ as if time is passing quickly it's due to you not paying attention or remembering the moments. Yet, I remember the moments and I am paying attention- though my companion thinks that I have alzheimer's as I can remember the name of the dog but not the investigator. But I was always like that; remembering useless information and forgetting the crucial things. Like giraffes have the same amount of vertebrae as humans, but I can't remember how to get home. Anyways, the best things that happened this week was having 11 people in church this Sunday. We only reported 10 because 1 we had never met before and she came to assist her boss, so not technically an investigator. Also this seems to be the week of the drunks.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We were walking to an appointment when Elderberto Javier- mr.i-don’t-want-to-listen-to-you-anymore-because-the-dating-daan-prophet-says-so guy I talked about last week. He comes running up to us and this is the conversation:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Javier: Sisters!!!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Us: hey! What are you doing?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Javier: I was just weeding my garden. Don’t you guys want to teach me?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Us: You said you weren’t sure if you wanted to listen to us.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Javier: oh that *laughs* I was disillusioned! I wish I didn’t like you two but I can’t sleep because of what you said and I want to listen now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Us: are you drunk?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Javier: *swaying slightly* you drink wine to open your mind! You should write that down.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">He insisted we talk so we sat down on some lawn chairs in his front yard and gave him a very brief overview of the Plan of Salvation, during which he sobered up a bit. He actually had a lot of questions and insisted he would come to church and not work the whole day of Sunday. He didn’t actually end up coming but besides the fact that he was slightly drunk the spirit was in the lesson and he has been reading from the Book of Mormon.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Another drunk story:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> We were teaching one of our potential investigators about the Book of Mormon and one of the drunks from her neighbor’s graduation party came over and joined in the lesson. He was seriously drunk, and could not remember 1 +1 sort of thing. I did get a little scared when he stood up from where he had been sitting on the ground but he was almost completely unaware of his surroundings. If he had not been shouting “I love Jesus” and “That’s like Catholic!” and “The dog told me that!” I would have thought he was completely out of it. Then as we were walking home from that lesson we ran into a Less Active who was wandering the street seriously drunk.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Brother B: Sisters! I am sorry. I am already drunk.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Us: then go home and don’t drink anymore.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">B: ok just one more</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Us: no you are done. Go home.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">B: *pouts*</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> It's sad to see grown up people reducing themselves to nothing like this, but it is funny to see full grown up people acting like children.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> Also! Our investigator Edita came back to church! This is two times in a row now and so we are hoping she will be ready by the end of this month for baptism. She even paid her tithing without us ever teaching her about it! They just talked about it in church last week so she paid it this week! She is amazing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">That’s all from my neck of the woods!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the Taser-carrying Sister,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-b241be9f-9910-a8d9-2b54-a1e4b5585817" style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-89891150611885928742017-05-29T18:39:00.000-07:002017-06-02T18:42:25.011-07:00Week 65: Teaching the Word<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbrmYxaCWm8UNiA-v7wmKEJV22H-2FDRwf8qPD-edy9vUtFknl-HegHBYde9eZQymaBv2iOh3ckSHDp-W_3tSUumJ8ucsyPkzfLW3Yb45vbGf5uzuR7oMDATZxeXl1TmJaG23ZWgsOo7ci/s1600/DSCN1124%255B1%255D.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbrmYxaCWm8UNiA-v7wmKEJV22H-2FDRwf8qPD-edy9vUtFknl-HegHBYde9eZQymaBv2iOh3ckSHDp-W_3tSUumJ8ucsyPkzfLW3Yb45vbGf5uzuR7oMDATZxeXl1TmJaG23ZWgsOo7ci/s640/DSCN1124%255B1%255D.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The weeks go by fast but the days have a way of dragging their feet. My companion says it’s because I'm counting the days, but that doesn’t really factor in as I don’t know what number I'm supposed to be on right now. I've never been very good with numbers… anyways we got punted (had appointments that fell through) so we did a lot of finding this week. Like 60+ finding… which is fun to say but it's killer on the feet and the shoulder. I got to weigh my bag today and apparently it's about 5 kilos. That’s heavy. And it's just sitting on my shoulder all day because we can't seem to get a sit-down teaching appointment. But it's all good, its a vocational hazard.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I’ve got a few fun stories for this week one about Honey Rose, Michaella, and one about Edita. So Honey Rose is just taking off! She is reading and praying and had a rather interesting question. So before I get to her question I should explain at the beginning of every lesson we always ask how they enjoyed their reading and if they have anything they learned or wanted to share. There are two usual responses:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">·</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Investigator “Oh yeah I read, I learned a lot.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Missionaries: “What would you like to share out of what you learned?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Investigator: *suddenly gets shy and has nothing to say</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Or</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Investigator: “I'm too busy, I didn’t read.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Missionaries: *begin to read with them where the assignment was for them to read and explain we are not here to push our religion down their throat but if they want to know if what we are saying is true they have to try it out themselves. *</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">However, this is how it went with Sister Honey Rose:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Missionaries: “How was your reading?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Honey Rose: “Great! I'm on page 12!”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Missionaries: That is awesome!! Do you have anything you’d like to share, or do you have any questions?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Honey Rose: …actually I do. Why did Nephi kill Laban?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Bam. Sister Banham looked over to me (Honey Rose was flipping to the verse where Nephi beheads Laban) and the look basically said “awe heck to the yeah” which was how I was feeling. We went on to tell her about how God had commanded him to do so to ensure that they had the scriptures- which turned into an incredible discussion about the scriptures. She even said “When I feel bad I just go and read and I feel so calm.” That is the spirit! So you can imagine the lesson was just incredible. We actually ended up teaching about The Word of Wisdom (how we are to take care of our bodies by eating healthfully, and not using certain things such as alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, tea, and harmful and illegal drugs.) She was surprised we included coffee with alcohol and illegal drugs but said “I used to just drink hot milk in the morning- I think I’ll just do that now.” She felt the spirit in the lesson and was immediately able to choose what she wanted. She may experience some withdrawal but she is very determined to follow the commandments of God. She just amazes me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then there is Michaella, when she told us about her reading she went on and on about what she learned and how she applied it in her life already and the blessings she has already seen. And she had a big karate tournament planned for Sunday and her mother was arguing with her trying to get her to go but she bore her testimony to her mother that no matter what she was going to go to church because of the feelings she had there and she prayed about her choice to go to church and on Sunday morning as she was dressed and heading out the door to go to church she got a text from her sparing teacher saying the tournament had been moved! When she told us about it she cried saying how she knows this church is true. It was a super powerful lesson, and she is teaching us more than we are teaching her! *see attached picture. She is just awesome.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Editha also amazes me. She is a bit older and is hard for her to read but she reads every day and she said at first reading caused her a slight headache but now it's easier and she feels like she is being strengthened. She is good friends with a part-member part non-member family that we are teaching/activating and she had planned to ride with them since they have a car (having a car in the Philippines is an extreme luxury) but that family went down to Manila and so she walked about ½ a kilometer before she was able to catch a trycee to get to church. She said she enjoyed the talks and recognized a not of people- I believe she listed off 3 names, and is excited to come back! She is awesome and I hope we will be able to teach her grandson who sometimes ‘steals the book of Mormon and reads all night.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Over all it's just that once you start reading the Book of Mormon and really try you will receive the blessings. I don’t convert, I just try my best to get people to read.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I should also mention that we had a fun time… yeah so we walked up to one of our investigators we have been teaching for a week or so and he just straight up said “This will probably be the last time you come here.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">“Why?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">“I was listening to the radio and this guy said Mormons weren’t true and I felt enlightened so I don’t want to listen to you anymore.” We bore our testimony of Joseph Smith and invited him to keep reading from the Book of Mormon and he said he would. THEN we ran into him again later that day and he said “I keep thinking about what I said and I can't get this bad feeling to go away- so I guess you can keep teaching me.” Then he just smiled.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">So life is just all hekkledy-peggledy and I have tons of other things I’d like to say but I’m flat out of time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who can't think of a way to sign off</span></span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-b241be9f-6b9b-360b-41e8-4d98f7eed64f" style="background-color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-18345556170165921732017-05-22T10:21:00.000-07:002017-05-23T10:27:05.001-07:00Week 64: So Hungry, So Grateful, and So Stinking Wet!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp8Pv9EOy_55Mdu21mlHvHg_fcsmBuEqLO1TslUYnE8ovN8FaSWlbeJVYBsPuEeT1VzJaBQfpB-ZMhF9yYqGWoKuWw_tYgdbw8eJXdCfRzs4QLwPphngN6XF-eQtpllX6GhA_ss8ya3ac9/s1600/DSCN1096.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp8Pv9EOy_55Mdu21mlHvHg_fcsmBuEqLO1TslUYnE8ovN8FaSWlbeJVYBsPuEeT1VzJaBQfpB-ZMhF9yYqGWoKuWw_tYgdbw8eJXdCfRzs4QLwPphngN6XF-eQtpllX6GhA_ss8ya3ac9/s400/DSCN1096.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">"You're still out in this weather?"<br />"Oh, it's just a sprinkle!"</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-fcdfb5df-3653-0038-ce85-03132a2954be" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">So hungry. So grateful, and so stinking wet. The rainy season is not supposed to start until next month but apparently Mother Nature is in a mood or something so it's literally raining buckets (it started raining during one of the lessons and by the end of the 10/15 minute lesson the bucket the investigator had placed under the rain spout was overflowing. So, I'm not exaggerating when I say it's raining buckets. We had exchanges with the Santo Domingo Sisters this week and didn’t take that into consideration when we bought our groceries last Monday so about Saturday morning we realized we had no food. We thought ‘oh whoops no food!’ and then went back to work and forgot to address the problem. We do have about 20 green mangos in the fridge that our neighbour keeps giving us but they are super sour (like it gives me a headache it's so sour) unless you eat it dipped in vinegar or soy sauce or salt but we ran out of vinegar and soy sauce and salt so I was out of ideas. Luckily the mission has had us prepare 72 Hour kits of food and that was extremely helpful.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This week was fun as I got to prove some people wrong about missionary work. I got into a light discussion/ argument with a few elders in the past about golden investigators. That elder posed the idea that they do not exist. I proposed otherwise as I have been able to work with several. This week I'm adding two more to that list. Kennedy and Michella. Kennedy is a professional football (soccer) player for the Ilocos team and he is actually a referral from the other sisters who are working here in Vigan. He is half Filipino half Nigerian and when we extended a baptismal goal date his reaction was “Yeah! What day?” and he is always asking great questions about the lesson and how to get to church. For example:</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> “So brother Kennedy, do you have any questions about what we just talked about?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">“Yeah, what time does church start?”</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">So he is great! Sadly he couldn’t make it to church this Sunday because he got in a motorcycle accident Saturday night and injured his hip. (don’t freak out it's not serious) He kept apologising about not being able to make it and even said he had tried coming regardless but that his motorbike would not start anymore. That means he honestly tried! Oh, did I mention he speaks English? It's so fun to teach in English as my companion keeps speaking Tagalog at him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Michella is dating a member and technically the elders should be teaching her as she lives in the elders area but she is too shy to talk to the elders (she gets really flustered if we suggest it) so we teach her after church on Sundays. She accepted a baptismal goal date the first lesson and this last Sunday her boyfriend came in to the lesson and wanted to ask her something and she just put her hand in his face because she wanted to listen to what we were saying. It was quite funny as the expression on her face was ‘this is life changing and I won't be distracted by anything.’ Her boyfriend’s mom has the best comments during the lessons and I can tell they are super close.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This is where it gets good. Remember how I said I had a discussion with a few elders about ‘there is so such a thing as golden investigators’? One of the things they said never happen is that after the first meeting investigators never remember Joseph Smith or the First Vision and both Kennedy and Michella remembered it. Kennedy almost recited it to us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">So life is good and beautiful and rainy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister staying dry</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-26342900803490942612017-05-15T14:40:00.000-07:002017-05-18T14:43:41.694-07:00Week 63: My Motto is Basically: Does This Absolutely Need to be Done Now or Can I Sleep?<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDan56f8bpVClUT-F1ZQ7rfgTMCFGpBl-qrkQHzIHAJep9XXNXZJTq9wPKDuh8kipK7FRdCdVZs2dMwjoa-oRAVDLwd0FHCCVfmejAjJLJRzo6Rx0A78TzcBK_YXb7x_vvtNoknrgfSwfj/s1600/DSCN1052.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDan56f8bpVClUT-F1ZQ7rfgTMCFGpBl-qrkQHzIHAJep9XXNXZJTq9wPKDuh8kipK7FRdCdVZs2dMwjoa-oRAVDLwd0FHCCVfmejAjJLJRzo6Rx0A78TzcBK_YXb7x_vvtNoknrgfSwfj/s400/DSCN1052.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">Also If it doesn’t move me towards baptism then I'm not doing it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">It's rough keeping up to date with all the paperwork that comes with missionary work but I'm mostly on top of it. I'm just not up to date in my journalist but that is something I have to live with… </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">The best part of my week was me and sister Banham praying to find a family and then finding two very promising families! We are trying to talk to everyone- even slightly scary looking guys- and its paid off!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">Sometimes the guys don’t want to talk so they give fake names but its chill, we are just learning patience. Actually it doesn’t make me mad that we spend an hour looking for someone who gave us a fake name and then when we finally do find them they basically tell us to leave. I was surprised by how well I handled it and my companion did a good job bottling her anger. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">We did find this family who we first met the dad and he jumped off his motorcycle and then showed us where his house was and introduced us to his whole family and got a return appointment and they live next door to some members and it was great|!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">We also had 17 people in church today that we have been working with (RC/ LA/ Investigators) so that was super fun. The sacrament meeting was pretty good and we had about 100 people there. I even gave a talk on Revelation and got to bear testimony how we believe God is a God of order and He establishes Truth through those who are of authority (they have a licence from Him- not from people or from their own understanding) and how our church not only has that authority but God's Power- that we call the priesthood. And it was fun to look into the eyes of my investigators and bear testimony of that to them in the sacrament meeting.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">We are just trying to talk to everyone and so far it's paying off as we find those who are interested and those who want to be left alone. It's fun and stressful but that is life!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">Sorry it's so short I have no time!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who is apparently patient now,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-clip: initial; background-color: #444444; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 13.5533px;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-69603336871635966502017-05-08T11:09:00.000-07:002017-05-10T11:28:28.093-07:00Week 62: God Knows What is Needed<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ydBTqSncVbOWH_a6HbaaRkDJRA4QRBv5UXsmQipVciAn-a556Y8_HJR18uJacmEJmiIC66MqkqEZEFyT48sffpPzdSilRKissoLVdNgsSlFGMJrSEFDVhtu3aKTsvXem1UedtH1lX7IM/s1600/DSCN1027.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ydBTqSncVbOWH_a6HbaaRkDJRA4QRBv5UXsmQipVciAn-a556Y8_HJR18uJacmEJmiIC66MqkqEZEFyT48sffpPzdSilRKissoLVdNgsSlFGMJrSEFDVhtu3aKTsvXem1UedtH1lX7IM/s400/DSCN1027.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-fcdfb5df-f38c-d0e2-4702-184f9ae7e169" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Oh how I love the smell of mangos in the morning. For some reason Mangos are very expensive here even though they are everywhere. It’s like you live on the beach and they sell fish… they are everywhere but not everyone has a boat- and in the case of mangoes a long bamboo stick with a net to both harvest and catch them. Luckily we have amazing members here who give us free mangos because I’m too cheap to buy my own! Haha</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Nothing outrageous happened this week besides the fact that it’s me and Sister Banham, so there have been a lot of kids yelling “Americana!” and people thinking we are tourists, so they are surprised when I speak Tagalog and Sister Banham is close to fluent in Tagalog and the village language Ilocano. I also realized that I’m not as fluent as I thought! Throughout my mission I've asked my companions to correct me if I say something wrong and I guess they didn’t… But now I have a companion who is not afraid of correcting me and knows what I’m actually trying to say so corrects my grammar. It's humbling, slightly, but I’m just so grateful I have a companion who is willing to help push me to be better.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We are getting a little rushed to find a baptism for this month as no Investigators came to church and they have to have 4 consecutive Sundays in a row (with one-week allowance) and since no investigators came last week I knew that if we didn’t get any again this week we would be sunk, unless a miracle occurred and we found someone who had received all the lessons previously, had the consecutive Sundays… and remembered everything. So that is a possibility because God is in charge but percentage wise… it's rare. So we fasted (skipped two consecutive meals with a purpose in mind) praying that God would accept the fast and that we will be able to bless the specific investigators we have, and that they will have the desire to go to church so we can not only help them but help the members get excited about missionary work. So it was a bit of a downer when we had no investigators in church. After church though we had a sister walk up to us basically saying ‘hi I’m an investigator, teach me and my three brothers’ so miracles do happen! Sadly, her brothers are not in our area but we can teach her, so the elders are super stoked as now they have three priest-age (16-18 years-old) men they get to teach and our branch president is getting excited! Not to mention one of the Elder’s investigators was interviewed this last week so even if we (the sisters) don’t get a baptism at least there will still be one in the branch.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> I have learned a great deal of trusting in the Lord’s plan. It makes life a LOT less stressful. I can trust He has got the reins, He knows what is needed and gives that, not what is wanted.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Love you all! Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-68371763275814120582017-05-01T10:59:00.000-07:002017-05-10T11:03:33.738-07:00Week 61: Two Baptisms and Another Week Down<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHQBc7537pq-_LTdNdVOjbxz9jxIwXTj17pXMzJQkZUcoFiSXolSga9mK21w5BRSnErFsiCQyIzVeXNS_DpHaaJhzkPyOgNn6afIZ3s44Qqh48Bdb9ZOXvRgcNXx-zgQQC4t3O-Bb9rf7U/s1600/DSCN0968+%25281%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHQBc7537pq-_LTdNdVOjbxz9jxIwXTj17pXMzJQkZUcoFiSXolSga9mK21w5BRSnErFsiCQyIzVeXNS_DpHaaJhzkPyOgNn6afIZ3s44Qqh48Bdb9ZOXvRgcNXx-zgQQC4t3O-Bb9rf7U/s400/DSCN0968+%25281%2529.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-fcdfb5df-f383-9253-7583-d131605bb6e4" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This week we didn’t get to work as much as we had a Zone Conference (we had 2 zones meet in Paoay… which is a 3-hour drive for us and there were about 100 missionaries) we keep losing huge groups going home and then only about 5 are new so we are getting a little stretched for missionaries! This week was fun and a little stressful as it’s Fiesta here in Vigan so there are NO people at their homes because they are all at the parties and stuff… I don’t like being a party crasher so we mostly just did finding.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> We did have a great double baptism this week though! Mark Adrian (8) and Vanessa (12) both of their birthdays are in May so it's more like 9 and 13 but, technically Mark Adrian is a child of record and not a convert… so we can’t count him as a convert. Saturday morning, we went to clean the chapel before the baptism went down and we basically spent all morning cleaning! They assign the cleaning schedule by ward and not by family so it's been a while but we have already talked to the branch president about the cleaning schedule. The baptism was great and we had so many people there, especially the felowshipers we had with us in the lessons! While Sister Bustarde and I were walking to the chapel for the service we did some finding and tried to contact some Less Actives who live near the chapel and lo and behold we ran into one of our investigators we found just last Saturday! We were walking down this dirt road where there are about 50 sleeping dogs so we are trying to walk as quietly as we can so the dogs don’t wake up and charge at us (sometimes they are scary and sometimes they are scared of you- it just depends… but regardless sister Bustarde is terrified of dogs) so we are walking as quietly and sneakily as we can and then in comes Vicky: </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">“SISTEEEEERRRSSSSS!!!!!!” Thus ensues chaos as all the dogs wake up and start barking and we throw rocks at a few so they go away. But she went with us to the baptism even though we went 30 min early! She met basically the whole branch presidency and the people who often work with us and it was just fun! BUT THEN WE HAD NO INVESTIGATORS IN CHURCH EVEN THOUGH WE HAD TWO AT THE BAPTISM!! But it's ok because we had about 6 returning LAs at the church which is something.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This week was hard emotionally for me as it’s the last week of the transfer (every 6 weeks is grouped into a cycle) and I now have to say goodbye to my friend Sister Bustarde, and she will be working in Laoag… but now I get a new companion! But not so new as she was my companion in the MTC! YUP I’m companions again with sister Banham! I hope she is ready for this! Hahha But yeah now I have officially lead the area in all of my areas except Santo Domingo but I was only there 1 cycle anyways!!</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister living in the 7 wonders</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-70842071064471500182017-04-24T00:00:00.000-07:002017-04-24T11:12:35.733-07:00Week 60: Glittery Smiles<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiXllH0GFfJ49pWgeXYRTUYI0PKV6rkL6_n5UYxKjr4FlRhHPAufauN2g08TMuU4Yt-0Yw09aEyWze9LVzkkuSfORldt1qTLkfpgBMFZo3_uy93nh248Od_V5-nKc8eWogtpVFTRJaHCbT/s1600/Image6463.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiXllH0GFfJ49pWgeXYRTUYI0PKV6rkL6_n5UYxKjr4FlRhHPAufauN2g08TMuU4Yt-0Yw09aEyWze9LVzkkuSfORldt1qTLkfpgBMFZo3_uy93nh248Od_V5-nKc8eWogtpVFTRJaHCbT/s400/Image6463.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-fcdfb5df-9e2a-5214-3059-a6eafb7d3cf6" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And I’m slip and sliiiiding down the wall…. or down the hill. So technically its ‘dry season’ (here in the Philippines there are three seasons: rainy (typhoons and tropical storms and just rain every day), the dry season (March-June no rain no wind just hot hot hot and freak it's hot) and the who knows season (jan -feb it's not rainy but it's cold somehow. Very windy) technically right now we are in the Dry season but it’s gotten into this weird groove where it rains at night. That sounds great right? Well no for a few reasons. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">1) tricees can NOT drive up hill when it's rainy, they will slide right back down the hill… backwards </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">2) that water just turns into humidity so you are Dying all day even in the shade </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">3) all the little buggies want to take shelter in your house… killing 53 cockroaches in one-day sort of thing and </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">4) I am not good at walking up hills of a 45 degree angle when its wet and slippery.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So for the 1</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">st</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> one. We were lucky to catch a tricy even though it was dark and starting to rain and the tricy that gave us a ride was not a very strong engine so the driver gunned the engine and zoomed up the hill but only made it about halfway when he started sliding back. My knuckles were white but I didn’t scream. Then the tricee driver was just like “well that didn’t work” and just expertly maneuvered the tricee and we slid back down the hill no problem. I was scared and for a second I thought I was gonna die but now it's just a fun story to tell people. “Yup, I almost died on my mission but it was worth it!” I guess that is the closest I’ll get to a rollercoaster ride on my mission.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Then for number 3. I am not exaggerating. After I killed them all, I counted and I'm regretting watching Supernatural before my mission because now there are scratching sounds in the ceiling that I know are not demons but are just cockroaches but it's still not fun. It’s the same with the sink. Skittering and scratching sounds. *shudder* we are still trying to fix the problem but honestly idk why they like invading my house… it's so clean. This is one of the cleanest apartments I've lived in on my mission but there are a million cockroaches. We have sprayed bug killer on all the screens and door frames and left poison where we see them often. So we will just have to see. (we are also talking to the landlord about it and he is implementing some repairs to the house to try and get rid of them all.)</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And number four… I’ll just let your imagination have fun with that. Just imagine me stepping </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very carefully</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> over a puddle but not </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quite</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> getting it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Actually this week has been a lot of realizations. I thought I was doing good in the ‘be nice to people’ department but after a few calls I realized I’m not quite up to where I thought I was. I still need to watch the ‘how.’ As my mother would say:</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Mom: ‘you sound mad.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Me: I’m not mad</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Mom: then change how you said that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Me: that is not a good idea.*with a smile in my voice* There how was that?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Mom: you still look mad. Try smiling.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Me: I am smiling</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Mom: on the inside maybe. Try letting your face know you are happy</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Me: That is not a good idea *cue butterfly eyes and sparkles in the air as I smile glamorously, birdies twitter in the air and it's like a scene out of a Disney movie*</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Mom: much better.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And as usual my mother is right. This is my face, and it’s a happy face, but it doesn’t always show it. It’s ok I’m still working on it. I studied more about Charity and Love and had a great realization on the importance of showing how much you care. (and I can already hear my mother saying “That’s what I said!”) But the more you love truth the more it will stand out to you I guess! But the best part is how the whole situation was handled. A missionary felt like I was attacking them (their words not mine) and instead of gossiping and hating me they confronted me about it, and informed their leaders by following the chain of command. The whole thing was handled with astonishing maturity and was very easily solved. I am very lucky to have these sort of people in my zone. And now I know to speak softly and with sparkles… And if I can find any more Disney birds I’ll throw those in too.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also Vanessa Dela Cruz passed her baptismal interview! She and Mark Adrian will be baptized this Saturday April 29! That will be my 17</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and 18</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">baptism! (which was actually my goal for my mission- to get 18.) so now I hope to get 20!! We hope Vanessa will be baptized by her older brother who was baptized last July (the area’s most recent convert) but it will all depend on how it turns out. I personally don’t believe in coincidences. Is it coincidence that she was one of the first people we met here in Vigan, or that her mom mentioned that she was not a member but wanted to be baptized? Or that she lives just across the street from us? No; it’s by design. Everything has a purpose and a meaning why… you just got to open your heart and mind and close your eyes. (be careful to not trip) but the thing is- to quote a musical “the heart understands, the heart is too wise. So look with your heart and close your eyes tight…”</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Anyways. I lost my planner this week. Or I thought I did. I was scrambling around the house and dumping out my bag and panicking (when you forget your planner at home for a few hours you feel like you’ve lost your arm because I have a fantastic memory for non-missionary related things like the difference between crocodiles and alligators but can’t remember names of investigators… hey the rhymed.) so I was texting those we had seen earlier that day and then just gave up. Two days later I found it inside my bag inside a little hidden zipper. That I placed it in. So today my companion had us do some deep cleaning and I found my missing wallet and t-shirt and now my companion has put me on a bag-ban. I have to put things right away after using it and I can't put it anywhere else but where it belongs. I like to think I’m a tidy person but my companion does not quite agree with me.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I have also started reading the Doctrine & Covenants backwards. I should read section 1 on the plane ride home… so according to that I have 136 days left on my mission.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who is covered in glitter :\</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-7634398716915420192017-04-17T18:34:00.000-07:002017-04-18T18:39:48.221-07:00Week 59 in the Philippines Laoag Mission - It's the hardest thing I've ever done. <div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhV_pOBvciyhsujaYqWwAydisj9HPgv2oTrvNDkIzcvxiWSOg1mmuPTgrau6z1ABJdqi08aQi82Jvz6QOT7RiGCWS-BA9mW_ZiNGc05OhBHu3CLUkiNFgbEKnymHkvEOSxh57KgVNmJD44/s1600/40.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhV_pOBvciyhsujaYqWwAydisj9HPgv2oTrvNDkIzcvxiWSOg1mmuPTgrau6z1ABJdqi08aQi82Jvz6QOT7RiGCWS-BA9mW_ZiNGc05OhBHu3CLUkiNFgbEKnymHkvEOSxh57KgVNmJD44/s640/40.JPG" width="480" /></a></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">“As often as occasion would permit Harry would lie beneath the window sill hiding beneath Aunt Petunia’s daffodils listening to the news and missing Hogwarts.” </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Ok so that isn’t an actual quote but for right now I am Harry Potter- but my scar is acne scarring that comes with no fancy prophesy. Too bad. But why, do you ask, am I like Harry Potter? I'm excited for summer to be over? (You may all collectively gasp in shock.) Yeah, I am stoked for summer to be over and for school to start again as that means I will be home and able to skype with my family whenever I want… since I’ll be home a grand total of 5 or 6 days before going up to school. Am I counting down my final 19 weeks? </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Maaaayyybeeee…. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">But does that mean that I am not working?</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Don’t count on it!!</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I am trying to finish my final 3 cycles sprinting!! I like to think that I am a dedicated person and that I am not a quitter- so to put myself to the test we have the Lysol and aerosol anti-bacteria on hand to keep the trunky sickness away and I’m eating that apple a day as they say is so important. I did write a poem though! Made me feel artsy:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">When the body needs something</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Food, water, light & air-</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">It has ways of telling;</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">But the brain is an organ more fair.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Stretching gasping and hungrily its yearning;</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This is the state of a mind so rare.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Who knew you could hurt for desire to learn?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I also have been enthralled with Proverbs which is basically scripture poetry, as well as Psalms. Anyways so on to this week! </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">It’s been a lot of ‘you already know this so start acting or you are never gonna get the seed to grow!’ If you want to grow a tomato plant you’re gonna have to water and give it sun and be patient. “Nothing worth having is ever gained without effort.” (Ben 10) but in the end it is their agency if they are going to water their gospel seed. It’s honestly so easy it’s silly how some struggle- but the thing is we all struggle. We all sometimes break down and listen to that voice saying we are too busy or too tired or too--- anything!! Sometimes we all fall but the trick is getting back up. Sometimes people fall in dry patches where it’s easy to ‘cover up their sin’ so they dust themselves off and crawl away thinking no one will notice. Well you are not standing until you admit that what you did was wrong and repent. Repentance is a gift that was bought with a great price- take it and be joyful.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I had the great opportunity to work in my old area for a day (perks of being a STL I guess) and it was fun to see the reaction of the members and investigators when they saw me again! Some fell out of their chairs in surprise and some were just like ‘how was your trip?’ thinking I was staying. Sadly I couldn’t but they were understanding and, honestly, I love it here in Vigan. The buildings are old and just as beautiful as I imagined and the people are very welcoming. You would think that because this is a city it would be gruff and scary- especially since there are a million Muslims and Indians, but, no. I’ve found a branch that wants to be a ward but just doesn’t know how! We are looking forward to our first baptism in the area since July last year and the members are getting excited again! We hope to have some fun ward activities and FHE (Family Home Evening- a spiritual thought followed by prayer and games) for the whole branch but we will just have to see! </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">It’s still hard planning- we spend a half hour to an hour planning our lessons and then we get there and no one is home so we have to change our plans last minute and just follow the Spirit. At least we are trying to plan and we are acting instead of thinking ‘well we tried, let's go home.’ No! if we think we want to go home we say ‘one more.’ And we mean it! If it's late and we think ‘maybe we should go home’ we go one more lesson or one more find THEN we go home. Its brought us great success.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I had a member ask if a mission was hard this week and I cannot lie. (that’s a lie- I'm very good at lying I’m just trying to quit the habit- but lying is usually me making a story more interesting by elaborating a bit…) anyways I told the member. “It’s the hardest thing I have ever done.” And it is. Never before in my life have I ever been this tired or this far out of my comfort zone. Never before in my life have I felt like the world was crumbling down around me and I could not move for fear. Before my mission I never experienced rejection like I have here on the mission, and being exhausted physically, mentally and spiritually.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Yet I have never felt so loved, I have so many people who write me and message me and sending me words of comfort and prayers. You can feel them like a butterfly on your shoulder. (It tickles and you can’t help but smile.) I have never felt so strong in my life- I can feel my spirit expanding, my understanding broadening and I can flex now better than ever before. It’s still wimpy but it’s the best I’ve ever been. Yes, so far a mission is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I did a lot before my mission, but it is the most rewarding. It will be hard to leave yet “to die will be an awful big adventure.”</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who is keepin' it real,</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZV-wTSQs1vCk45IDPQJS5MJiiRpVvQ_2OQS5rdQJyKuYH6xYSvsNZT9fTAImLsicPL5bjFUe_wiqKV6iNXy9aqVxZ1lM59Yd-XtpgYCtBU7Sqn_IaQBO8-SYdOlQ9AbGe3mOHVLpV0qAk/s1600/35.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZV-wTSQs1vCk45IDPQJS5MJiiRpVvQ_2OQS5rdQJyKuYH6xYSvsNZT9fTAImLsicPL5bjFUe_wiqKV6iNXy9aqVxZ1lM59Yd-XtpgYCtBU7Sqn_IaQBO8-SYdOlQ9AbGe3mOHVLpV0qAk/s400/35.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Very Special and Humbling Dinner Prepared Just for Us.</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-84243742795262115862017-04-10T13:37:00.000-07:002017-04-12T13:40:43.814-07:00Week 58 in the Philippines Laoag Mission - Conference & Barbies<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfdurHd47LTKPdZ8y_2TKpPrk5qfAzBAVBNqabZX0wLyyn55MemERY70CRLDYkzJzzrlx-lhy45eT8CpHLgjwh9VLX3lDeA6y3AfOjII39snLbY0iiImveIRunE343s52K6ys0kJy2L3pf/s1600/23.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfdurHd47LTKPdZ8y_2TKpPrk5qfAzBAVBNqabZX0wLyyn55MemERY70CRLDYkzJzzrlx-lhy45eT8CpHLgjwh9VLX3lDeA6y3AfOjII39snLbY0iiImveIRunE343s52K6ys0kJy2L3pf/s640/23.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At the Church for General Conference</td></tr>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-fcdfb5df-63e2-d59b-4fe8-0af8e648b53f" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">MLC Interviews and General Conference, these are a few of my favorite things... when you get sick, when the dog bites, when your inbox is empty.... i simply remember my favorite things and then i don’t feel soooo baaaaad! I'm kidding my mission is incredible and there are no biting dogs. (and my inbox is always pleasantly full)</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">MLC (Mission Leadership Council) is always fun and with tons</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I've also realized God has quite the sense of humor, because I am just about fluent in Tagalog now and I can understand Ilocano… but the thing is they will go off on tangents and I'm standing there with the buffering wheel on my face. And then it's like someone whispers ‘they said their father is a member’ even though I didn’t recognize a single word from their spiel. I can’t translate word for word but I can get the gist which is freaking cool. Why does God have a sense of Humor? I only have ever prayed to speak Tagalog and now I only speak Tagalog (and obviously English) but I can ‘translate’ Ilocano which is an interesting bonus point.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So like I mentioned in my previous emails my area has not had a baptism in about a year. At first I thought it was 2 years but now the most recent convert was baptized July 2016 so he is getting up to his year mark now. The thing is though several people- including members- now think the area is cursed. So we have been trying to help the area have a new perspective. We actually found two baptismal potentials (they will be baptized April 29… and we first arrived here in March) who actually both live just across the street from us. They are both part members and we found them by going through the old area book and looking up LA and RC members. Vanessa is super cool and has actually been going to church for a long time before we arrived- maybe the other missionaries thought she was a member already, and that’s why they didn’t teach her? Who knows, all I know is she is just soaking up the gospel and is honestly golden. Mark Adrian knows nothing about the gospel and only just started coming to church last April 2</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 7.2pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">nd</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. His mother is LA but she is the one who introduced us to her son. We are working to help her realize that her role as a mother is the same as us missionaries. We are encouraging her to teach her son as we teach her and her son since it’s been 9 years since she last went to church.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We also had a somewhat surreal lesson with Ivy and Florence. Apparently they had been debating about the purpose of life and heaven and hell when Ivy picked up the Plan of Salvation Pamphlet we left with them and Florence opened her Bible and they both ended up reading the same scripture! Then Florence also told us how she was randomly flipping through the bible when she stumbled upon a scripture in the New Testament that said basically ‘prepare yourself for the Lord is coming’ and then 5 minutes later she saw us walking down the street. We weren’t even going to her house, and we were in a different community that she happened to be in and we found her RIGHT AFTER SHE READ THAT SCRIPTURE. Mycroft Holmes inquired “What do we say about coincidences?” To which his brother Sherlock replied “That the universe is rarely so lazy.” Yeah that happened. ALSO while we were discussing the ‘pre earth life’ Florence pointed out that if we all lived in the pre earth life we must have had pre earth friends. She then said “Sister Bustarde, we must have been friends before this life because from the very first moment I saw you I knew you were familiar- despite never having met you before.” Freaking goosebumps! That is cool.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Besides that it mostly has been me preparing for Conference by doing a lot of reminding and inviting. I got to see the Gonda family from Santo Domingo (my RCs) and KC, the little neighbor girl sat next to me during the conference. She is about 4 and thinks I'm a living Barbie. When the conference started and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir starting singing she just sat with her jaw dropped and said “There are so many Barbie’s…” apparently all foreigners are Barbie’s. Hahaha it was adorable.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who is striving to inspire,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-74398444057512839052017-04-04T13:30:00.000-07:002017-04-12T13:35:45.057-07:00Week 57 in the Philippines Laoag Mission - Florence & Ivy & Goose-bumps<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnlT5Acn1JIdONf01_pZeyMJlAYXUmsQ48ZCwtHTFgi4CHvvOE_R4ZKW7_d-i9bQFt1-jAvvRxufrnchJJ0rCVZiEepYzKc_3pAlKWipGL5Q7_WKOqPo34zO3vEyLOJKpSj6flWUDyzZ9f/s1600/24+my+adorable+self.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnlT5Acn1JIdONf01_pZeyMJlAYXUmsQ48ZCwtHTFgi4CHvvOE_R4ZKW7_d-i9bQFt1-jAvvRxufrnchJJ0rCVZiEepYzKc_3pAlKWipGL5Q7_WKOqPo34zO3vEyLOJKpSj6flWUDyzZ9f/s640/24+my+adorable+self.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Adorable Self</td></tr>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-fcdfb5df-63dc-abb8-d310-3e42a48ab760" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This week was hectic. I still don’t know what I’m doing but somehow we found 34 new Investigators this week, and 41 lessons. Yet I seem to keep asking my companion “What are we doing next?” We plan as best we can and try to always follow the Spirit so that tends to make things interesting as we drop investigators and find new ones. It seems that all the previous missionaries here mostly stuck with the eternal investigators- we have found several receptive people who said :</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">“oh, I know Mormons, they are always walking somewhere.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">“They never talked to you?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">“No, they seemed too interested in where they were going/”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Which is a shame. These people were literally ‘perishing on the wayside’ in search of the truth and the missionaries forgot to open their mouths and speak to everyone they see. It's not that hard finding 34 people weekly as we live in a GIANT city (that probably is about the size of Spring Texas) and everyone is out on the streets.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This Monday we tried doing some finding in the public square… that was frightening and unfruitful. People kept giving us one-word answers as we tried to strike up conversations or even try just going straight to the point. After about an hour with only one person that gave us more than a two word sentence we decided that the field was not white and ready to harvest there and moved on to the whiter fields (see Doctrine and Covenants section 4.) and boy did we find those white fields! We then had an incredible lesson with Vanessa Dela Cruz and extended a baptismal goal date and she even invited her friend to the lesson. On our way to the lesson we ran into a Less Active Mormon and her partner. Raymond is very versed in the Bible and asked for a Book of Mormon because he wanted to compare it to the Bible. I dared him to prove it wrong, and he seemed a little surprised by my confidence. When we met with him later this week he had read the introduction, the testimonies contained therein, and begun the first book in the book of Mormon and could remember very clear details about it. We answered a few questions he had about Joseph smith and he kept saying ‘you have to have real intent! Real Intent!” His friend was quiet as he listened in too but quietly asked for us to come back again. Really cool. It just goes to show that sometimes some areas are ‘not ready’ but that will NEVER mean your whole area is hard. We will go back occasionally to the plaza and try again and give it a chance to be fruitful. We </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Never</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> give up hope, after all “we hope for all things.” (Articles of Faith 1:13) I’ve always had a soft spot for the number 13…</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We continued contacting some of the Investigators from the previous group of missionaries but they all seem to be the same ‘I'm not really interested in acting, but I like listening to your message” or “teach the kids but they can’t be baptized because we are going to die catholic as it is a family tradition. A family tradition of the Great and Noble House of Black was stuffing the heads of the house elves and mounting them on the wall. That doesn’t mean you keep following the tradition… I’ve been humming the tune to the song “Tradition” From fiddler on the roof and enjoy remembering that there are differences between the Lord’s traditions and worldly traditions. Godly Traditions: Ask Him and follow His guidance. Worldly Traditions: This is what always has been done so shut up and do it, no questions asked. Am I a little biased? Yeah, but everyone has an opinion, even the referees at the ball game. Sometimes it is not about opinion but about truth and real truth only comes from God. So just ask Him! He actually said, “Weary thou me with thy petitions.” He wants us so badly to ask Him, so just do it and He will answer; maybe not in your way, but He will answer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Another killer lesson we had this week was with Ivy Carmen, and her friend Florence. These two girls couldn’t be more different and they are close friends. We were teaching Ivy about the Book of Mormon by going through the Introduction and I flipped through the pictures at the front and told the basic story line (thank you mother for making me learn how to do that before my mission.) And in the middle of the lesson Florence sticks her head out of her room and asks if she could join. Florence apparently reads the Bible every day and is very religious although she does not attend any of the local churches as she believes they have drifted from the true word of God, and wanted to know what made our church different and if we followed the original teachings in the Bible. Which just so happened to be what we were talking about. It was honestly a kick-butt lesson and they only had one downside. They both live in the area boundaries of Baguio Mission! So if we don’t get them baptized by the end of May we will have to refer them to the Baguio missionaries!! Not to mention every weekend they have to return home to do school work as the wifi shuts off in their dorm on the weekends. Ivy has many Mormon friends so we are trying to coordinate if she can stay weekends in members’ homes so she does not have to travel so far and not be able to go to church as the closest church to her house really is here in Vigan anyways. Same for Florence, but we first have to find fellowshippers for her first. It’s funny as Ivy’s closest friend in the branch also happens to be a rather attractive single RM so we are having fun with that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">And at the end of the week we were blessed with 4 Investigators at church this week- 2 of which we think are really interested in baptism, and 1 who paid his tithing to the branch president! Which is funny as that Investigator likes to say all the time how he will ‘never become Mormon’ but he- besides coffee and wine- acts like a Mormon.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The reason I didn’t mention Conference is because that is actually next week for us so we can get the videos and translation done… but I do know that they announced another temple here in the Philippines! Last April when I was in the MTC they announced the Urdineta temple- which they still haven’t done the ground breaking for- and now another one is announced, this time in Manila.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Ether 12:40 “And only few have I written, because of my weakness in writing.” And shortness of time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the perpetually tired but excited sister, </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-14087730142358153262017-03-27T13:24:00.000-07:002017-04-12T13:29:20.703-07:00Week 56 in the Philippines Laoag Mission, but Still Clearly a Foreigner!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhClZiMqbS_4G6vbyWP0um02OH3xqU8czwvkOGA1c_RCgqRlzNESECO7ApYRQbsvCgeuEEutLJs85pWK-BTU6ugjEnApu-uLEtf87DgWLpiy0WqCKPhhqd4nOV8e2olEHnmE555dPyFSbUY/s1600/88+farewell+party+in+Santo+Domingo+R2L+Bianca%252C+me%252C+sister++Bustarde%252C+Carms+and+Maynard+%2528we+are+teaching+his+brother%252C+he%2527ll+be+baptized+this+Saturday+march+25.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhClZiMqbS_4G6vbyWP0um02OH3xqU8czwvkOGA1c_RCgqRlzNESECO7ApYRQbsvCgeuEEutLJs85pWK-BTU6ugjEnApu-uLEtf87DgWLpiy0WqCKPhhqd4nOV8e2olEHnmE555dPyFSbUY/s640/88+farewell+party+in+Santo+Domingo+R2L+Bianca%252C+me%252C+sister++Bustarde%252C+Carms+and+Maynard+%2528we+are+teaching+his+brother%252C+he%2527ll+be+baptized+this+Saturday+march+25.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Saying Farewell in My Last Area to this Wonderful Family</td></tr>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-fcdfb5df-63d8-a9e0-9c2f-b5449ea172bb" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Ever since I arrived in the Philippines I knew I was a foreigner. When kids come up to you and ask if you are sick because you are white and they thought that was something only real on tv, or when people tell you that you glow in the dark because you are so pale… you kinda get the hint. I knew from day one that I could never pull off the ‘oh, I’m from Manila’ besides in a joking manner. When I introduced myself to the branch this week in Vigan I joked about how my companion doesn’t have to worry about losing me because I'm about 5 or 6 inches taller than most people, brown hair, white, and apparently I have ‘rainbow eyes.’ Despite all of that I was still rather surprised by how much people stare at me. Yes I'm a foreigner. No I know what I'm doing and no I know the tricy fare is not 100 pesos its 20. It's ok. It's still fun to startle people. When I first moved into the Vigan apartment a tryce driver came up to help lift the luggage off the bus and onto his tricy. I had already carried it down the steps and I'm just a little noodle arm so he thought ‘ha no big deal I can lift this’ (this is a big burly looking guy) and his eyes literally bug out of his head when he tried lifting it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Me: “Yeah, sorry those are all my books.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Tricy driver: “Are you sure they aren’t dumbbells?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Another tricy driver walks up and thinks he is all that so he tries to lift it and he also gets a surprize! Haha They could lift it but they just didn’t expect it to be that heavy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">So as I said in my last email this area hasn’t had a convert baptism in a long time so I was a little apprehensive about it. A little worried about it all, but it turns out I was worried for no reason. We recently got a new Branch President and he is on fire! I honestly felt like I was back in Batac with the kind of organization he has going on. Because we are both new he took us for a tour around our areas and pointed out Investigators he knew and we stopped to chat with members. It was incredible, and then from that we were able to start working with members from week one. We work with new ones just about every day and we are now working to pair our Investigators to the members, and it's wonderful! We are really starting from scratch though. Every time we ask if anyone had seen or talked to the missionaries before they would say “Yeah, we see them walking down the street all the time. But they’ve never talked to us.” It’s a little strange to see that these incredibly receptive people are sitting there watching their salvation walk past and the missionaries never stopped to talk to them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Not much to say about this week besides finding 37 new investigators in one week which was exhausting , but none of them came to church!! We did find one girl, Ivy, who is actually a referral from Santo Domingo- we gave the referral several weeks ago but she was never contacted. We found her and she has been reading the book of Mormon a bit and will come to church next week- she was going home to visit family this Sunday. This town is a college town so there are no end to the fast food and BBQ and Indians everywhere. Not cowboy and Indians. Actual Indians. It's fun! My companion is a little scared of them but I hope to do some finding in a female dorm this week.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who is meeting a million people a week</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-58803043716972182982017-03-20T13:15:00.000-07:002017-04-12T13:21:48.956-07:00Week 55 in the Philippines Laoag Mission. Transfers and Harvests.<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix3NCKrkMgz0lN1Y_5OgGGsrTB8tYRWFFPcQSQ53SyWD2WJwalKVNVxC5b7daPogkR4gGTjy-p67f2KGf9qpEReIjp2rqTYHru9UjHV51mJc3KnPxMQpXc1KPGsbH9-B7KZC-Pnd_Sx9pK/s1600/44.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix3NCKrkMgz0lN1Y_5OgGGsrTB8tYRWFFPcQSQ53SyWD2WJwalKVNVxC5b7daPogkR4gGTjy-p67f2KGf9qpEReIjp2rqTYHru9UjHV51mJc3KnPxMQpXc1KPGsbH9-B7KZC-Pnd_Sx9pK/s640/44.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Well, it's from Santo Domingo to Vigan! I'm a little worried about the travel as it's so far! Last time I was transferred it was a 3 hour bus ride alone and now it’s a 10 minute bus ride with my companion who is going to the same area I am. Yup, we got pulled out! Actually we are swapping with a sister in Vigan; she will get our old area… which means she gets our baptism this Saturday! Hopefully we will be able to come back up to Santo Domingo for the baptism but that is all on President Andrada.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> Nothing much happened this week besides me giving a talk at a funeral, doing a CSP, and getting pulled out.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">In Filipino culture they do funerals kind of like how Americans do weddings; way big and over the top with lots of unnecessary pomp and frill. But that’s the culture. The viewing is about a month or two weeks long at their home, and outside they burn a giant log constantly, and play poker. Inside they sit and stare at the casket and talk with each other and eat food. Normally the service is given at the home but this funeral was at the church… but the power was out! From Vigan to Sinait no power! So it was a little hot and it didn’t help that I had a cough and had lost my voice. Luckily though we got a car battery hooked up to an amp so I could use the microphone. Filipinos are ingenious! It was actually rather funny as I actually used more Tagalog than the Filipina who spoke before me. I started my talk out with a scripture from the Bible, which I read in English. The crowd looked a little bored like oh-boy-this-whole-talk-is-gonna-be-in-english-and-we-don’t-speak-english but then I started speaking in Tagalog about the Atonement of Christ and how we need to use our agency to be exalted. That is a novel thought for Catholics (they were 97% non-members) who believe you just have to be baptized as a baby to be saved. I had fun, and from their faces and how they talked to me afterwards I had an effect on them. We had a TON of return appointments and it was an incredible finding opportunity. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We also talked to a semi-drunk school teacher who thought it would be marvelous to have us teach a Gospel Doctrines class in the school (it would be non-denominational, so no talk of Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon) which was awesome. We wanted to try and find families by teaching the 9-16 year old kids… but we got transferred so that will be up to Sister Tomepeao and sister Pangilinan… the new sisters here. It was rather funny as this school teacher, who is on the board, had been taught by some elders in Manila a few years ago and is almost done with the book of Alma! But he was rather drunk and asked if I had a boyfriend so we left after we got the school appointment. I mean, he is probably older than my dad, and is trying to woo me with mangos. “I’ll bring you 6 mangos, girl!” that was random, but we know he will be sober at the school. We will talk to the new sisters about making sure they speak to the principal of the school about the class and just avoid the Mr. mango guy.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg53Mwy2aVhyphenhyphenxkFp4oUZWM2f5IymZS0bOY2c8yuk_YkiVYqtZA0NmZfxe0m-3K9zdjXRp9ZdztcNrfbrr_6h6_dZWSJfQ2JhRgmOjP_GmIkvS7Yg4vIyuKNPmAa7VHGX06jA2qFEEb01zYB/s1600/37.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg53Mwy2aVhyphenhyphenxkFp4oUZWM2f5IymZS0bOY2c8yuk_YkiVYqtZA0NmZfxe0m-3K9zdjXRp9ZdztcNrfbrr_6h6_dZWSJfQ2JhRgmOjP_GmIkvS7Yg4vIyuKNPmAa7VHGX06jA2qFEEb01zYB/s640/37.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harvesting Corn</td></tr>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The CSP (Community Service Project) was great! We were about to meet basically all of the Gonda's neighbors as they worked in the field and we helped dry the corn. So what we ended up doing was taking the corn they picked and laying it out to dry. We thought we would also be helping around the house cooking and doing laundry with the girls but they were quite insistent that they could do it. I think we 'found' about the whole sito (a subdivision of the community group called a barangay.) We just forgot to count them in our weekly report! whoops! It was honestly so much fun and everyone was teasing me that i was going to get a tan (which i think would be fabulous) but no matter what I'm going to be white any way. Then we went out to our furthest area and worked hard the rest of the day! it was great! We were a little tired by the end of the day but it was a good tired, not the why-did-we-do-that-im-so-exhausted kind of tired.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">It's such a bummer that we are leaving Santo Domingo as we were so sure we were going to have somewhere around 6 baptisms here! But it will be a blessing for the incoming sisters. At least I can say I left my area better than I found it! Now I just got to do that with my new area in Vigan!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who travels a lot,</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-82402929688993506602017-03-15T18:24:00.001-07:002017-03-15T18:39:28.743-07:00Week 54: A Pen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8q9XIyhucDy3Td2Y7xcwYExFSJmf03mQa-7VyrV8Y84Lzyhd9idSwxh8gva64UzDfRtIk6CiTPYMpguBI3w9MrigCq4e8LlY3kW_kRVOUtE9eLsKREx5cco4T4dYdytmCWeYcjA-_fH3P/s1600/10+an+elelphant+for+mom.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8q9XIyhucDy3Td2Y7xcwYExFSJmf03mQa-7VyrV8Y84Lzyhd9idSwxh8gva64UzDfRtIk6CiTPYMpguBI3w9MrigCq4e8LlY3kW_kRVOUtE9eLsKREx5cco4T4dYdytmCWeYcjA-_fH3P/s640/10+an+elelphant+for+mom.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_luA1Fv_zQ-ebitRPl_RntTkUELtnh0b4_WrB4g5EtuaEItvd1XYNWoz0b8ppYTrj00OM9UKGvc7cAiW22TpAm840wtGHmNeXBmMqbPtd9N_A1zWoceY5ZhO_ogq5oxFfmsxoSTz8FIHm/s1600/07-1+guest.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_luA1Fv_zQ-ebitRPl_RntTkUELtnh0b4_WrB4g5EtuaEItvd1XYNWoz0b8ppYTrj00OM9UKGvc7cAiW22TpAm840wtGHmNeXBmMqbPtd9N_A1zWoceY5ZhO_ogq5oxFfmsxoSTz8FIHm/s640/07-1+guest.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-yZMU_fhe02NxHM1gMV68gkZJ3KkQxbndxXGhZTfQkFLqD6cMHbV4cgKW4rOTc8BhUXp41N7kPeMPjZjP__P3HzYwtU8jzkXBmHZgdkzso9J8MxVjOT0k_EAC211UmMdxhW_rnUqOQ8Ci/s1600/07-2+never+been+kissed.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-yZMU_fhe02NxHM1gMV68gkZJ3KkQxbndxXGhZTfQkFLqD6cMHbV4cgKW4rOTc8BhUXp41N7kPeMPjZjP__P3HzYwtU8jzkXBmHZgdkzso9J8MxVjOT0k_EAC211UmMdxhW_rnUqOQ8Ci/s640/07-2+never+been+kissed.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1770bb59-d4b2-b206-1d24-1deedcc69b91" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So this last Monday (March 13</span><span style="font-size: 7.2pt; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) was MLC (Missionary Leadership Council) and then this Tuesday was Zone Conference so I'm actually emailing on Wednesday… so lots of emails! Yay!! We’re doing our best to shorten our lessons (less chatting and more teaching) which is actually difficult as Ilicono’s in general are long winded. They’ll talk to the wind if they have to but they have to talk!! That being said we are also focusing on those that will be baptized this month (Zeus) and those who will hopefully be baptized (Channel, Jasmine, Denver, Angelo Gabriel, Iris and Nicole) next month. We are just waiting on church attendance and parent’s permission for some. We got to work with members this last week as we picked up some members from their house and took them to their neighbor's house to teach them. It was awesome as we were extending an invitation to be baptized she hesitated, and without having to ask the members jumped right in and talked about their own conversion and how it took a while and several ‘goal dates’ from the missionaries but that they understood that baptism was the end goal. Would they be baptized or not? So they took it seriously and that is why they read the Book of Mormon and went to church and prayed about it. It was so powerful, yet the investigator still felt nervous-which is natural. The culture is ‘born a catholic die a catholic’ even if you don’t go to church or live what you believe you gotta at least die a catholic.</span></span></span><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We also had a great lesson with Anna Marie, who lives in Magsingal- a neighboring town. We talked about the Gospel of Christ (faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) and she just started crying, hugging her Book of Mormon to her chest and said; “It's true.” She all but whispered it, but it was so powerful. She reads from her Book of Mormon everyday, she hasn’t gotten far because she likes memorizing the scripture and quoting them to her children- three kids under the age of 7. If she can read every day- and get a spiritual experience from it- even with little kids, we can too.</span></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-1770bb59-d4b6-b9f6-88c5-9aa7d4b4e1c1" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We taught Denver, Jasmine and Chanell this last week too, or more like we went to their house (a good 1.5 hour walk) and only Jasmine was there. They have been investigating for several years now but their father has yet to give permission. But they can still go to church, I love meeting with these kids because their testimony is so strong! They can call down miracles and I know they will- that is why I'm so confident they will be able to be baptized this upcoming April. Not to mention us doing a ‘mock baptism interview’ with Jasmin was more her teaching us than me teaching her! It's almost like a flash back for when I would teach Gwyneth back in Batac!!</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I also got to see Elunard get some ‘aha!’ moments when w e taught him this week. I have to say I am soooo grateful to have been able to meet with Elder David A Bednar (one of the 12 apostles) and to listen to him talk about agency. It's all about letting people know our purpose is to INVITE. I am not a police officer here to drag people to the baptismal font! (Not that I ever was.) I'm here basically handing out invitations to God’s Kingdom. Like I said a few months ago, I'm offering free tickets to something better than Disneyland and people think it's more fun to do facebook or work than prepare and accept that. Priorities. If you don’t have 5 minutes a day to read God’s word then you are more busy than He designed you to be. He made an entire day for rest!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">This Friday-Saturday (12pm Friday – 12pm Saturday) we were on exchanges and I was with my ex-STL Sister Corpuz. We got to meet with all of our progressing Investigators and she pointed out that how I teach is by using parables that apply to everyday life. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">example</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">we are all pens. and the spirit ink.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">We’ve got to keep the ink filled up and get refills so that God can make art and poetry and inspire others. it's not us that does it. God writes and the spirit comes out, but we are necessary too- if the pen breaks that's a big mess! keep yourself together and worthy and clean (if you are gross He may not want to pick you up until you are clean) so God can pick you up.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">It was a fun realization. And now the best part… I GOT TO GO BACK TO BATAC!!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">It was only for a few hours but because the MLC was this Monday and then Zone conference on Tuesday that meant I would have to take a 3 hour bus drive up to Laopag, have the meeting, go back down to Vigan to sleep, the BACK up to Laoag for the conference… so we asked if we could just sleep in Batac and Prez said yes!! We got permission to use their phone number so we could find them and then spent about an hour trying to find them… The area boundaries changed since I left and they were in an area I had never been to! It was exhausting and somewhat embarrassing to realize I am not as smart (geographically speaking) as I thought. But we did run into a few members on our mad search for the Batac trysome. Which was awesome, and an additional bonus I did not expect.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">The actual Zone Conference was beautiful and so inspiring. This whole cycle I've been thinking about my duties as a leader and what is expected of me (we got no handbooks besides the one everyone has) and this conference was everything I needed to hear. We talked about obedience and what it means to be a real leader. We are all leaders and whether we have a calling or not is up to the Lord and doesn’t mean someone is better than someone else.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who writes too much</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-86599851660409212252017-03-06T15:32:00.002-08:002017-03-06T15:54:16.966-08:00Week 53: I'm Here To Teach and That's What I'm Going to Do!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7_qfoxXMX3D_kccF27DxkAiuD1ANDnaF46v1ss40ctbLslQmyCRjcdJBWdpi4K3JtJ1c3NSs4QhwMFL-Bowfw6oiGBKeHZ-fQ4gRrKLoeOBTc0JaEYjhWym7OGpwQGADdk9bcpDSm0t0o/s1600/50.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7_qfoxXMX3D_kccF27DxkAiuD1ANDnaF46v1ss40ctbLslQmyCRjcdJBWdpi4K3JtJ1c3NSs4QhwMFL-Bowfw6oiGBKeHZ-fQ4gRrKLoeOBTc0JaEYjhWym7OGpwQGADdk9bcpDSm0t0o/s400/50.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">Making Dudol from Sugar Cane and Crushed Rice</span></td></tr>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-1770bb59-a5f6-cdb0-fcb1-8f9a421639eb" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alright so this week was… fast!! As it is probably very well known I am very good at misplacing things. I hadn’t seen the expensive music speaker that I use for two days so I asked around (I asked my companion and our landlady) and none of them had seen it. I mentioned that the usb playing my music had all my pictures from my mission and then kept looking. After about 10 minutes I found it where I had been looking for the last two days (somehow it magically reappeared once I complained) and so I went to tell my companion and Sister Carms- the landlady and she had gone to the police to find it!!! I had to call her and tell her I was so sorry that she had gone through so much fuss- within the short time span she had gone to 4 different houses asking all the people who had been around the house lately if they had entered our apartment and taken anything! (Our apartment‘s front door broke so we have not been locking the doors because if we do we won’t be able to get back in) so it was a highly plausible thought that it had been stolen. To make up for the stress we went to the Vigan zoo today. I got to battle a raptor, sister Bustarde was flirted at by a peacock, and sister Carms went on a trip in the yellow submarine. All in all it was an average day in Vigan. Also… idk why but all the foreigners I see are either missionaries or 60+. I have only seen 2 who did not have grey hair and i'm not so sure if that was natural or not… I don’t get it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyways, work this week was nuts. Isn’t it always nuts? It's just a matter of trying to keep up with everyone. We got a referral from one of our members (how incredible is that?) and actually the person they referred to us has been going to church for several months and has only just lately expressed a desire to be baptized!! We both thought he was a member!! Wow man, and our lesson with him was a bit hekkledy-peggledy. It was Sunday night and we had gone to their house twice but they were not home so after working for several hours and texting them we went home. Then 5 minutes later they showed up at our door asking to be taught! Yeah, that’s crazy. But we walked with them to sister Carm’s house and taught them there. It's just fun to say here in Sto. Domingo the investigators find you!! Haha. We think that Zeus, the referral that came to our door, will be ready for baptism this month which is amazing!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Also I think have found out the foolproof steps to become less active in your faith!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stop reading your scriptures</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t pray, and if you do just say the same thing over again… He should hear you better if you just repeat yourself right?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why bother going to church? All the people there are not perfect! Not even the missionaries! (GASP)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="background-color: #444444; white-space: pre;"><span style="color: white;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;"> This list reminds me of the ‘101 ways to be completely miserable’ by John Bytheway that I read in jr high and my teachers pulled me aside and asked me if I was depressed. That was fun… anyways this is honestly the one quick ticket to lose faith and even question if you ever had a testimony in the first place!! Honestly, I think if everyone- no matter what faith- would just read, pray (like the heart wrenching or at least reflective prayers) and regularly attend church the world would INSTANTLY become a better place. But… that little devil on your shoulder gets the best of you. Kick him off! You don’t need him weighing you down!! Geez.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Missionaries seem so scared to drop investigators. Idk why, because when we dropped one of our investigators this week (like a sit down you-haven't-been-reading-so-or-going-to-church-so-we-are-not-teaching-you-anymore lesson) and honestly she so understood. She promised to start reading and so we told her we would come back in four weeks, if she had not read and prayed to know what we had taught was true then we would not come back. It’s harsh but at least she knows just how important our time is. I’ve only got 6 more months and Im not going to spend it sitting chatting, I’m here to teach and that is what I’m going to do.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the dino but kicking, and ice cream addicted missionary,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">(IDK= I don’t know) so if you don’t know what idk is idk either hahaha</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVmCI0q4EYQmWNJTWx_QKNMhttVTcMvdA1SSUyJ8YzHjAa4x8Vie4IuBJzfEOrHn0bCYSugVDntiThyphenhyphenmqDDGkhhhzXEIPANGc5hu59yHAVK4iDjpHCfilzfEEHRIbI3AhpYSH09FXEAqo_/s1600/81+sister+carms+gave+us+sticky+rice.++it%2527s+cooked+in+a+bamboo+stick+and+then+you+whack+it+really+hard+to+open+it.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVmCI0q4EYQmWNJTWx_QKNMhttVTcMvdA1SSUyJ8YzHjAa4x8Vie4IuBJzfEOrHn0bCYSugVDntiThyphenhyphenmqDDGkhhhzXEIPANGc5hu59yHAVK4iDjpHCfilzfEEHRIbI3AhpYSH09FXEAqo_/s400/81+sister+carms+gave+us+sticky+rice.++it%2527s+cooked+in+a+bamboo+stick+and+then+you+whack+it+really+hard+to+open+it.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">Sister Carms gave us sticky rice. It's cooked in a bamboo stick and then you whack it really hard to open it!</span></td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-57876206637782632182017-02-27T15:54:00.000-08:002017-03-06T16:00:33.671-08:00Week 52: Bernne-Lynn & Enard's Baptism<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0EC82BDpmvkb-wvDEGCkIJDxFZmJxLpnfq1LAVWcwFro4-c39lRjxddW1qReQTSN_vnyfbbIErPjw15wwqBOiRgV2giK3uWP6l3Z3LOmcuNxMF3OCyisIq5GhpLMk2DUhn_K3QpWxGZ7N/s1600/88+Baptism+of+Bernne-Lynn+and+Enard+Gona.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0EC82BDpmvkb-wvDEGCkIJDxFZmJxLpnfq1LAVWcwFro4-c39lRjxddW1qReQTSN_vnyfbbIErPjw15wwqBOiRgV2giK3uWP6l3Z3LOmcuNxMF3OCyisIq5GhpLMk2DUhn_K3QpWxGZ7N/s400/88+Baptism+of+Bernne-Lynn+and+Enard+Gona.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Baptism of Bernne-Lynn and Enard</td></tr>
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<span id="goog_1887550817"></span><span id="goog_1887550818"></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7466707721693046396.post-3682642532239917142017-02-20T15:25:00.000-08:002017-03-06T15:29:43.442-08:00Week 51: Meeting an Apostle of the Lord<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaUDDX3ehLSAXw28qntwMHMXboeZP0erizAkLQ21PAMozcNDQ810fFj_sC2BKnRHaUTer8BZHGOlrLMFBmYHLSqOWNSLGg2X7e1U9oOAbCVAKaybAsv8EXq4e9ijrdchyKsGj4YDEgyXZa/s1600/16910626_10211598106371715_734813235_o.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaUDDX3ehLSAXw28qntwMHMXboeZP0erizAkLQ21PAMozcNDQ810fFj_sC2BKnRHaUTer8BZHGOlrLMFBmYHLSqOWNSLGg2X7e1U9oOAbCVAKaybAsv8EXq4e9ijrdchyKsGj4YDEgyXZa/s400/16910626_10211598106371715_734813235_o.png" width="400" /></span></a></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-1770bb59-a5f0-9efa-8cb1-800d25ee22d6" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">I live with an American. Yeah, she was born and raised in the Philippines but she is more American than me. Today in our groceries we bought root beer and vanilla ice-cream. We are sort of spoiled… but she buys a small root beer every day (or every week) and doesn’t eat rice in the morning like me. People always joke that we were swapped at birth and that she is actually an American and I’m actually a Filipino. If that is true then I’m one white Filipino… so much for my dreams of getting tan…</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the reason I emailed on Tuesday is not because I’m pasaway (disobedient) but because when you are an STL and you have an all day meeting on Monday and you have to travel Sunday night and Monday night (3 hours both ways) … except we missed our stop so we accidentally ended up in Vigan at 9pm… with no transportation… but we caught a trycee that was willing to go back to Sto. Domingo. At first I was thinking “well we wanted to come to vigan for p-day anyways so I guess we will just stay at one of the sister’s apartments tonight…” It was a rather funny experience, and I’m just glad when I was riding on my own my first week here that I didn’t miss my stop! So that means we got to have our p-day on valentine's! Idk how your valentine's day went but for us sister Bustarde got a cold and passed out as soon as we had done our shopping and emailing. So vigan will just be next week I guess! Haha But we got to meet with our progressing investigators. (So my first week here- the 6</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 5.7pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- I said we had like 5 baptisms coming up this week… no they just had not updated their four month calendar of who they had extended Baptismal Goal Date’s to… so yeah) The Gona family is amazing. The two older brothers remind me of characters out of the novel I was writing before my mission (and that I will resume when I get home) so that means they are a bit of jokesters. The ages go like this: Berny-lynn (18) Elunard (17) Eiyahn (15) and Enard (10) We know that the oldest and the youngest will be ready by the 25</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 5.7pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of this month but the middle boys will need more time. That’s not a bad thing its just too bad they weren’t all ready at the same time. (Their parents are members but the father is Less Active). </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m still trying to adjust to the new area; I’m meeting people who I know their nicknames (sprite) but not their names (Espirita.) Luckily I can still pass off as new and I’m slowly making a branch pedigree chart by writing down everyone’s names and who is related to whom. But i'm slooooowly getting my bearings. Because i'm an STL that means I will be doing exchanges 3x a cycle. (a cycle is 6 weeks) an ‘exchange’ is when we basically just exchange companions for a day and we work in each other’s areas for a day. I will be traveling to Vigan and Sinait then in my 5</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 5.7pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap;">th</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> week of being here I will lead the area with sister corpus… yes I am the STL for my old STL!! She thinks that is just hysterical. However being in a leadership position means hearing about all the problems. I hope I can simply encourage and show how to be a successful missionary. So long as my Zone knows sister Bustarde and I care for them then they will take our advice to heart- hopefully!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another job of an STL is giving trainings in our Zone Training Meeting once a month. This month I talked about Christlike attributes and… personally I had a great time preparing and giving the training/ speech but I feel like the audience –my zone- was slightly comatose… I’ll see what I can do to be more interactive next time. They say “you tell me and i'll forget, you teach me and I’ll remember, you show me and I’ll never forget.” So let's hope this works out.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now for David A Bednar: we traveled by about 7am and arrived about 11am in Laoag. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then ran to the chapel. We were told to be there by 12:30 but we are glad we showed up so early so we could get good seats. It wasn’t some long talk he had prepared like a mini General conference, it was “I gave you reading assignments, what did you learn?” “What did you learn that was not said?” it was incredible, because it was all just the spirit and all that we learned was from God! I want to incorporate that type of teaching in my missionary work, especially the agency on asking questions. He always would say ‘may I ask you a question?” and “If you don’t want to answer this that is ok.” He was very much about ‘you have agency and I will not force you to interact.’ Which is funny as before the conference a sister sat down in front of me and begged me that if she got called on that I would save her and speak up. You know I have no problem talking. The best part afterwards was when David Bednar shook my hand and thanked me for the comments and questions I posed during the conference, and then Elder Smoots (of the 70) and his wife wanted to know how to pronounce my name! My thing is though when Elder Bednar thanked me I totally froze and was speechless. I didn’t say ‘thank you’ back to him or accept the thanks he gave me! Dang it!!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In closing we had 11 investigators show up to church today and 6 LA’s. One of our investigators Im not sure why he came but it may be because he thinks sister Bustarde and i are pretty but he participated well in the classes so I hope that i'm wrong. I did not get to mention that Kim Umawid, Natally Batulayan and Ethan Repolosa got baptized in Batac the last two weeks! I'm so proud of them and I wish I had pictured but I’ve got nothing… (speaking of nothing my old usb got a virus and i have lost all of my old pictures!! Everything. It sucks but now i'm sending all of my pictures home and that way i'll have a back up I guess.) Next week I’ll have pictures of Berny-lyyne’s and Enard’s baptism and coming soon is Eythan and Elunard!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">From the sister who is 2 weeks behind in her journaling because she reads too many liahonas,</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Sister Eldredge</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Mom: Did you find your name tag in time to meet Elder Bednar?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white;">Mikella: No i didn't, i got a rental for the face to face it's got someone else's name on it but with a sticker for my name. i'll have to give it back when my new one is made</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNOt2SmGls6fi-6l6U9cn8tnWQPoWsL0r9ir8wWpEwfR1s5jLGfaIKyH9UMuVCGE95oP3k3L-SspN8A_7E2RyKEcuP6HUiYVRArXY8FH5zEoLoiyvHzgCdl5-V0HKnoTKSP6vKeiV6bQ8/s1600/001+I%2527m+speaking+with+Elder+Bednar.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNNOt2SmGls6fi-6l6U9cn8tnWQPoWsL0r9ir8wWpEwfR1s5jLGfaIKyH9UMuVCGE95oP3k3L-SspN8A_7E2RyKEcuP6HUiYVRArXY8FH5zEoLoiyvHzgCdl5-V0HKnoTKSP6vKeiV6bQ8/s400/001+I%2527m+speaking+with+Elder+Bednar.png" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white;">That's Me Asking Elder Bednar a Question</span></td></tr>
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