☼ Mabuhay ♥ from the Philippines Laoag Mission!: 2nd week!

Dear family,

Well, the mosquitoes are being more well-behaved this week. I think it’s because I remembered to wear insect repellant. I actually haven’t had any huge problems with bugs in my house. It’s a blessing.

I think the Laoag area is pretty rural. However, Laoag is a pretty decent size. I think there might be a mall there. The town I am serving in seems like it might be about the size of Mount Pleasant. We have to go shopping for food in an adjacent city, but we bought produce last week here in Paoay. My mission President wanted to keep the new sisters semi close to Laoag. I don’t know if I’ll be assigned further out later.

My trainer, Sister Asuro, is really great. She is very patient and kind. She likes to run, so we exercise together every morning. She also likes to eat healthy, so we get lots of vegetables, and we usually just share food, rather than each shopping for our own food. I’m learning a lot from her about humility and prayer, and loving others. She is a good example to me.

It has been raining quite a bit. Almost every day. In fact, right now it is raining super hard, and it has been all morning, and our house is flooded downstairs. Luckily we don’t have anything on the floor that can’t get wet, and our bedroom is upstairs. So we’re just chilling up here in our room right now. I guess we’ll try to deal with the water downstairs after the rain stops.

We wake up at 5 a.m. on P-days to do our laundry. We wash it by hand. It’s been taking about 2 hours each P-day to do our laundry. I like getting it done in the morning so I can have more time the rest of the day.

We have a big bucket in the bathroom with a scooper for showering. It’s actually not a bad way to shower. I thought it would take longer than a normal shower, but it doesn’t. And the cold water feels really nice because it’s hot.

Well, missionary work is definitely work. It’s good though. It’s a great experience to be able to bear my testimony every single day. I’ve really been learning a lot about how important it is to always have the spirit with me. The more of the spirit I have when I am teaching, the more I know what people need and how to help them. On Wednesday we visited Brother and Sister Degollado. Brother Degollado is not yet a member. As we talked with him, I felt the Spirit testify through me that he needs to be baptized.

It’s incredible to see miracles happen. Whenever the spirit is present while we are teaching and those we are teaching feel it, I count it as a miracle. We planned to visit a less active family at 5 pm today, but they weren’t home, so we decided to find. We found an old lady named Gartrudis at her house, and she invited us in. She is 82 years old and reminds me so much of Grandma Gunn because she seemed so tickled that we would come to visit her, and she was very receptive to what we taught. We taught her about prayer, and the proper way to pray, and she said she would start praying that way. We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she said she would read it. She was just tickled pink that we would give her the Book of Mormon as a gift. She said we can return to teach her.

I know the gospel is true!

Love, Sister Lisa Boekweg