"Fingertoes" and Brown Outs

This week was a pretty good week, but exhausting. We hit our goal of teaching 25 different lessons this week, so that was really good. The week has been really busy and I haven't gotten much sleep. So when the power goes out here, it is called a brown out.We have had brown outs two nights in a row. I went to bed with my fan blowing and woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat because no electricity means no electric fans. You should know it's 8am as I write this and its 92ºF but feels like 104º with humidity. I have to say it's pretty miserable, but luckily the brown outs don't last that long, maybe an hour or two. Ever since the two nights in a row, we have been praying for no more brown outs, at least during the night. Our prayers have definitely been answered! THE CHURCH IS TRUE! haha....but, Seriously it is!!

Despite the heat and the brown outs and the bugs, I have really loved being here. The kids here are my favorite. They are so funny and so helpful. The other day we went to teach out in this area called Guribang. One of my favorite families lives there and so I love this part of our area. After we teach with that family, the kids like to follow us and introduce us to their friends. Little missionaries in training. Gotta love the help. In school they are learning English, so sometimes they try to practice on me, and they help me with my Tagalog and Illacano in return. One 11 year old girl asked me what the words are for fingers and toes. In Tagalog, the word for finger is the same for toes. I explained that fingers are on your hands, and toes are on your feet. Later she asked me, "Sister Koncurat, why do you only have four fingertoes?" haha. Sister Lamac and I laughed at that one. 

Anyway, the work is hard, but so worth it. Although that language is hard for me to speak, I am understanding a lot better than before though. The spirit has been so strong in our lessons and that is so great to feel. The people are just too nice to say no to us when we ask if we can teach them, which is both a good and a bad thing. Good that we can get in, but bad because they tend to get our hopes up and they don't really mean it.  So far we have no progressing investigators, but we have a couple of strong potentials. We taught three different lessons this week that just made me so happy. As we were teaching, one of the investigators said that she has felt goosebumps every time that we come see her and she feels that happiness that we explained was the spirit. By the end she said that she wanted to come to church with us. It was so exciting! Sadly we stopped by her house on Saturday and no one was home. Her neighbor said she went out of town with her husband. It was a little disappointing, but there is still hope! Another time we were teaching another investigator, and she said the same thing about the goosebumps. So cool! And the third one, I was thinking that we should stop teaching this one family. They haven't really seemed interested in the previous lessons, but we thought we would visit them at least one more time. This time they were a lot more active in the lesson, asking questions that totally lead into the next part of the lesson. It was great, and afterwards they started saying that they were more interested. Sometimes it is hard to know the intentions of people, but overtime, it may just lead to something. Patience is key, right?

So...all is well here in the pines...I am running low on my Benedryl stick already, what can I say...mosquitos love me! 

Have a most awesome week everyone!

Love,

Sister Koncurat