January 8, 2014

To my beloved friends and family!

 

I'm so glad that things have been eventful with Christmas and New Years and I sure hope things are FANTABULOUS!!!

 

Leslie is off at college now, wow, weird, and at SUU, that's even better!!! I sure hope she enjoys it and gets involved. I'm sure she'll be great!! I bet that was amazing to get her back for a few days and then kind of annoying to let her go again, how are you doing without her there. I bet it's still not the same huh? Oh and can you have Lezlie e mail me the date of when that lady from China is getting married here. I"m going to ask my mission President if it's okay if we go.

 

I'm excited about Brady, my new cousin, that's crazy. That's so cool that he was baby Jesus, I'm sure that was a wonderful Christmas Eve!!! I have been thinking a lot about family and friends this past few weeks. Little things keep reminding me of you all and it's sometimes hard. Songs will come up that I sing with people or I see something that totally reminds me of someone and I get sad, but then I remember that this time I have here is so short. It is going by fast for me, I feel, I don't know if it's different at home, but that's how it feels here. Just because we are always doing something. I just keep thinking of the quote, "A missionary leaves his family for a short time so that others can be with their families for eternity!" well something like that. I love that quote so much!!

 

Also days are good at bad with the language, I noticed that a lot this week. One day I was just feeling super discouraged. We were teaching about the Plan of Salvation and since I haven't done that lesson as much I don't know a lot of the vocab and I was mixing things up and just not saying it right, but my companion was there to help me I was just feeling down. That day did get better though, just started out rough. I just keep thinking, I can't wait, until I can understand everything and feel so confident in my teaching and don't know when that will come. I just have to keep practicing though and putting myself out of my comfort zone to speak their language, even if I don't know everything. How am I going to learn if I don't do anything or practice, right? But then yesterday things got better. I felt like I really could understand a lot that was going on, even what the people were saying back to me. Usually I just know what my companion is saying and get some words from Investigators, and try to put things together, but not full sentences, but yesterday I felt a lot better. I understood sentences!!! I WAS SOOOOO HAPPY, and Dad, I have had two dreams now in Cebuano, it wasn't all Cebuano, but some of it was and it was great. Hopfeully that means I am getting it. I have felt like I have learn so much just from being here and using the language so much, but there is still so much to learn. It does make me feel good when people compliment me and say, wow, you speak so well, or it's so good to hear someone blonde, speak our language. That always boosts my day, but other days are just hard. I can do it though. I love that scripure that says "where there are two or three of you, I am in your midst". And that is the Savior talking. So many of the scriptures and quotes I have read in personal study have helped me when times get hard, I love it.

 

We had some crazy experiences again, like last week. I have been AMAZED noticing the Spirit in our lessons a ton, especially this week. We plan to teach certain things to certain people and in our planning sessions and then sometimes when we get there, we feel strongly to teach about something else because of what they are going through right now. This happened when Sister Tandiman and I went to see Sister Bacus and her family. She and her husband are less active members, but their kids aren't. We were thinking it would be good to teach them the Plan of Salvation because we noticed that their family was kind of struggling so we wanted to emphasize how if we live righteously here, we can make it to the Celestial Kingdom with our families. When we were just talking with her and the beginning she started crying. I didn't really know what she was saying really, but I felt for her. All I knew is something was going on with her kids. Apparently her children have addictions to drugs and just aren't helpful at all at home and just all the time. She is feeling stressed and doesn't know how to deal with them because they don't really listen to her. Sister Tandiman and I changed the lesson to faith and action. We needed to let her know that her faith is so strong and that we know she is doing the best she can, which is great and the Lord is proud. We brought up scriptures that we thought would help and told her the quote, "Faith makes things possible, not easy." So if she shows her faith by keeping the commandments and just doing what she knows is right she will be blessed. We just tried to give her hope and just be there for her.
It was great because of Monday we had a wonderful lesson about Faith and Action in Jesus Christ by Elder Ferris our new district leader. He told us that sometimes people say they have faith in Jesus Christ, but they don't do anything about it. My seminary teacher, Brother Anderson drilled this in my head and I have never forgotten it. Faith is a principle of action and power. I'm sure you have all heard that, but it is so true. If we don't do anything about our faith and really show Heavenly Father and Jesus that we really care we will do things. I learned so much from this and what we can actually ask people about faith. Because of lot of people here say they have faith in Jesus Christ, but they think that's all they need. They can be saved because of Him if they have faith in Him and live a good life, but there is so much more. So our District Leader told us that if we let them know they are doing good, but there is more that needs to be done, we will be more affective in our teaching. He encouraged us to use this in our teaching and we really have. When we talk to investigators about how they really need to find out for themselves, it's not us trying to drag them to join our church or our religion, but to work for it to find out how true it is. And they can't find out for themselves if they don't do anything about it. If we give them a Book of Mormon and they don't use it or study it, how will they know and how is that showing faith. Once they do something, they can know.

Oh man, I almost forgot we had 9 investigators at church this last Sunday!! WOW, I wish you could have been there to see this. And our reactions, they just kept coming, it was wonderful! So when we first were there we saw 3 of our investigators. Vicky who came with her daughter, who is soooooooooooooooooooo good. She has been taught by missionaries before, I'm pretty sure all the lessons or at least a lot because she already knows about the Word of Wisdom and other commandments that are really far into the teaching records. But since we don't have a record of it, we started from the beginning, but she is moving swiftly through them because she already knows a lot. She always adds to our lessons and just is so good, so we were so happy she was there. Then we saw Ben and Vengi, they are there every week because they know what they are supposed to do and how true this church it. I love their diligence all the time. Then we noticed that Nick and Ovelia were there and it was AMAZING, they had come once before, but had some Catholic tradition thing  for Christmas the next Sunday and went to that instead, but have been progressing really well. Every time we go to their house we have a kugog with us, Brother Traya and is super good at being there to fellowship them. They always have so many questions which is so good because that really means they want to learn. Some of the questions they ask are funny. We were teaching about the Plan of Salvation and how we will live forever with our families. He mentioned that Sister Ovelia is his 2nd wife and that he was wondering if he died if she would too. We told him no, she'll still be here. But what if she marries someone else? Than what happens? Who are we with in Heaven? And just some other questions that I have totally thought of before and it was just funny all that went through his mind. And then we noticed 3 other investigators came in that are apart of a part member family. So the dad, Brother Regner, is the only member in this family and they have been stubborn about coming before so it seriously was a shock for us to see them all there. Man, this was the best Sunday. We were extrememly happy the whole rest of the day and made sure they knew where to go with the different classes and made sure they had someone there to go with them. Sister Tandiman and I were praying that they felt something different at this church than at the churches they go to. It was such a great day!
Also on the side of the road, an investigator was on his way to work, Clarisus. He stopped us and said, hey, can you come by tomorrow? We agreed and were excited. That just shows that he really is interested and that he wants to learn more. We were very happy.

 

Members are so helpful and eager to do all they can for us as missionaries and just want to introduce us to all their friends so the gospel can be shared in their homes, it's so wonderful. Their attitudes about missionary work make me more excited and I just keep thinking, this message can change people's lives, why not share it to everyone. We can't just hand out Book of Mormons everywhere though, we have to make sure they really want to read it and learn for themselves. It's been great, just having that attitude makes things a lot easier to do the work.

 

 Oh yeah, I have a funny story. So it was raining pretty hard one day and the roads or walkways we go on, they are dirt. So they were quite muddy and full of water. We went to go to this area to find a less active member's house and we got stuck. There was no place we could walk that didn't have water. So we saw a rock in the middle of the giant puddle. "Should we try it?" Sister Tandiman asked, (Siempre) of course, I replied. So I leaped to the rock and it was so unstable I just fell in the water, well I got my feet wet. I was so lucky I didn't land in it sitting, that would have been awful, but I got drenched, and muddy and it was just great. JUST MY LUCK right? My skirt was pretty drenched and I actually got a little scrape. Man, we were laughing sooooooooooooooooo hard. I wish you all could have been there. It doesn't sound super funny, but we thought it was. And everyone who would walk or drive by would laugh, it was great. But anyway so we went to this house and they have turkey's there. I don't know if i've already shared this, but if I have sorry. So we said AYAW, because that what you say when you get to someone's house and all of the sudden the turkey's started chasing us. what?!! Turkey's or all birds usually leave you alone or are afraid of you so they run, but these ones were like guard dogs. man, it was so freaky. And Sister Tandiman is dealthy afraid of turkeys, chickens, just any bird on the ground. She hates when we walk by or go near them so always has me go first to get them away, but these ones, were different. We talked to a neighbor and apparently they have bitten people before. I'm glad that Sister Tandiman was cautious enough to tell me to get away from them so I wasn't hurt. It was so funny. I thought she was so silly to be afraid of them, but I actually found myself afraid of those ones. Who knew turkeys were like that. That totally reminds me too of the turkey whisperer Lezlie, that we saw on our trip.

 

Well that's my news for the week, Some days are hard, but we are making it through.

Amping mo! (You all Take care)

 

Sister Riggs