08/24/2014

Gathering rice.

An unorthodox way of traveling.

From left to right: My comp, the bishop's son (he might play basketball for BYU!), our ward mission leader holding my bag hostage, our investigator who should have been baptized ages ago but lacks parental permission, counselor in stake presidency, random ward member, random white girl. ;)

Beautiful dusk!

A family scheduled to be baptized next week. Aren't they cute??

Cute little girls. :)

Flooded rice paddy.

Mabuhay!

Hahah, no one says that. What a great week it's been here! The highlight of our week was definitely the baptism of Sister Carlota! YAY! She has the sweetest spirit, she literally lit up the room when she came out in her baptismal clothing. To our pleasant surprise, unexpected friends and co-workers came to support her and she burst into tears when she saw them. Miraculously, her autistic son was able to sit quietly through the whole baptismal program as well. At the end, all the missionaries present (6 of us) sang "When I am Baptized" to close the meeting. The spirit was so strong. It was such a wonderful experience and I hope she will never forget it because I will not. 

I also won't forget the family home evening we had this week with a family in our ward. They live out IN the rice fields in an area prone to flooding. We thought the elders were joking when they told us to wear shoes we could walk through in "high tide." Nope. The rice field had completely flooded up to our knees. It had been raining all day and it was dark. So we all girt up our loins (heheh), literally, with pretty fresh courage, and walked through it with flashlights. There were fish and frogs and unidentifiable creatures in the water, and little chasms that made it easy to trip. It was really slippery and a pretty long walk to their house. What an adventure.

We did a CSP with a different approach this week. We just street sweeped but this time with the intent of finding as many people as we could as a zone. Lucky for Sister Mabini and I, it was our area so we came out of this with 15 referrals. ;) And not just any referrals, friendly happy family referrals who are ready to learn. I'm so excited to visit them this week! Another cool thing happened. We tracted this one house last week and they were pretty rude to us so we just left a pamphlet in the gate. We passed by again during our project and they were excited to be taught. Mind blown!

Yesterday was a pretty tough day for me though, I'll admit. 5 minutes before church started, the speaker flaked so they made me speak. I had zero time to prepare and they didn't let me choose my topic. My hands were trembling. Somehow though my mind was flooded with memories of talks related to the subject so I managed to get through it... but it's definitely not gonna go down as a pleasant memory of the mission. I hate those moments.

Anyway, doing well over here. The only thing I ask is that someone send me some United States stamps. I can't get any here which means nobody is going to get letters from me unless I get stamps... that's it. :) Love you all.

Sister Wilson