Happy Valentines!

February 14, 2011

Isn't this fun! I get to celebrate Valentines by emailing all the people I love so much.

This week was another amazing week. All weeks are amazing, that's one of the blessings of being a missionary. Really- I'm in the Philippines and I'm doing the Lord's work, what could be more amazing than that.

So- the week started off with Pancit Bihon for dinner on Monday. This is officially my new favorite thing to eat. It's some awesome type of noodles with chicken and fish and carrots and some awesome sort of sauce. It's amazing. Remind me when I get home to try and find some way to make it for all of you so that you can partake of this amazingness. I've definitely been blessed with a wonderful companion who is an equally wonderful cook. She's teaching me how to make lots of fun Philippine dishes. I'm actually making a recipe book so that I can continue to eat good food when I am no longer with her.

After this we had a rather full week of teaching the gospel. We have 3 new investigators who are all very eager to learn. We've also returned to a few previous investigators to find them very open and interested in beginning the lessons again. We have felt so blessed this week. The most exciting thing is that we have found 3 of our investigators who had gone missing. For all of January they were valiant church attenders and amazing investigators, then they just disappeared. We visited and visited but no one was ever home. We discovered they were visiting family because an uncle had passed away. This resulted in mixed feelings- we were happy to learn they weren't just avoiding us, but very worried about the father. Philippine funerals tend to involve lots of drinking and this brother was working to overcome a drinking problem. But the good news of this week is that he was home getting more clothing for he and his sons when we stopped by. He apologized for being gone and asked if he was still allowed to get baptized even though he missed church. He also let us know that he hadn't been drinking at all for the whole two weeks we hadn't seen him. We get to return this week to teach them again and are very eager to hear about how they've been.

Life is wonderful. I love you all and hope life is just as wonderful there!