Barugo Week 5

Hi my family!


Our Branch Mission Leader is looking for a wife, so he keeps teasing me. It's worse though because Sister Sacayanan teases me too now. But she told me that he did the same thing to Sister Garcia, who was her companion before I got here.

I saw a 4 year old smoking a cigarette last week! That was HEARTBREAKING. All his little friends were laughing at him. Hehee cigarelyo! Sister Sacayanan and I just looked at each other with open mouths.

Mark was baptised! :) Mark is 16 year old young man who really wants to do whats right. He was found by Sister Sacayanan and Sister Garcia last transfer. Before he met the missionaries, he would drink and smoke with his friends. But not anymore! Whenever we ask him a question while we're teaching him, he looks down and holds his head with one hand and makes little noises like he's thinking REALLY HARD. hehe. Whenever we would ask him how he feels about his baptism he would say... I'M EXCITED! So of course, I was so sad when I thought that he wasn't going to be there on Saturday. Someone told us that his dad was making him work and he was going to miss his baptism! But he showed up! (apparently disobeying his dad) So I started thinking, what's better to do, disobey your parents by being rebellious and drinking or disobeying your parents by going to church? o_O

We currently have about 12 people that have agreed to be baptized. The hard thing is that most of them don't have transportation to church. We didn't have any investigators at church on Sunday, including Mark! AHHH. HE HASN'T BEEN CONFIRMED A MEMBER YET!! But I'm mostly scared that his dad might not have let him come to church.

We gave Laura her Book of Mormon! She was excited that we found one in German for her. (It was hardbound too!) She asked how much it costs, and we said: It's free. o.O She just sort of looked at us for a second not really believing us. haha. So we said that we hand it out because even poor people who don't have money deserve to be able to read it. We gave her 3rd Nephi 11 as her assignment, so when we went back to teach her, we were a little surprised at what she said. "I read what you told me to read. It was kind of negative." "Huh?" "It was talking about how... if you do this, bad things will happen." So I asked her where she read, and it was page 66-69. But her assignment was actually 566-569. So she started laughing. She actually read the end of 1st Nephi and the beginning of 2nd Nephi, where Nephi is exhorting his disobedient brothers to keep the commandments of God or they'd be cast off. So we just all started laughing. We read the beginning of 3rd Nephi 11 with her, and it was a really nice experience. In the part where Christ invites all the people to touch the wounds in his hands and feet, I asked her how she would feel if SHE was being invited by Christ personally to touch his hands to know that he died for us. She said: "Wow. I can't really describe that." It's really weird teaching in English. hehe. When we read the BoM together, she reads her German book and we read our English books and follow along with each other. :)

We also taught a VERY active 7th day adventist church member named Abraham. He and his family are basically the reason why there is a 7th day adventist church in Barugo. His relative in America gave them the money to build it. So in other words, YEA they are active. Our second visit, he basically told us when we got there: "I don't think there's a point in us continuing, because this is not the gospel that's found in the Bible." I thought: "MY GOODNESS, all he's read is the Restoration pamplet!" He was very advent about not accepting the Book of Mormon, because he says the Bible is perfect, in terms of doctrine. We spent almost the whole hour just trying to use scriptures to help him see that the Book of Mormon is ANOTHER WITNESS. It felt like going against a wall for a short time. Sister Sacayanan turned to me and said: "Gahi siya" (meaning, he's hard [not accepting]) My only worry though was if he was WILLING to read the Book of Mormon or not. So I did my best to just TESTIFY and ask him to read it. He said he would. Wheeeeew.

We also taught a woman named Jenny, who told that she's a member. It turns out though that she is not all there in her head. It seems like she has the mental capacity of a 5 year old or something. But she says her grandma is a member in Tacloban, so it's likely that their family are members. Anyway, near the end of the lesson, the following conversation happened:
"Does your husband have time, so he can join in on the lessons?"
*She shakes her head no*
"Oh, he's always busy then?"
"We don't have a clock."

Yea, they don't have time because they don't have a clock. hahah. It was just really funny. :)


I love you! I think about you all alot! Maybe too much. Agoy! Miss you. I will get to hear you in December! Yay!

--
~the end~

0 comments:

Post a Comment

I am a LDS sister missionary serving in the Philippines Tacloban area. I made this blog so that I may share my experiences with my friends and loved ones and anyone who may need to hear my story. My sister will be updating this blog with letters that I'll be writing home.