Harvesting Week 34

Yesterday we taught a lesson to the cutest lady ever and her "husband". Her parents just got sealed in the temple last year and her sister is working on getting ready to serve a mission, but she herself has not joined the church yet. But she has a huge testimony of the gospel already.
Anyway. We decided to showed her and her husband the "The Restoration" DVD. It's like 20 minutes and just goes over the life of Joseph Smith. It is absolutely beautiful. The church is amazing. After we watched it, the spirit was SO strong. It made it easy for us to share with them our testimonies. He says he will come to church next week so we are really hoping he can. This ward is SO good at fellowshipping and helping the  people we teach feel welcome, so I really hope he can come next week and feel the spirit at church.
During the movie though, it has a part where Joseph is harvesting, with a sickle and it kind of hit me a little bit. I wish missionary work was all harvesting and having baptisms every week. It's not though and takes a long time to plant and then to grow testimonies. It is a long process and I am learning patience. But this week I have strongly felt that maybe I am here to strengthen the other missionaries around me so that they will be ready to harvest other people. It is kind of hard and the blessings definitely are not immediate, but I really think that that is why I am in this area. One of the sisters from the MTC sent us all this quote...

“Our work will be light and easy to bear if we will depend on the Lord and work.

Don’t worry about being successful. We are going to be successful—there is no doubt about it. The Lord has sent us to earth at the time of harvest. He does not expect us to fail. He has called no one to this work to fail. He expects us to succeed.”-President Ezra Taft Benson

I know that the work I do here, whether in the apartment or out will not be a failure. I know that I just need to rely more on Heavenly Father and learn how to apply the strengthening and enabling power of the Atonement in my life so that I will know how to use it better after my mission. 

I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!!

Love,

Sister Mecham

Handstands and house pants!

Boku on Sunday afternoons!

Pedicures from our cute ward members!!!

Almost half way done...? Week 33

Well. I reach 9 months this week. Crazy town. I didn't think I would make it past 6 weeks. Miracles do exist.

This week has been another great one. I love this ward. They are so great. We have the stake president and his 2 counselors in our ward, and 2 of the members of the stake primary presidency. Plus a ton of just really really good families. I love them.

A couple weeks ago we showed one of the bishopric members a little missionary video (I'll go where you want me to go, go look it up on lds.org) about how a family does missionary work and the" mo tab" sings in the back. Anyway. We showed it to him and on Tuesday. We had planned to go back and do a follow up, but instead, he took us to his neighbors house to teach them!!! It was perfect! The same thing happened to us on Saturday. We showed the movie, then we went back to do a follow up and she took us to her neighbors house as well. Seriously such blessings. This ward knows how to give referrals. Also on Sunday, the same bishopric member (Bro. Briones) told us he has another referral he wants us to teach next Sunday!!! 

We also got another referral this week from the office elders. The lady's whole family joined the church(in 2011 and her sister last year). She has been taught before, but now they live here in San Pablo. She wants to be baptized already and wants to come to church, we need to help her husband understand better.Plus they need to be married first.

Also we have good news...Marissa wants to be baptized on MARCH 8TH!!!!!!!!!!! Yay!! We are so excited for her. Last night we taught her and we asked her to bear her testimony of the Book of Mormon and it was SO sweet! She just loves how she feels when she reads it and she loves how much happier she feels now. She works for some people in the ward and lives with them but has 2 kids that live with her mom. She said it is too hard to be away from her kids, so she will go back home in April, but she told us she will be baptized before she goes back!! We just love her.

That is pretty much it for now. We had a good week and we even got cute little valentines from some of our little friends that we teach. It was pretty cute, and then we enjoyed a lovely lunch at Chow King at SM.  I did laundry that night. Haha. It may have been one of the most low key, un romantic valentines day ever, but I know I did feel Heavenly Father's love. We got punted a lot, but there were small miracles that reminded me that Heavenly Father loves me and all of the people we are teaching and that made everything better.

Fun facts...

-I heard "Just Give Me a Reason" on the jeepney this week. It was Tagalogized. I loved it. 

-We rode bikes today around the lake by the chapel. It was beautiful. And only 20 pesos. That's like less than 50 cents.

-It's getting super hot again. Boo. Luckily people sell Halo halo for 10 pesos. Halo halo is like shaved ice, evaporated milk, sugar, sweet beans, a piece of leche flan, banana, and buko and jelly ball things. Then you mix it all together and it is super good.

-One of our  ward members, her name is Gigi, she is super sassy and speaks English to us, said that I can stay at their house if I ever come back to the Philippines. They have a pretty nice house too, so I told her I will definitely work on getting back here as soon as possible.

That's all from here!! Ingat po, ha!

Nagmamamhal,

Sister Mecham

P.S. I also forgot to mention...Sister Malig got emergency transferred last week. One of the Tacloban sister's that was here got to go back to Tacloban, so they did a little switching the companions around, so now Sister Japus is Sister Cox's companion.

This is Sister Japos!

Happy Sunday!

Happy Valentines Day from the SM!

Lake pictures!

I Love the Philippines! Week 32

I have made a goal.

In five to ten years (siyempre lahat ay depende sa future ko...) I am coming back to the Philippines with my asawa. Sister Wilkes said she wants to come with me too with her asawa. Today we had another amazingly beautiful zone pday. The Philippines has the absolutely most gorgeous places (and some really nasty ones too...but today was not the case). We went to some water falls in Nagcarlan (I think) and it just made me grateful all over again that I am here. It was perfect. 

This past week has been pretty good. Actually it has been great! President sent us all the talk "Consecrated Missionary" or something like that by Tad Callistar . It was really what I needed. I realized that there is a lot more I could be doing to make my mission better and it definitely gave me a big push to be a better missionary. I really learned a lot from it. It talks a lot about changing our nature and not just our behavior, so I have really been working on that a lot this week and I will definitely continue working on it for the rest of my mission.

I got really good news about Zeiti this week too so that helped. The sister serving there now said that she and her husband, , are planning to go to the temple in April so she can do baptisms for the dead and she may be pregnant!!!!! I am so excited for her. She is my favorite.

Today at our Zone p-day I was talking to sister wilkes, who got to have a sleep over with sister smart (from the mtc) because she was getting a new companion, but any way. She said they were talking and of course numbers got brought up and she said sister Smart just said to her not to worry about the numbers. She said to just work as hard as she can and be happy with her work, regardless of baptisms. I have actually been kind of worried about that too the last few weeks, seeing that I am almost half way done and only have one, but if that's how my mission is supposed to be I have decided that it is ok. I know if I had baptisms easily, I wouldn't appreciate them, and having Zeiti as that one, I couldn't be happier. I am so glad to be here, and I am really trying to just learn to trust Heavenly Father and accept his will.

I love you all so much and hope you have a great Valentines day!!!

Mahal ko kayo!

Love,

Sister Mecham

P.S. My English is getting quite awful. I conjugate verbs really wrong and I am flipping word order when I talk. Haha it is really funny sometimes, but it totally is scaring me. Writing in my journal is getting really hard. I forgot how to spell as well. So I am really sorry if some things don't make sense...

Brother Dalisay and his granddaughter. He just turned 78 and is an angel!!!
He was baptized in 2012. It is hard for him to get to church so we were so happy  to see him today!

 

Nagcarlan waterfalls

District meeting

Exchanges

We went on an adventure! More like getting lost in the jungle...but we liked it.

My companion and I with Sister Hernandez!
We just love her!

Us with Sister Punzalan. She is the cutest lady ever!
We of course love her as well!

Kumusta po kayo!

Well it's been another great week here in the Philippines. I think I'll do numbers for this week:

1. We got our support again. Those 5 week months are hard to budget.

2. I love my companion. Sister Vaipou. At night we have "kwento kwento". Kwento means story. We pretty much just talk and sometimes tell stories. But we like to call it kwento kwento. 

3. I have 3 pairs of stretchy pants. They were only 100 pesos each. We call them House Pants.

Sister Mckinney actually named them that. They are super soft and stretchy and they have sweet designs on them and they have pockets.

We call them house pants because "they should only be worn in the house" says Sister Mckinney. I made sister Lorente buy some in Candelaria and now I have made the other sister's in our house buy some too. We love them. (that is what the picture is...)

4. We have the cutest investigators. We are teaching some of the kindest women I have ever met.

Families are SO important in the Philippines and I just love being in some of these homes. They just love their kids and their families. It is really cute

.

5. We have fun housemates. They join us for kwento kwento sometimes too. 

This week really has been good though. We met almost all our goals for numbers this week (except for investigators at church. Money is a big issue here) and we had some other really good lessons this week.

I am learning more and more how real Satan is. And how he works best by confusion and pride. It is so apparent here and it is really sad. I am very glad to be serving here though to help others know about the Book of Mormon and prayer, so that they can know the truth for themselves and dissolve some of the confusion and help soften some hearts.

I love you all and hope you have a good week! And happy birthday again to Mom and Josh!!

Love,

Sister Mecham

We find these at least a couple times a week, always dead (thank you permatox), but they are always this big. it's gross.

House pants!

Sister Vaipou getting ready to braid Julie Ann's hair.