Then Sings My Soul: All Things New

Written 1/19/14

Maayong Aga, my loved ones!

Wow, what a week of changes and awesome stuff. Sister Person left Tuesday to go home... It's a weird feeling to kill a missionary. Right now for me, home will never come, it's some far away concept that will never be real. Ahaha. But I said goodbye to her on Tuesday and met my new companion! Sister Natalie Nielsen, and she is the BOMB. We already click so well- I love her. She's from Arizona, and she nannied in PARIS (MEGAN) before her mission. So. Yeah, I think that alone can tell you how well we both get along. :) It's been different, leading the area, but our lessons have been rockin- she's a way sweet teacher and way good in the language. Speaking of the language, I feel like this week it randomly just CLICKED in my brain. It honestly felt like I woke up one day and suddenly I can understand what I need. I know what people are saying in the jeepneys and the streets and in the lessons.... Not everything, but enough to be able to teach. The Lord has given me the words I need to teach our investigators, and it's so exciting to actually be able to converse with these people I love so much. Wow. Gift of tongues is real. Before now, I could understand enough to get along, but it's amazing how the Lord gives you what understanding you need to move the work along. Sometimes I stop and wonder in amazement that I am speaking to these people in a different language, and they are responding! Hah. Weird. On another tangent- The past couple weeks I've been getting everyone's family Christmas cards, and I love it!! Thank you so much, especially to Aunts and Uncles who have been writing and sending cards! I love it so the MOST much.

Sister Smith and Sister Davis got the (dreaded) AP's call last monday after emailing that Sister Smith was transferring. We were so sad, but such is missionary life. We have Sister Arcinas in the house now, a Filipina, and she's super awesome. We all get along really well and love being housemates :) This week we have the girlfriend of one of our less actives getting baptized! I might have talked about K. before, but I can't remember. F. is a (former!!) less active in our ward (he just officially returned to church this week!) and we've been teaching his girlfriend, K. They want to be married in a year in the temple, but we can only teach K. on Friday's and Saturdays. She's been a little spotty here and there on the days she's been able to meet with us, but her interview was yesterday, and we got to teach her before. She passed, and she'll be getting baptized on Saturday! Hopefully F. will be the one to baptize her :) She told us how happy she was to be getting baptized, and even got teary as she shared her excitement with us. Missionary work rocks!

We had a sweet lesson with the J. family this week. (They are the ones we found through a referral... We wandered around for around and hour trying to find them?) Anyway, it was the very first time I've ever sat down in a lesson and felt the Spirit say, "You need to teach about (in this case) Temples." So I thought... Okay, we'll teach about temples! I told Sister Nielsen how I felt and we just went with it. The Lord had totally blessed us, and prepared us for this lesson without us even knowing. Earlier in companionship study, Sister and I had found a tagolog Liahona we wanted to give to T. that night, and it had a huge picture of the Salt Lake temple in it that we wanted to show him. We had planned this really nice lesson for T. about temples, and ended up using a lot of it with the J. family. We've been struggling to get them progressing. Brother has a lot of sincere desire, but keeps getting hung up on the small questions and details and random stuff from the Bible. But seeing their faces as we taught about the temple and showed them the picture... The Spirit was really strong. It got quiet for a bit, and I think the Spirit was really testifying to them that their family could be together forever. They are a pretty young couple, only about 32 and 28 and they have 4 beautiful kids. I really, really hope they get baptized soon- I know how much the gospel really blesses families!

And finally, in our week of miracles, we met a family of 18 children. Um, yes. 18. All from one mother. (Bless her.) And they let us into their home. And we taught them. WOW. We were totally lead by the Lord to them, but long story short, as we walked by their house it was getting dark (it gets dark here at 6 pm) and I saw two kids pumping a bumba by their house (pumping water.) I haven't been able to try that yet, so I told them we didn't have them in America and asked if I could try. They laughed and said yes, so I filled their little bucket there. Sister Nielsen just grabs one of the buckets they have filled there and starts taking it into their house. They are laughing at us, but let us help. Then all these kids start coming out of the house and we started talking to them. Come to find out, they all live there, and there's 18- with a couple of them living in other places with their families. The dad invited us in and we taught a bit of lesson 1. They all sat around and listened, and seemed so receptive. We invited them to church and told them we'd come pick them up on Sunday, and they accepted! But when sister and I went back, there seemed to have been a miscommunication (maybe I can't speak this language as well as I think ;) ) The dad had left with some of the kids to his own catholic church, and the mom told us they were really busy and couldn't come with us... But we will go back! I love them already :) Pray for them.

T. is doing fabulous. He wears his white shirt to church every week and I love it :) We taught him about the temple, and he can't wait to go with the YSA on their temple trip to Cebu for baptisms in April. It's amazing to see him and G. establishing their lives in the church. On Sunday, Sister and I were fasting, and had brought lunches with us to church so we didn't have to go home to each lunch after church, and we could just break our fast there. We may or may not have locked ourselves in a classroom to gobble down our food before K.'s interview after church. Ahaha. The life of a missionary.

Anyway, sorry for the random throw up. I am happy and love love loving this work. Mosiah 24:14-15. So the MOST true. I love being a missionary, and I love you all. Keep sharing your missionary experiences with me- You are all an inspiration!

The MOST love,

Sister Luke