.: Week 23 Sunshine, Daisies, and a baptism :)

Week 23

Dear Fam and Frieeendly people,

Hello everyone, I hope everyone had a good week as always. I really can't believe its November already, the past 5 months have just flown RIGHT by haha. I still feel so new at everything but I bet that is how I will feel on the mission...I still have moments of, "well that was a first..." So I feel like when I can stop saying that then I will be old in the mission. Anyway about the week, this week was a challenging one pero sobrang masaya ako kasi nackaroon po kami ng binyag noong sabado! We had a few really awesome things happen with our investigators this week too! I feel like I have been here long enough to make friends with our investigators and have talked to people enough that they are starting to see that we aren't scary people trying to bring them to the dark side...we are just normal people who devote 14 hours everyday to teaching and converting them...same thing right...? Haha on to the week!

So lets start out with the best part of the week. Paulie's baptism! :) All I can say, I am happy to have been apart of Paulie's conversion process. This is the first person that I have taught and found, then finished his teaching to the end...and it just felt so good! It was an awesome service and Paulie was just SO ready. He shared with me right before he went back, he turned around and was like Bishop Zarbock...yes he calls me a bishop...I just wanted to say that I am so grateful for you. And it just brought tears to my eyes holy cow. So grateful to have met someone who seeks for the truth so diligently. Baptisms are always an amazing thing to apart of, but the best part is when the whole event was over and my cute trainee was like, "well what's next?" haha, we go out and do the whole thing again.

Paulie's BAPTISM!!

Paulie with his kids--they're up next wait and see!

Paulie and Jerry--previous baptism of ours!
My two favorite guys of Makati 4th Ward!

Next is Trisha Kate--SHE CAME TO CHURCH :) We had an awesome lesson with her and talked about the importance of church. Trisha Kate is so cool. Sister Guiuo and I just love teaching her. She is 15 and I feel like I can relate to her SO much. We invited her to a youth activity and we showed up to pick her up and she and her cute friend were all dressed up in their cute little dresses and I think she had a good time. So she is really progressing, fingers crossed she keeps building that desire.

I had a way awesome Gift of Tongues day on Thursday--All I can say is GOD IS GOOD....sometimes in my morning prayers, I've really started to be specific with the things that I need or want to accomplish in that day. And Thursday was an awesome day. I was teaching a lesson to Amalia (one of our investigators), and I walked out of the lesson and Sister Guiuo turned to me and told me that that lesson was so smooth, no mess ups, no nothing--and I literally fist bumped, punch danced for a good 30 seconds--I am all about the tiny victories here haha

To finish off, we just started to teach our first family! I have never taught a whole family before and we had the opportunity this week. I LOVE it. The wife's name is Almera and she and her husband have been through a lot and their 4 kids, one of their kids had almost passed away from an illness or something. And there is honestly such a special spirit when you can teach a family about how they can be together FOREVER. I hope they progress, hoping for good things.

I did mention that this week was a little bit of a challenging one, just the bumps and bruises that come with missionary work. But we went to this youth activity and I was feeling a little down, a little discouraged--but we were able to watch a Face to Face conference with Studio C (BYU TV show) and I was just kinda taking a minute to unwind for a second and then I caught a little bit of an answer one of the actors answered about the atonement. And he said something like, "I do my best and I know it still isn't THAT good, but thats where the Atonement comes in and I have to be humble enough to have Christ help me" and honestly it just brought me back to thinking about the power of the atonement. We need to be humble enough for it to help us.

Love you all and I hope everyone has a week full of sunshines and daisies ;)

Love,

Sista Zee