Called to Serve in the Philippines Quezon City Mission
Speaking the Tagalog language
January 2013 to July 2014

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Listen to the Spirit


Andelyn.....HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!! I hope you had a wonderful day and I CAN'T believe your 17..what the heck..ano bayen!!! Ha-ha.  You will have to tell me all about the fun shenanigans you did for your Birthday de ba? You guys are probably having your birthday dinner at this moment ha and my guess is that it's probably chicken broccoli casserole right?? mmm sounds so so good! Sige, well Andelyn I hope your day was wonderful and that the prom preparations are going well and I want pictures ya hear! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY again, I love you!

I loved the pictures you sent from the Easter Pageant I can barely recognize dad! His beard looks soo great!!!   

Andelyn’s dress looks adorable it's so her. I can't wait for the pictures from prom

Well family I made it through my third week! It’s been hard but it's so great. We have met a lot of great people this week who have been prepared to hear our message and we also got the privilege of hearing from two Apostles via satellite at stake conference specifically for the Philippines. Elder Holland, and Elder Hales, Sister Mary Cook and David Evans all gave great talks and it's just such a blessing that the leaders of our church are able to speak to us even though we are thousands of miles away.

I've been a little sick this week, having really awful stomach pains from the climate change, the water and different food. A lot of rice! It’s all definitely not treating me very well paro I'm feeling much better today I’ve been taking some medicine approved by SIs. Delamare  to help. So no worries :)

One thing that I have been learning the most here is about how to listen to the spirit and to let it guide the work we do. As a missionary the spirit is the most important thing to have with us because without it we cannot teach these people. We can share with them all the lessons we can think of paro without the spirit they cannot know for themselves that what we are telling them is true. Through the spirit we were able to find new investigators this week who are so wonderful and so hungry for the gospel, and I know that the spirit put them in our path. We were teaching an investigator of ours outside of their house because a relative of theirs was drunk inside so we had to teach outside that day, these two boys walked by and saw us and came and sat down and started listening and reading the pamphlets of the restoration that were sitting on the log next to them. Sister Sabiano was talking and during I just couldn't keep my eyes of these little boys reading this pamphlet. So at the end I walked up to them and offered them each their own pamphlet to keep and read and they both asked us to come teach their families. One boy was only 10 years old and he brought us to his dad and we shared about the first lesson and I could just feel the spirit so strong I was almost starting to cry. We taught them again yesterday and the dad is just soaking everything up and wants to get a hymn book to read the hymns and he wanted the address to mormon.org to read more . :o) He just keeps asking us for more and he has great questions and just listens so well. He's had a lot of problems with other churches in the past so he just doesn't go anymore. The timing couldn’t be more perfect for him and his family. plus he understands English really well hehe :) yesterday we shared about families and how they can be sealed in the temple and I was just thinking about how grateful I am to be sealed to my family for eternity and to have the opportunity to get sealed to my future family, and how so so blessed and thankful I am to have the opportunity here to teach families how they can obtain these same blessings and be together after this life forever. It's so great!

We have a service project every week, and this week we helped one of the less active families clean up an area by their house so they can build more and at the end some of our ward missionaries (monkey climbed) up the coconut trees and cut down some for all of us so we all sat around together afterward drinking fresh coconut juice and eating coconut meat, it was soo good!

 So I gave some more of my CD's out to some of the ward missionaries I only  gave them 2 but then they made more copies for the others to have ha-ha They are so funny they always ask me to sing for them. And they keep playing the cd all the time everywhere we go cause they know I don't like to listen to myself, they think they are all so funny most of them are turning their papers in to serve missions soon which is awesome.

We went to a less actives house this week and I’ve never been there before. And I understand why we don't go often because they live pretty far out on this mountain and we have to hike about 15to 20 minutes to get there and we come to this big river to cross and the only way to get across is this bridge made out of bamboo and wire (what?) it looked like something out of an adventure movie and it's about 15 feet over the river and about 50 feet across. It was so scary but it was fun too haha. Yah so I’m sending pictures of our apartment  I’ll send more next week but Mom yes… we have beds and a fridge, toaster, rice cooker, stove and even a blender so it's pretty nice. We have started cooking a lot of our food basically rice for every meal because it's cheap and some kind of side. I really love the food and I’ve tried a few things like barbequed chicken intestines on a stick J it's actually pretty good. I'll probably be trying balut soon cause the ward missionaries want to see me try to eat it.

Well Family I love you all soo much, please be safe and follow the spirit,I love you!

Sister Jones


***Unfortunately , we did not receive any pictures from Ammah. The process was taking too long to download and she ran out of time  :o(
Also…A balut is a fertilized duck embryo that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It is commonly sold as street food in the Philippines.
                                         Balut Egg Embryo. mmmmm
 
 

 

 



 
 



 


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