Merry Christmas!!! Week 9 Philippines

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

So here in the Philippines, September 1st is officially the 1st day of Christmas. Yes. I am SO happy about that! This is definitely the reason why I got sent here. Joke lang! But really. Yesterday in church our Bishop wished everyone a Merry Christmas ha it was great. They celebrate Christmas in all the "Ber" months. So this means we will probably start to be hearing Christmas songs and seeing Christmas lights. I can't wait!

This last week has been pretty good though too. I still fight with anxiety and lots of stress every morning, but getting out of the house and getting to work and just being able to feel the spirit so strongly in the lessons helps me so much. I have really been trying to focus on the investigators and not be thinking about what I will say next, and I can always just feel that Heavenly Father needs them to know that they are SO loved. It is such a unique experience to feel so much love from Heavenly Father for these people I really don't know and  can't understand half the time. It really just reaffirms to me that this church is true. I love it. And it makes me so grateful I am a member of it.

We have been so lucky to be able to find so many people. Everyone here is so willing and so open to hearing our message. Some of the religions here are actually not allowed to listen to us or they can get excommunicated from their church, so they pretty much just run away from us, but the Catholic people are usually always willing to listen. We have found that talking about baptism by immersion really gets their attention and so we have been able to teach a few people and explain about how Jesus was baptized. It has been working pretty well.

We still don't really have any progressing investigators, but I know one day we will find someone who really wants to have these blessings in their life.

Last week I was able to work with one of the sister Training leaders- her name is Sister Harris and she is from Sandy. It was really fun to work with her and we did a LOT of talking to people that day. She has been out the same amount of time as Sister Begontes, so her Tagalog is pretty good. She said it took her a while to learn it too, but she gave me a lot of good study tips that helped her.

On Wednesday we had Zone Training again in Lucena. It was pretty fun and we have a really good zone. It is always good to have zone activities because we always get our letters and I get to see the other sisters. 

P.S. getting letters seriously is the greatest thing in the world. It just makes me so happy every time!!! 

Anyway...I want to tell you about the bus rides to get to Lucena. So there are like a ton of big tour buses here that just go all the time and that is their main transportation to get to far places. (also Jeepneys). But riding on the big buses TOTALLY reminds me of the bus on Harry Potter 3 that just weaves all over in and out of traffic and stops suddenly and then speeds up all the sudden and just swerves all over. It is probably the sketchiest thing ever...ha but we haven't crashed yet. Ha also they have air con so I don't complain.

Anyway. I really wish you could all see this place and just experience all these things with me, but I will have some really good stories for you when I get home.

I hope everything is going good at home! I love you guys so much and I am so grateful for all the support. Everyday is hard, but there are definitely miracles everyday and I am so grateful for all of them.

Solving spiritual problems people have is quite difficult and it is really hard to know how to help them. We have been dropping lots of people and just teaching basic lessons, so hopefully we can start teaching more of the other lessons too and really see some progress in this area.

Love,

Sister Mecham

New Companions! Sister Begontes, Me, Sister Finau and Sister McKinney