Week 22

This past week was good. Starting out with last Monday- we had finished emailing and we out doing other things we needed to do. When we get a text at like 5 saying we had a curfew and had to be back home at 6! We had to cancel our appointments and hurry home! Ha that was crazy. We just spent the night writing letters and hanging out because we had already finished studies in the morning. We had exchanges on Tuesday with Sister Pace and Sister Siola’a. I really enjoyed working with Sister Siola’a and learned a lot from her. I learn and grow so much from all the exchanges I have the opportunity to go on. It challenges me on my language skills especially. So Sister Evans and Sister Pace worked in our area and ended up teaching Tontons mom and it was a really great lesson from what I heard. We are having a family home evening with all the Besmontes this Tuesday and I’m excited for it! Have I told the story of Tonton yet? I’ll tell it again! He is the nephew of the Besmontes and lives right next door. We have tried to teach his mom in the past but haven’t really been able to. He ALWAYS comes and listens in on the lessons with the Besmontes. He come to church every week and attends Gospel Principles class instead of Primary the 2^ndhour because he likes it more. He wants to be baptized so badly. And reads the Book of Mormon daily. Says the cutest prayers. He wants to be a missionary too! And he is NINE years old. OH and he goes to Seminary everyday with LK Besmonte (the 15 year old daughter). He is really amazing and I’m hoping his mom continues to be interested so she gets baptized so he can be too! Me and Sister Evans both ended up getting sick and not being able to work on Wednesday but are back to feeling well and able to work our hardest. Thursday was a good day and we were able to teach some new people which I am excited for. Friday was a little difficult with the curfew and no one was home who we had planned (and back up planned) to teach but we didn’t let that stop us. It was a holiday here in the Philippines. Like All Saints day or something? I’n not sure… Like everyone goes to the cemetery and like has a party with their family… the dead included? So yeah its interesting. Its like a Spanish holiday. We ended OYMed and tracted and found people to go back to! In an area where we don’t have a lot of people so it was still very productive. Saturday was a great day though! We had a total of 5 member present lessons in one day! And we can see how it is helping our investigators when we bring members. With one, Brother Borais, his wife is a member and he has had many sets of missionaries teach him in the past. We brought 2 male members from the branch here to fellowship him and it was so good. They are both really excited to keep working with him. He has a lot of potential and really is searching now. He had been working a lot this past week and had a lot of overtime and me and Sister Evans felt like he wouldn’t have read the Book of Mormon or prayed about Joseph Smith but he did both! That was such a testimony builder to me because even though he was busy he made time. And he feels like this is all true. We are working on resolving his concerns and continuing to grow his testimony. We are having a challenge in the area with investigators attending sacrament meeting, even when they had committed. They have members’ fellowshipping them and we just don’t understand. I am trying my best to not get discouraged. So I studied this week about Humility. If you are being humble you have confidence you can do ANYTHING IF you have help from the Lord. You rely on the Lord in all things and do your best. You need to be obedient, hard working, and selflessly serve others and you can work to being more humble. I am trying my best because I know if I want to be more Christlike I need to be humble in every aspect of my life. So yeah this was my past week. It was good! So fast! Yet it feels like FOREVER since last Pday. This upcoming week we have MLC (for Sister Evans the STL) and then Zone Training on Friday so that will be fun. Until next week!

Mahal Kita

Sister Ianuzi