August 24th-I love my new area!!

This week was awesome, of course. Have I told you how much I love our new area? Because I love it. Like love love love it. The members here are just getting the missionary spirit. And that makes all the difference in missionary work. 

This week, during a lesson to a new investigator I realized how grateful I am for less actives. We were teaching a sister who's husband is less active and it was a great lesson because the Spirit was so strongly there. As we shared with her the true character and nature of God she was taken back. She never realized that God, our Father, has a tangible body of flesh and bones. As we testified and read scriptures to help her understand I thought to myself "Wow, there really are people who are kept from the truth only because they know not where to find it." And then I thought about how we probably wouldn't be teaching this sister if her husband wasn't less active. And then I realized how this great burden of so many hundreds of less active members here in the Philippines is actually a great blessing and finding opportunity. I know that we are encouraged to find part member families and this week my testimony of the importance of part member families really took on a new meaning as I began to feel gratitude for the opportunity to unite these families with the gospel and thereby tie them more strongly together. The less active members as a blessing, not a burden. 

Tell me what you guys are learning in Preach my Gospel? :) 

Sister Larson

(Language:  anyone under the age of 60 speaks tagalog because they also learn tagalog in school, but then everyone also has at least one more dialect they know because of where they live and that's what they speak when they're at home. here in this area their native dialect is ilocano, which kind of sounds like chinese)

 

 we had a sports day earlier today at the church with the youth and YSA and even some of our investigators. it was awesome.. we have a TON of youth in our ward! 

The Bukid

Service project in the bukid :) it means field. that bukid was sugar cane. which i'm pretty sure is the first time i really saw sugar cane in real life.

we were chopping all the weeds with machetes and raking them up. but the second pic in front of that machine thing is what they use to make the sugar cane into sugar. they hook their caribou up to it and he walks in a circle to grind the sugar cane up.  it's like ancient. 

Dragon Fruit

i tried dragon fruit! it was weird and didn't taste like anything. it was like a stawberry mixed with a watermelon in texture but not very tasty. disappointed.

we made a cake in the rice cooker! and it was delicious!