A Great and Marvelous Work: March 2011

Note from Heather

Hey! I'm sorry I got a bit behind. Please note that I posted twice today. Lots of pictures and a few videos as well.

I am SUPER excited for conference!!! It is so cool to be a missionary and teach people about the restoration and tell them we have a living prophet and they can go to the church in a week and listen to what he has to say to us today! SWEET!

Yes, I got transferred. I am in Santiago zone now. My area is Rizal ward 1. Actually my and my companion sister Tadifa are opening this area technically. This is what happened. There was only one set of missionaries for two wards here in Rizal and they transferred the one sister and put three more of us in, the two of us are the new missionaries for ward one and the third became the companion of the missionary that was already here. So she was able to help us and show us where our investigators live and stuff but it will still be a little bit of a challenge since the both of us still don't know the area and members and stuff very well. BUT!
It is unbelievably supportive to missionary work. Let me just tell you how our coordination meeting went yesterday.

We actually have a Ward mission leader (I've never worked with one before because there never is one) and he totally organized the whole meeting. He recorded everything in a notebook and he had assignments that he gave out last week that he followed up on. "Sister Sharon, did you visit Brenda (investigator) last week?" And they had treats for who ever completed their "assignments". Just imagine, the members visiting the investigators WITHOUT the missionaries. That is true fellowshipping right there. It was incredible!
There was an activity on Saturday so we didn't have a member work with us, and when we were reporting our work for that day the bishop said "who was working with you? There was no member with you? Why not?" He turns to the council, "Who could have worked with them Saturday? Repent!"
I'll tell you it was so unreal. I was just standing there in the front getting all teary eyed because of the overwhelming support and enthusiasm for the work. The members are just totally on it. They are just as busy as everyone else in the world, but they totally take part in missionary work and I can tell its going to be so fun working with them!

I think we have a dinner appointment every night this week.

So I was wondering if you could send me also in a dear elder (so i dont have to spend money on printing!) the following talks
-Quench not the spirit which quickens the inner man -Elder Keith K. Hilbig (october 2007 conference)
-10 gifts to bring home from your mission -President Hinckley
-Elder Hollands talk from the last october conference about faith and something (forgot the title)

Thanks!!
You should read the one by Elder Keith K. Hilbig, it ROCKS! He tells us that there is a price that we have to pay to enjoy the gifts of the spirit. Its not money, of course, but its the price of personal investment in spiritual things.
And I have a scripture I read this week and thought was cool. Alma 5:57 "Come ye out from the wicked and BE YE SEPARATE"
As latter day saints we should be "separate" not in a snobbish or self righteous way, but as in, we are different, we are distinguishably separate in that we don't follow with the ways of the world.

So have a great week everybody and be ye separate!!

Love Sister Webre!

p.s. Fight Satan
p.p.s. Ever heard of the book "behind the veil"? You should check it out, it sounds good.

pics

my apartment

That furry critter also found its way into our appartment

We ate at this cute place called francos cafe. They have delicious pizza (rare here) and cake (love the chocolate in sister stewarts teeth)

We had to do a quick photo shoot because we found this amazing spot with the corn and the hand carts!!

That pic with all the missionaries is my zone right now. the first one, I was still running to my spot. I thought it was actually a cool picture!

Only in the Philippines

I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY, ITS THE BOMB!!!!!!!

Hey, so I have pretty much zero time today to write you because I had to organize a mess of pictures, but just know that I love you and that I had a super awesome week and I'm just loving sharing the restored gospel with this great people!

Just a few things

I got my hair cut earlier by this guy who was definitely on the feminine side. (The ones who cut hair the best here are all gay) He cut off way more than I was wanting, but I like it. It wont be so hard to manage now and hopefully not quite so hot.

I had washed my hair earlier and just put it up in a bun still wet, without combing through it. Then when they got to it, it was the biggest tangly mess EVER. I felt like Mia on princess diaries when they transform her into a princess and he is brushing through her bushy mane and his brush breaks. I was laughing so much inside and just waiting for his comb to snap.

We tried to contact a few of our referrals this morning and so this one tricycle driver was just driving us around the whole time for like an hour he helped us. It was unreal though, like he would drive to a place and jump off his motor and starting asking people where this person lived and then he would get back on his motor and drive us somewhere else. He was totally dedicated to us! Then, when we found one of the families homes, he took the lead to ask them when this specific person would be home that we wanted to meet and could we please get their cell phone number so we could contact them later, and they should really listen to our message, etc. etc. We were just like who is this guy??? He is AWESOME! Before we were able to find our last referral, he got a flat tire! So we had to get a different tricycle, it was sad. So we got his info and we invited him to church and he said "sure I'll come to church. You invited me, I'll come! No one ever invited me before!"

Our new favorite phrase is "only in the philippines". Even filipinos say it. It started to be funny when last week we were clothes shopping in the market and this lady was just super persistent, with every article of clothing we looked at. "only in the philippines. you buy now!" "only in the philippines, you buy now!" Like the broken down shack house that says "this house is NOT for sale". Love it.

I'm probably getting transferred this week, so I'm saying goodbye to cauayan city. Goodbye to frequent visits to the mission home. Goodbye to all of my beautiful investigators and recent converts and my companions and all of the amazing members in this branch.

Most of the pictures I sent that have other people you dont recognize, they are all members of branch 2 cauayan. (my current branch)

We did have a baptism. Those two little cutie heads. It was also a part member family that we helped re-activate.

Pictures:
The lady in the red that I'm sorta hugging is Chudora Andres. I will miss her SO much. She is the semi-crazy/hilarious member that we reactivated and is die hard tithe payer.
The four of us in McDonalds! We are all in the same tiny little apartment! The one on my right is my companion, Sister Tadifa
The one with the little garden is right outside our apartment, we actually have a little corner with a tree and some pretty little plants! Im so excited!

During our nightly planning, suddenly sister stewart gasped and said "oh my gosh", she was looking over towards the door and I just knew it was a giant spider. Sister Martinez and I both look over and saw instead a giant toad. Once again, we don't know how on earth that thing got in there, but it was HUGE. We considered the best way to get it out and figured we could sweep it into the bucket and throw it out. We all got kinda freaked out though, when it started jumping as soon as it got in the bucket. Haha!

My Week

Hello family,

As far as the earthquake/tsunami goes, we didn't feel anything over here. There was a warning for tsunami, but thankfully that didn't reach us either! It's great to be a latter-day saint and know that we dont have to fear if we do what is right.

Hey I really like what you said about happiness. (Or, I guess, what Bryce said in his lesson) It is totally a choice, and Its always good to be reminded that!
I for one, choose to be happy!
Actually I was totally talking about this in a lesson last week. None of us would choose to be sad, I mean that is just silly. If given the choice to be sad or happy we would all choose happy! But the thing we sometimes forget is that WE make that choice through our decisions. And when we don't do what is right or do wrong, when we go against the commandments, we are really choosing to be sad. The trick is that sometimes the sadness doesn't come immediately, so we don't always connect the dots.

Just in case you were wondering.... I am HAPPY!! I am SOOO happy.

Oh yeah, you probably want to hear about my birthday. We celebrated by going to a funeral! No joke! They asked me to play the piano. A birthday I will never forget!

The guy that died was like 80 I think and he was albino. He is way cool and actually has been a member only just under a year.

I know I really should have had a big party at my apartment and cooked for everyone, but I don't think that would have worked very well, so Vilma threw a party for me.

Vilma is one the of the coolest people ever. We had it last night and it was really fun, all of the single adults were there, the AP's and the zone leaders. Vilma is so sweet, she made this GIANT card and had a bunch of people in the ward sign a little note, as well as all the couples in the mission.

Well, little update on my investigators.....um...

Brother Dela Cruz bailed on us again and he didn't come to church the little stinker. But his wife came and SO many people knew her. LIke every other person greeted her and knew who she was and they were so happy and suprised to see her there. I was going YES YES YES! She has so many friends already in the church--automatic support system! Still praying for her husband!

Madeline is doing good. She came to church again will her 5 kids, even though her husband was out of town this week at his work. They also came to piano lessons saturday night and her two oldest kids (11 and 13) picked everything up really fast. IT was super fun teaching them. Then we watched the testaments.

That was our third week teaching piano and I think we will keep doing it every week with the movie afterward. We haven't had a great attendance so far, but they just now announced it in church and everyone was super excited about it. Now I have to figure out how I'm going to be able to teach them all at the same time in one hour (all of them at different levels) when there is one piano and they don't have pianos at home to practice on.

Did I tell you about Claudio and Nora Balangatan? They are cool too. We met them a couple weeks ago and they came to watch the testaments on saturday. They really liked it and they thought the church was pretty too. Sister Nora, I don't know if she was born this way or if there was an accident, but she only has her thumb and pointer fingers on both fingers They are the ones with all the kids in the born again church. They go to church with them but we keep trying to get them to come with us just once so they can really feel the spirit and see for themselves how it is! We have been focusing on the book of mormon and their testimony of Joseph Smith. We committed them to pray again on our last visit. Once they get a testimony of that, I think they will

Well it wont be the most quality lessons, but at least its something and its free!

Have a great week!! It is time for me to go!

Love you all!

Fight Satan

Sister Webre

Pics

We roasted marshmallows this week on candlesticks when our power went out

Tip: When you boil your eggs, an hour is probably a little too long

The food Vilma cooked

We also went over to the Mission Home and Sister Carlos made me a delicious butter delicious bunt cake on thursday. It was AWESOME! I am definitely spoiled.

It's Jenny's Birthday! Write her a letter!

Brookes letter was one of the highlights of my week! It was pretty long too. (hence the shout out) I don't know what made you decide to write me Brooke but thanks a mil! It was really fun because your personality came right through and it just made me laugh and miss you.

Well, the wildlife is fantastic here, I'm really enjoying all the different bugs and things. Its cool to see people riding on the carabou with the big ol horns. Someone recently told me that God numbers all of His creations, and I bet thats true, even down to every mosquito.

Well I guess maybe I'll say something about my investigators before I sign off because they are AWESOME!

The beautiful family you see before you in my attachments is the Subac family. Arent they so adorable!? dimples! We have only been teaching Madeline (the mom) because Dad is always gone, but by some MIRACLE their whole family came to church yesterday. It was seriously a miracle. I was super weepy for like the first 15 minutes of sacrament meeting after i saw them walk in and sit down. Madeline is so cool, she is so teachable even though she is really smart. The gospel just makes sense to her and she wants her whole family to be able to get baptized with her. (makes sense) Her husbands work only allows him every other weekend home so that makes it real difficult to teach him, but we might try to find some missionaries where he stays to teach him.

Then we have Sister Delores Deguzman (early sixties) and two of her daughters. She is our golden investigator. Delores has come to church for a month straight now and she is gung ho. She ALWAYS reads in the book of mormon, in fact she keeps all of the committments we give her, including stopping her coffee. I remember the first time we taught her, she had all these questions about tithing and all these other things, but she totally agreed with all the doctrines we shared. We left that lesson saying "That was SO COOL."

Her daughter are way cool too, they totally have desires to learn and apply the gospel, but they haven't come to church yet. We have tried like 3 times to give a baptismal date to sister deguzman but she wants to know EVERYTHING about the gospel before she joins. Hopefully we can help her realize that she might not ever feel like she knows everything, she needs to rely on faith, and the spiritual confirmations she has recieved of what she already knows.

Sister Deguzman is super talkative so that is fun in lessons but also can be bad when its hard to get away and we have another appointment.

The last one I will tell you about is Brother DelaCruz (69 yrs old). He is also a fan of the book of mormon. The first time we visited him, we gave him the lesson one pamphlet and he said he couldn't see to read and didn\t have reading glasses. he asked me if I had any (which by miracle I did--i bought them for this very reason, often we ask people to read in lessons and they can't because they have no glasses) He asked if he could have them so he could read the pamphlet. Have--not borrow. So we made a deal. He could have my glasses if he would read the whole pamphlet. So I gave him my glasses. Heck, I would buy reading glasses for the whole world if they would read the book of mormon.

It really makes all the difference, those who really read and those that dont! In our third lesson with him, he just went off about how the Book of Mormon is like a manual for our life. He said "You know when you buy something like a camera or tv, it comes with a manual so that you know how to use it and what to do...etc....Well this book is like the manual for our lives, it tells us what to do and how to return to our Father in Heaven" We were all kinda stunned and my companions and I looked at each other with big grins on our faces. And we told him he was exactly right, spot on! Brilliant. Thanks for the sweet anology Brother Delacruz. We are teaching his wife too, but she's more catholic than he is. We taught word of wisdom last week and she drinks 4-5 cups of coffee a day, so that's probably not gonna go away tomorrow.

They were supposed to come to church last week, but he is still feeling really weak and cant walk without help because he had a stroke recently. I think he would be fine, but he is scared of falling and not being able to sit long and stuff. So we'll keep praying for him and try again next week.

I almost forgot to tell you another highlight of my week. Brother DelaCruz's smile. Oh my goodness, it is the most heart warming thing I have ever seen. I had never really seen him smile before our latest appointment with him and It was super precious. Because of his stroke, its totally crooked and onesided and its just the best. Sorry, no picture yet. YOu just have to imagine.

Well I hope you have a great week!

Thanks for all the happy birthday wishes, Im sure it will be my happiest ever!

Fight Satan!

--Sister Webre