Chelsea - November 14, 2016

One of our members house totally was destroyed by the typhoon and this is the new house they are building. They are living in a tent meanwhile.

Joanna's Baptism

Alma, Alwina, Angel, and Darwin!! favorite fam :) 

Hi everyone :) 

So this week was great! We are back in Tugue and on Monday we spent the whole day cleaning our house because it was so gross! But it's back to normal and we are doing good! We are actually also in the process of finding another house in our main area so it's closer to the other sisters area! 

On Wednesday we had just gotten out of the hospital and into our area when the other sisters called. Sister Caduada had some kind of heart problem and the Hiatts were going to take her and Sister Kjar to Cauayan and they were going to leave Sister Fielding with us. And so we got to train her for a couple days! I was pumped because I had always wanted to train in english! haha it was great though. Sister Fielding is an awesome missionary and it was so fun to train her. I've definitely realized how much I've grown as a missionary! We talked about the spirit and teaching people according to their needs. 

On Friday, we had a return appointment with one of our investigators Lunabel and right when we started the lesson I felt like we should extend a baptism date and so we did! She totally accepted and it was so funny because she was like where do I go to get baptized? We feel like she is really going to start progressing! The only thing is, is that she's not married to her boyfriend and they have a child.... and her boyfriend is living somewhere else working, but we'll get there when we get there! 

Haha definitely had some funny moments with Sister Fielding. This is her first cycle in the Philippines and she studied spanish for 3 years like me in high school and so we were teaching the Temporal family about missionary work and she was the one to share the scripture verse and she was trying to say "work hard" in tagalog even though there's like no exact translation and she was like kailangan natin na trabaho mucho" haha me and sister atutubo looked at each other and were like mucho??? what is that??? hahaha turns out it was spanish! Also she was saying the prayer when we were going to Joanna's baptism and she said nagpapasalamat po kami sa oportunidad na ito na punta kami sa pagbabayad sala ni joana. hahaha which means we're grateful for the opportunity that we have to go to joanna's atonement hahahahaha. We were laughing so hard. She kept getting baptism and atonement mixed up and man we've laughed so hard! But she's great and will always just keep going despite the mistakes. 

Anyways, we had Joanna's baptism this week and that was just super fun to witness :) We asked her what she felt like when she was baptized and she said that she just feels like a new person. We are so happy for her and her family because all they need is the dad to get baptized and then they can be sealed! 

Also had an amazing lesson yesterday grabe!!! One of best moments of my mission seriously. So basically there's this family, the mom is Alma and the daughter is Angel and they are both recent converts. Her husband was supposed to get baptized but he couldn't stop smoking and basically he doesn't care about the church anymore. Whenever we taught him, he didn't really listen or care...so these past couple of weeks, I've just felt like we need to go back and teach brother darwin even though we know he's not that interested. When we went to church on sunday, he was there with his daughter! Sister Alma was gone because she just had a baby. The bishop then told us that he even came to church last week before we got here! We were so surprised! So after church, we went to visit Alma and her new baby Alwina and then we taught brother darwin. It was so cute because we were all sitting on the bed with the mosquito net over us and they were all together as a family and we reviewed the restoration and brother darwin remembered everything! We then extended the baptismal date of Dec 17 and he accepted and he said he was excited! We were just so shocked. The spirit was sooo strong in that lesson, and it was like brother darwin had totally changed and that the Lord was softening his heart! This has definitely been the effect of never ending prayers from alma and angel and the ward and I really think the Lord is pushing bro darwin and helping him. He's been chewing gum and eating candy so he won't have the urge to smoke so he can get baptized on Dec 17! Man, what a miracle! I know that God lives and that he's so aware of us and those we love and if we come to him with a willing heart, He will help us be the people we need to be! I know this church is true and I know that god loves us. Sorry  my grammar is so bad.... Love you all!  

Sister Dunn