Hello Po!

Well I am officially one year old. Time is flying and it is almost June. And I have been in San Pablo for almost 6 months. I feel a transfer coming soon...

This past week has actually been really really good though. We had a great week of teaching, learning, and laughing, which all three are my favorite parts of being a missionary.

We are teaching new investigators, Nenita, Eddy, Nida, Lerma, and Sheryl. They are all pretty fun. They are all actually hilarious, especially the first 4. We have had a fun time getting to know them this week and have had some really good lessons with them. It is amazing for me to see how Heavenly Father prepares people to be taught, and how good Satan is at confusing EVERYONE. But it has been good.

 We are really trying harder and harder to let the spirit take over the lessons so that we can all be more converted. It is hard, but the difference in the lessons that are led by the spirit and the ones where we just teach to teach is huge.

 In D&C 50 it talks about teaching by the spirit and if you don't teach by the spirit, you just shouldn't teach. And I have been trying this week to only say things that come from the spirit, and it truly makes the difference.  

On Friday we taught one of our less active members and we went in with a couple scriptures we wanted to share and just kind of prayed that we would be guided for the rest of the lesson. And it worked. We shared Ether 12:6 about how we get trials to exercise our faith. As we read it with her, I felt like we should look up the footnote in 3 Nephi 26:11 and it was perfect. It pretty much says ,"And thus saith the Lord, I will try the faith of my people." and that was it. The spirit immediately testified to her and you could tell that that verse was specifically written for her. It was perfect. I love that the Book of Mormon has all the answers. It's like doing a really long hard math problem and then getting through all the steps and checking your answer and knowing it's right. It feels so good! We sat with her last Sunday during Sacrament meeting :)

Life is really good here. I really do have the best house mates in the world and my companion is hilarious and 100% Samoan and the greatest chef. I love what is going on in this area and I love how all of us missionaries are working with the members. I am really learning a lot from the members as well. I was thinking about it the other day, that this will be the only time in my entire life that I will be able to get to know SO many members of the church and be able to visit and become close with so many of them. They are all SO different from each other, but it has been such an amazing experience for me to see the gospel working so differently in so many people's lives. I am learning a lot here.

Tomorrow we get to go to a meeting with Elder Christensen and I am so excited! Plus we will also get to see a lot of other missionaries :)

Being a year old my only goal for these next 6 months is to have no regrets. And for all you who have served missions, I would love to know what your favorite part of being a missionary was and what brought you the most joy. And I have a special assignment for you preisthood holders. Sister Waldrom did this also and I want to copy her idea.

For all you priesthood holders I have a question: What does it feel like to use the Priesthood?

That is pretty much all here. I love you all and I hope everyone is healthy and safe! 

Have a good week and spend a few extra minutes in the air con for me and take that time to think about Sister Mecham swimming in her sweat in the Philippines :)

Love,

Sister Mecham

Happy birthday to me! Week 46

This week is my birthday again! I am turning one in the mission. I really don't know how this year has gone by so fast!

The last week here in the Philippines has been good again. We have been working hard as usual and pushing ourselves to just keep going and trying our faith to find people to teach. And finally it has been paying off. We have been blessed to find more people to teach this week and we are really hoping they will progress. They are actually kind of older people, but some of them have been taught before by missionaries and one of them has a grandson who is an RM and has done a lot to help them with money and such, so they talk about him all the time. Their names are Eddy and Auring. They are darling.

We see miracles everyday. One of the biggest ones I am noticing though is how much easier it is getting for me to speak in Tagalog to people and to communicate with others everyday. It truly is one of the greatest gifts from Heavenly Father and I am so grateful for the opportunity to be here in the Philippines and learn Tagalog.

This week we had a specialized zone training meeting, where President Peterson came and taught us. It is always a huge blessing to be able to hear his counsels. He is a great leader. The meeting was a lot about connecting members to heaven and how to increase our faith to have the spirit more strongly with us when we teach. It was really really good. After I went up and just shook his hand and he told me "Oh sister, I was in Candelaria last week to do some practice teaching with the other sisters and I remembered, 'oh, this was Sister Mecham's first area' ".  

I just told him "President, that was a rough time. I cried a lot." and we both just kinda laughed and he said "No Sister, that's not what I thought of." He said, "You're going to look back on that time of your mission and see how much the power of the atonement strengthened you through that". 

 I have been thinking about that ever since. President is famous for incredibly powerful one-liners that really make you think and totally re-evaluate your entire life. 

 I have been taking a mental tour of my whole life and realizing there are more times than I can count where the power of the Atonement has given me strength. I know that Jesus Christ is real. I know that He lived and died for me and that through the power of His atonement, we can be redeemed from all of our sins and receive his power to overcome trials and one day we can all live again.I love being a missionary and I love this church SO MUCH!!!!

I hope you all have a good week and I love you all too!

Love,

Sister Mecham

Family Home Evening with some ward members

Sister Mann's birthday!

Happy Mother's Day! week 45

I hope everyone had a good mothers day!!! It was so good to skype everyone again! And I love you so much!

This week has been another good, but ever so sweaty one here in the Philippines. Mother's day was definitely the highlight.

 We have been working hard this week, but we are still facing struggles. We have been tracting and tracting and tracting and talking and talking and talking, but we are really hoping that all those people we talked to last week and all the houses we tracted will turn into new investigators this week.

It really was a very normal week here. We had a fiasco though trying to get a hold of Sister Mann's family for mothers day. Western Samoa is not the easiest to get a hold of, but we figured it out and I could tell she was SO happy about it.

Julie Ann and Vincent came to church yesterday, but we weren't able to teach them last night because they were doing other things for mother's day. It was really good to have them at church again. They are great!

May and her asawa are really finally figuring things out, but it is kind of sounding like they might move back to Candelaria to be closer to their familys :/ We will definitely keep teaching her till it's official.

We found a couple new investigators this week and talked to a lot of nanays who are a little crazy...but they are so fun to talk with. Everyone thinks  Sister Mann is from the southern islands in the Philippines and they are all obsessed with my nose. Almost everyone we talk to says that they thought sister Mann was a filipina or that they love my nose. Filipinos have tiny little noses, so my huge one seriously just fascinates them. Haha I just love it here! 

Any way. My mind is really running blank right now. I think that's pretty much it from here. We did find out today though that Elder Craig Christensen will be coming here on the 27th to talk with us. But the kicker is that only the missionaries within a 2 hr radius of San Pablo are invited. And yours truly is a whopping 10 minutes away. I am excited!

 I am glad Heavenly Father kept me here for this transfer. I am really really happy here and again my kasama is the best. She reminds me to be humble and be grateful for all the blessings in my life, and my housemates remind me how to be American and not Samoan or Filipina. Sometimes I forget that I'm white and from America, so I've got them here to remind me how Americans act. I love all of them though!

Life is good and the church is true. I love you all and hope you had a good Mother's day. I love all of you the same and am so glad I have such great support from all of you! 

Have a good week :)

Love,

Sister Mecham

We found another river to cross, but you have to climb this hill to get to or from it. We love adventures!

Family Home Evening with some ward members and Julia Ann and Vincent.

Happy Mother's Day from the SM

Our view from the church

Riding bikes (last week)

zone conference

Baha sa Bahay. FHE. Zone P -day. week44

Well this week has been leaps and bounds better than last week. I am really grateful I am here in San Pablo. I live with some pretty amazing sisters and our ward is definitely figuring out that they really are important to us and our investigators and we are all going to see miracles this week.

Starting with Monday. We had our normal pday. It was just like any other pday. The other sisters went out early to email then came back for studies while we did studies first and then went out. It was a good thing they went out early and were home because it is rainy season here in the Philippines and we had a HUGE storm come in out of now where. And it flooded our ENTIRE apartment. As in we were pushing water out our front door and doing slip'n slide in our kitchen in a solid inch of water and Sister Mann was doing water angels in our kitchen. And our light fixture turned into a shower head. Yes. We definitely live in the Philippines. 

To make this story more fun, we were out buying groceries when Sister Tua'one calls and says "Um...Sister Mecham what do you do if the back drain isn't draining and is starting to flood?" and me not realizing that the pouring rain outside is causeing a serious backup in the drainage here say, "Do we need to buy some drain declogger?...." and Sister Tua'one just says, "I don't think that's the problem. Just get home as soon as you can". So we hurried and got everything then as we are checking out they call again and say "come home for real as soon as you can. Our house is flooded and the Hansens (office couple) just told us to push the water out the front door." I was in shock.

 Then we get to the doors of pure gold an there is literally a hurricane/typhoon/bagyio outside and sister Mann is like standing in it while I am in the door saying this is a bad idea. All the workers were  like "Huwag sisters", "wait lang", and other things like that. But sister Mann just looks at me so seriously and says, "Sister Mecham we need to go help those sisters".  I'm like oh man. OK. So we walked home through sideways rain, very strong winds and puddles up to our calves to get to our flooded home. Holy cow. I was soaked to the bone.

It was definitely one of those things I will never get to experience ever again, but so much fun. The rest of our pday we had to just sweep the water out with our brooms and mop and have the fans on full blast to dry them. It was a mess. Our landlord came over and cleaned out the drain and we haven't had any more problems. It was quite funny though. Luckily none of our stuff was ruined . We just were all really wet.

That was the highlight of our pday. Heavenly Father doesn't flood the earth, he just floods missionary appartments. 

My other favorite part of this week is Julie Ann and Vincent. We are really starting to see a lot of progression with them! They have come to church now like 4 times, but they aren't married yet. On Thursday though we taught them and the husband (who has been the one that is having a harder time accepting the church) told us that he FINALLY read the Book of Mormon and believes it is true. But he still hasn't prayed about it. We told him that if he believes the book of Mormon is true, then the whole church is true, so he really needs to pray about it. I think it really caught his attention. The spirit was there so powerfully during the lesson. They came to church yesterday and the ward just welcomed  him. It was SO good!!

 We have been visiting the members and giving them a list of our investigators and asking them to pray for them and also pray to know of one of their friends that we could start teaching. We have talked to a couple families about these 2 investigators and so on Sunday, I think it finally clicked for the ward to fellowship him. It felt so good to see the ward just go up and start talking with them and take them to classes and we had a lot of members come up to us to tell them they want to fellowship them. Then we did FHE with them last night we had 7 members with us and the light of the spirit in their house was so amazing. I have been thinking a lot about who should fellowship them and one family came to my mind back when I was with Sister Vaipou, but I didn't act on it. But. This week I did and I am so glad because they are perfect for these investigators. The ward is so excited to help them and I know that they will be baptized. 

Anyway. We had zone pday  today and got to go ride bikes around the lake again and play games at the church.

But the chruch is true. There really is "no unhallowed hand" that can stop it and I am SO happy to be here. This is going to be a great transfer and I can't wait to skype you next week!!!!!!

Love,

Sister Mecham

Baloooooot!!!!

Our Stake Presidents wife had us over for lunch on Wednesday. She found out that I hadn't eaten balot yet....so that was her grand idea for my birthday.
I ate two of them!

Changing another light bulb. And then taking pictures with them to look like halos.

Roommates getting transferred

New roommates

Flood!!!

standing outside the flooded apartment

Flood "Angel"