Rain Showers

So, we had a lot of rain this last week. It was great because most people were at home when we came by to teach them, but the bad news was that not quite as many people were out for us to contact...oh well.

Because of the rain, the work was kind of slow, it rains so hard here that it isn't usually a good idea to go walk out in it and the members and investigators pretty well insist that you stay in their home until the storm's past...that's going to change here in a few days anyway when the rainy season "officially" starts. Rain, sunshine, or...(can't say snow...um) flood? we need to go out and help people understand the importance of their salvation and the importance of sacrifice in order to do so.

We started teaching the cousin of Christine, the second awesome recent convert I have, this past week and it's going pretty well. Christine has gotten to the point where she understands my broken Tagalog most of the time and was able to help answer some of her cousins questions. It was an awesome lesson! We got to get to know Deseray better and she even went to church yesterday! We're teaching them later today, sobra mesaya ako! I really don't want to leave this area, but that is probably going to change here in the begining of June during transfers if the Lord needs me elsewhere in the Angeles Mission.

Speaking of rain, we had just gotten back from work on Friday and just finished our daily planning and updating our area book when it started to rain...when it rains here, it always rains hard and, because we love it when it rains, Sister foukimoana called out "I'm going to shower in the rain!"  and quickly changed into

shorts and a t-shirt and grabbed her showering stuff and ran outside. I just laughed, grabbed my camera, and took a couple of pictures, then changed into shorts and t-shirt myself and went outside for a different purpose: frogs. I have mentioned that Sister Foukimoana doesn't like frogs right? They tend to come out while it's raining...and I had seen some pretty malaking sized ones that looked easy enough to catch. I walked out the back of our apartment and was fortunate enough to see a bullfrog the size of the palm of my hand when it's sitting after taking two steps. I cornerd it, caught it, and then proceded to walk around the side of the apartment to the side Sister Foukimoana was and proceded to chase her around our ward mission leader's home (they're our front-door-neighbors) for the next three minutes. Immature? Probably. Was it worth it? Oo! Did I get a picture of it? Hindi. I didn't even think about grabbing a camera, but everyone was laughing in the end, so that's the important thing. There are times where I feel like I should just have a camera strapped to my forehead with some of the things that we've walked through, sat in, and seen...like a fish swimming in the middle of the road while it was raining...true story! I love teaching though, sometimes it's hard, but it's always worth it when we find the ones who just get it, who just feel it, who just know it, and who just do it.

I talked about laughing at yourself and the things you do wrong last time I wrote, that's because of an important fact of life. Christ commanded His followers to "become perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (don't remeber and don't have enough time to look up reference), we are NOT perfect, but we have the potential to become perfect. This is ususally an overwhelming prospect for people sometimes (including me), but the goal is "to be better today than yesterday, and better tomorrow than you were today" (Pres. Lorenzo Snow), for me that means laughing at myself and asking people to correct my grammar when I say something out of order (almost all the time). The only way that we can become as perfect as our Father in Heaven, is through the Atonement of Christ, who suffered all our weaknesses and infirmities to "know how to succor us" in our times of weakness (Alma 7: 12).

Mahal ko kayo

Sister Jones