Hellooooo my lovely friends and family! Admittedly, this week was a tough one. Persecutions may rage, and mobs may combine, but no unhallowed hand can stop the work! haha I learned a lot about being positive and being forgiving this week. It's hard when the harder you work, the more criticism you get. But it's okay because not everyone is going to like how you do things and people are going to criticize the things you do, but it's important that we do things not to please other people, we do things to please our Father in Heaven. I've learned that my accountability is to the Lord and no one else. And that it's important to forgive 70 times 7! In the scriptures Christ says that those who do things to be praised of man have their reward - the praise of man. But for those who do things for their Father in Heaven, their reward is in Heaven. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have the latter!
SOOO guess what people?? You know when you sit back and think about where you were a few months ago and you realize you're so different. That happened to me with the language. I realized that if need be, I could teach a whole lesson by myself. I really have progressed so much. There's still a lot I don't understand, but man has the Lord blessed me! I can do this! haha
A huge blessing this week was as follows: so our biggest struggle is getting our investigators to actually attend Sacrament meeting. It's like once they attend they always want to attend again and again and it leads to baptism. So our first step is getting them to church. We've only had one or two investigators attend church at a time since I've been here, but this week we had... wait for iiiitttt... FIVE! Oh my heck I was SO SO happy. Fasting works, man! One of which is named Rosalio and he was a referral from a less active member. He's 9 years old. We taught him a few times this week and he attended church and LOVED it! He had so much fun in primary and kept telling me all about it. The Gospel equals pure joy, people. I'm so excited for him and he's excited to be baptized!
On Saturday we attended Tatay Tanada's 83rd Birthday Party. Basically a Filipino birthday party is just eating the entire time. SOO much food, man. But I absolutely adore the Tanada family. Nanay is so strong in the Gospel and she's been singlehandedly reactivating all of her children and grandchildren. She's so loving and Christlike. She reminds me a lot of my mom, so that's probably why I love her so much. Tatay is getting old and can't really function very well anymore but every time I shake his hand he smiles and says "thank you, sister" and then he smiles at his use of English. haha I LOVE these people.
SO today we went to Sobang Park, and there will be pictures to follow. Basically I live in paridise and It's SOSO pretty here. Why is there no ocean in Utah? haha
Welp, that's all folks! I love you! Diyos Mabalos!
P.S. That's 5 weeks in a row with 50 lessons! Hard work pays off, people!
Sister Wilkins
