Hello hello!! First of all, dang I am sooooo happy and I hope you all are too! I feel like the most blessed person in the whole wide world to be here and to serve people that I love so much! There are so many things to tell MY GOODNESS!!!
So my first area is called Taguig. It's very densely populated and not really what others would call pretty... but I think the people make it the prettiest place in the world! There are kids all over!! I love it here so far.
Little background about my situation: We live in a small apartment with two kabahays, or roommates. Sister Gaspar is my adorable Filipino companion/trainer from Laoag, Sister Baptista is the other newby like me except she can speak the language HAHA. She is from Laoag too and actually from the same stake as my companion so they totally know each other! Sister Baptista's trainer is Sister Nagareda from Hawaii and her Tagalog is amazing, whether she thinks so or not ;)
I have some truly hilarious things that happened this week...
So my first night here, my kasama told me in Tagalog that she had to wake up at five to go to a meeting. I thought she meant district council that we had the next day, so I was like dang ok. So in the morning, I naturally woke up at 5:45 and was like OH NO we're gonna be late!! And so I wake up Sister Gaspar like darn it the alarm didn't go off let's get ready fast. She was like ummm we don't get up yet honey what are you doing...so yeah. Apparently she was saying that the morning before she had to get up at 5, not that day. Talk about embarrassing!! I felt so bad haha but she just laughed. She's so patient with me hahha
Ok, you know missionary language, lots of weird stuff that I still need to learn... So my kasama was like "I had a friend, Sister something, she died just last week" My heart sunk! I was like oh my gosh I am so sorry that's so sad! My kasama just started laughing because it meant that her mission ended, not that she actually died... blonde ako.
There's more... in our apartment, i was standing right next to Sister Baptista but she apparently didn't know I was there. When she saw me, she SCREAMED bloody murder and held it out until she hid behind her kasama. Oh my goodness, it was so funny. I died laughing for like a half hour.
That same day, we visited the Fajardo family. They are members, so for our spiritual thought, I just shared my favorite scripture with them and a discussion followed. I wanted to add some awesome comment and so I started with: "Para sa akin, hindi ko alam kung paano magtagalog. Pero, nagtutulong ko ang Diyos" which means. " For me, I don't know how to speak Tagalog. But, God is helping me". I was so proud because it was all correct tagalog so on the inside I was like WOOO!! But then, I said "at... JOKE LANG" which is "and... JUST KIDDING" because I didn't know what else to say!! It was so funny. I turned bright red and we all had a good laugh.
Now on a more serious note...
We had an amazing experience with one of the people we are teaching. His name is Ric and he has the cutest family ever. He is so ready to be baptized and you can tell that he already has a strong relationship with Heavenly Father. The only problem is, him and his asawa are living together but are not married. My kasama said that they have been focusing their visits on the importance of family, but I really felt impressed that we should read Mosiah 18 and talk about baptism to hopefully grow his desire more for that. As we were teaching, the Spirit was really strong. We started talking about the Holy Ghost as well and I was told by the Spirit to ask if he had any experiences where he has felt the Holy Ghost and to share it with us. We ended up being able to see how strong his desire was for baptism and how eager he was for it. He understood that he needed to be married as soon as possible and that they are trying! It's made us so happy. Pray for them!
There are so many individuals that I really need your prayers for, but the one that needs the most I think is an 18 year old named Lovely. She is ready to be baptized and is old enough that she doesn't need a parent's permission, but her father does not approve and he is very abusive. If she goes to church, we are scared that she could get hurt. Please pray for her father's heart to soften and for her family to be able to attend church so that she can be baptized. My heart is aching for her.
Book of Mormon: Helaman 5:12
WOW sorry this email was so long. I love you all!!
Mahal kita,
Sister Stewart
