Allyson's Mission to the Philippines Baguio Mission: Phantastic Baptism in the Philippines

Sister G’s baptism was great! They were so happy. We went to their house every day last week to make sure she was all ready for her baptism. They have a ton of faith. We've been having some problems in the barangay where they live and where we spend a ton of our time because we have a lot of investigators there. Filipinos love to gossip and in a pretty rural place like that gossip travels very quickly. The G family overheard a ton of our investigators and stuff getting together and bad-mouthing us. And some people are ignoring and being really rude to the G family because of Sister G’s baptism. But they say that they don't care and people can say whatever they want. Their attitudes are really inspiring. So we are trying hard to find people to fellowship them so they feel really welcome at church since not so much in the barangay any more.

Sister G was so cute when she bore her testimony after her baptism. She had it written down because she was very nervous. She said she knows this is the true church and some other stuff like that and said and I'm thankful to Sister Mortell and Sister La Torre for hiking to my house to teach me about the gospel. It was so sweet. I am just very happy for their little cute family. Also, surprise…Brother G got advanced to the office of Priest on Sunday.

I'm really good friends with the Samoan sisters now and I'm so glad they live with us because they are awesome.

Anyway, terrifying moment of the week--There I was, peacefully taking a shower, washing my hair. Then all of a sudden I saw these huge hairy legs wrap around the clock in our bathroom. I barely had time to wrap my towel around me, and then I burst out of the door. I discovered it was a spider literally the size of my hand with my fingers extended. I am not exaggerating! It was the most terrifying moment of my life. Also, the other day, Sister T "killed" a cockroach and put it in the trash. 30 min later I opened the trash and a headless cockroach leaped out at me. It was so scary.

Oh sad...Remember the less active girl that we finally found last week? We went to visit her again yesterday (hiked for like 25 min to get to her hut) then we went to shake her hand and ask how she was and she said not good and then ran away. So we asked her brother what was going on and he just said "wala daw" which means "she says she's not here." So that was pretty depressing.

Good news. Manny and his cousin and his sister came to the baptism. And Manny and his cousin came to church the next day! Hooray! His mom even gave us all a ride in their car. It's the first time I've seen Manny wearing clothes. Usually he's wearing these little boxer shorts with his white tank top tucked into them.

We went to go contact a referral last week. So when you're looking for someone here you just have to ask people because there are no house numbers or street names. So this group of kids was helping us find this girl and then they spot her at the end of the street and just yell "Hoy! Armie!" so loud and sooo many people were just staring at us. Then the girl didn't hear so they took off sprinting to get her….This herd of little boys sprinting to tell this girl that the missionaries are looking for her. Then we talked to her and had to just teach her in a field because her house was too far and she had to go somewhere and the little kids were sooo amazed by me. They were fighting and like tackling each other to get to hold my hand. I had 4 kids on each arm and the rest were just staring at me. They told me my "color contact lenses" were beautiful and couldn't believe it was natural. They kept feeling my skin the whole entire lesson. They were so cute. Then, haha, they gave us the names of all of their families and begged us to come visit again. So hopefully we'll be able to get some investigators from that!

Sometimes it is really, really hard, but I'm seeing that it's worth it. It was very special to be a part of Sister G’s conversion and her baptism. I loved seeing the changes that they made as their testimonies grew.