February 26, 2014

SHOUT OUT TO BRANDON RIGGS!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY IN A FEW DAYS!!! FEB 28TH!!!! I can't believe it, you are 21 now right? how does it feel?

Thanks again for all the letters and pictures of the family, it's been great to see everyone, it makes me feel like I was there. My companion, Sister Villasis is from Negros, so the Philippines, sorry I thought I sent you a picture and told you where she was from, but I guess not. She's great and makes a lot of dishes to put on rice, we eat rice all the time, I'm kind of getting sick of eat, but realizing you can put rice with a lot of different things. She'll make chicken, beef things mixed with potatoes and carrots and just a lot of good things, it's great.

It has been a very interesting week. It's been so funny, I realized we really need to ask more questions in the lessons or you might not know exactly all about them. If we don't get to know about their background, it's hard to cater to the needs of these people. So this week we went to visit Sister Erlinda again, so funny. So our plan was to teach about baptism and the doctrine of Christ in 3 Nephi 11 and right as we brought up baptism, she said, oh, I've already been baptized. WAIT WHAT?! She didn't tell us until our visit this week which is our fourth visit with her. SO INTERESTING, we were wondering why she never brought it up. What was she thinking? You'd think that she would have told us a lot sooner. Oh well, it's okay. It's just funny. We were just so so so so so shocked. So that changed our lesson. The thing is she said she was baptized in 1963, but we don't think that missionaries could have taught her and baptized her that early because missionary work in the Philippines didn't start until the early 1960's, but they weren't assigned in this area, it was Manilla when it was first opened to missionaries so we have to make sure she has the dates right and that is was a baptism for our church. We totally showed her a picture too and asked if this was the way she was baptized, and she said yeah, so we are thinking she's a member, but we don't know for sure. So we will find out what really happened. Also she hasn't been to church in about 50 years, she went to church for about a year after she was baptized then she stopped and she is 67 right now, so it has really been forever. We hope to really get her back to this church. It was weird because it seemed like she has a good background of this church at first so we didn't know how she knew about Joseph Smith and some other things. But she has forgotten a lot, so we will definitely have to help her with that.

 Also we were FTEing a family outside and asked if we could share a message right then with them. They willingly agreed and so we went inside to teach. Later on in the lesson we found out that they had been baptized before. Wow, we were happy that they told us. We also realized with them that they were missionary converts. This is so common here, I think a lot of people are just so impressed with us as foreigners knowing Cebuano and they might not fully understand the importance of baptism. Seeing this has really helped me realize that you have to make sure that they understand all that you teach them and are ready for baptism, we can just think, oh they are so ready and then they really aren't. And seriously they have forgotten so much so we really need to get them back into things. One of the girls is named Maya and she is 22. The only problem right now is that she has a live in partner, who is not a member. Man, we'll have to remind her of a lot of things. She is super bright though and remembers the things we teach her. Also she came to church on Sunday, that is so good, and we've had fellow shippers come with us to her house. It's been great and helpful since we can't have these people rely on missionaries, they need to have friends in the ward so that when the missionaries leave they stay in the church. That is a hard thing in the Philippines. So many people have live in partners because it is hard to get a divorce here and people aren't willing to make commitments to each other. It's kind of sad, but that makes it hard when we want to commit them to baptism because they have to get married first or get paperwork and it's just hard. It really depends on the person, but the people in this area really struggle with the Law of Chastity here and Word of Wisdom too. It's really to bad. And most of them happen to be less active members, because obviously the investigators don't know it's wrong. interesting.


It's been nice tracting and finding more investigators because there were not many in our area book so we have a lot of work to do and people to find. We also have an IBD who is progressing really well, but we have so much to teach her and she is only available on Saturday's and Sundays, but she is great! We were surprised that she is so busy, but she still will read the Book of Mormon, it is AMAZING!! Her name is Sister Carmen, she really wants to get baptized, she does have to get married first to her live in partner so their plan is to get married April 12th in the morning and then get baptized that night. We hope that she will keep progressing to this date. The date was originally in March but because of the wedding, we had to change things.

We are really helping the work in this area grow! It's great and this week has been so much better, we got 26 lessons, that feels good. I have so been wanting to just teach so much, but I feel like we always run out of time during the week so this week was great, we are remembering to FTE. Sister Villasis says once we start talking she is fine, but she doesn't like just starting a random conversation, so she keeps saying, remind me to just start and help her to FTE too. FTEing really helps find investigators, it's amazing. And I feel like I can talk to anyone, I am glad my fear is gone. I think it was gone about a month ago, but now I really feel like just talking to everyone I see and sharing this wonderful message, it's great!

Sorry I feel like this letter isn't as detailed and as much as usual, but I have to go, I didn't have a lot of time this week, but will be able to share a lot more hopefully next week. 

Nahiguma jud ko ninyo (I love you all tons) and hope you have a wonderful week
Love Sister Riggs