Let me tell you one
weird experience from this week. We were going to teach a less active member.
So, we walk in and there is just the oldest, grumpiest, scariest lady sitting
in the middle of the room. She also has this weird cigarette stub in her mouth
that I'm really confused about because it wasn't lit. Anyway, I walk in and
stick out my hand and introduce myself and she refuses to shake my hand and
just says, "Just sit down." So we sit down and our friend turns off
the TV and the old lady freaks out and starts to yell at our friend in Ilocano.
Then Sister Bircher tried to ask her what her name was and she said "I
already told the missionaries my name" and we said, "We have never
met you" and she said, "The other missionaries ..." and refused
to say her name. Then our friend told us it was her mom and what her name was.
Then we were about to start the lesson so we asked if we could turn off the TV
and she just looks at us with an evil look in her eye and says "Ayaw"
then translates it into English "I do not like" then our friend tried
to make her leave and she started to yell in Ilocano and then she just looks at
us and says to us in Tagalog, "I ask your forgiveness" something like
that and it was super hateful. Then she just mockingly gets on the ground and
starts to kneel before us like mocking us and "asking our
forgiveness" because we asked to turn off the TV. Our friend kept
apologizing to us and trying to force her to go away but she refused so we
taught the lesson with that scary woman staring at us the entire time. As we were saying goodbye, we tried to shake
her hand and she refused and just glared at us. Our friend just kept
apologizing over and over.
We’ve been teaching
another lady. Our lesson yesterday was the most exhausting lesson ever. This
lady has a really strong desire to learn and to understand our message but she
gets confused SO easily. It also doesn't help that she mainly speaks Ilocano
and not very much Tagalog. We taught the Book of Mormon so simply and here
were the things she was confused about: she thought Joseph Smith was in the Book
of Mormon then he slept for thousands of years and an angel named Moroni came
and woke him up and then he got the Book of Mormon, she thought the Book of Mormon
was a summary of a bible, and then she thought the Book of Mormon prophets were
the same ones from the bible just with different names. She just takes what we
say and gives it this weird connection in her head. Oh, and we said that Joseph
dug up the plates from a hill and she kept saying "oh Mount Sinai! with Moses."
So she was super hard to teach but she is super eager... she went and got a
notebook and was taking notes as we were speaking!
Oh, here's a good story. A few weeks ago someone
from the mission office called us and said there was a less active member in our area
that no one knew about. We tried to contact her 10 billion times but she was
never home (we finally found her house after a big ordeal). Oh, and we thought
we’d been given a fake name because her name sounds like it is from Dr. Seuss. So
we finally contacted her on Saturday. Coincidentally, she lives in the nicest
house besides the mission home or the Dinkel’s house that I’ve ever been in in the
Philippines. Anyway, we had a really good lesson with her and she said she was
baptized in the 70s, then she went inactive because she went to work abroad in
China so she stopped going to church in the early 80s. She said lately she had
been thinking she was going to come back to church. So luckily we found her! Hopefully
she will come back after 30 years of inactivity!
Also, we received another referral and the person that
referred her to us literally knew nothing about her except that she was nice
and her first name. She wasn't even sure if she was a member or not! So we had
no one to teach so we went to contact her. She also lives in a really nice
house. So we show up and she just says, "Oh, come in sisters." Turns
out she used to investigate the church about 4 years ago. She just went and got
her Book of Mormon which was right next to the TV and let us teach her. She
reads the Book of Mormon sometimes and we had a really good lesson with her. We
have less active members that we teach twice a week that have to go search for
the Book of Mormon and finally find it in a random cupboard every visit. So,
hopefully we'll be able to teach her! She super nice and also has perfect English!
(We teach in Tagalog, but it's comforting to know that if there's the
occasional word we don't know we can say it in English.)
Our investigator with the next baptismal date is
good. His family is the cutest family in the entire world. I love them so much.
He needs to come to church every week until his baptism because he needs 4 weeks
in a row. He was 5 minutes late last Sunday and it was awful. We were so so
worried he wouldn't come. But then he walked in with his wife and his baby and they
were so cute and they even came to the gospel principles Sunday school class! (We’ve been trying to get
him to come because usually he just goes to the gospel doctrine Sunday school class). He’s really
excited for his baptism.
We teach
less active members just as much as we teach investigators. The standard of
excellence in our mission is 15 recent convert and less active member lessons a
week (at least 10 less active lessons) and 10 investigator lessons each week. We
were 1 lesson away in each category this week. We teach about 25 lessons a week
usually. We need to figure out
how to spread our lessons out... last week we either had 6 lessons a day or 2
or 3. Six lessons a day in 8 hours of proselyting means a whole ton of speed
walking between appointments! We are really busy. There are recent converts we've been putting off
for weeks because we never have time to go to them!
I feel like I'm in
the groove of being a missionary. My Tagalog is okay, I don't have culture
shock anymore, and I actually really like being a missionary now 90% of the
time. Last night we were talking about how sometimes when we're at our
apartment we forget we are in the Philippines because it's just Americans and
our apartment is pretty nice. Then this morning, I had a rude awakening of
where I actually was. I opened the cupboard under the sink to get some bleach
and an overwhelming stench hit my nose. Upon further investigation, I
discovered a halfway decaying dead lizard. So that's gross.
Here are a few
random items.1. I cannot believe JK Rowling would doubt herself. Hermione and Ron are the perfect couple.
2. I have lately
taken up running in the morning with Sister Dial.
3. Everyone had
school off for Chinese New Year. There were a few fireworks but that was pretty
much it.
President Balledos, Sister Dial and her companion, Sister Dinkel, Ally and her companion
Love you! Have a wonderful week
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