Called to Serve: MISSIONARY LIFE=BURNT CHICKEN NUGGETS IN VINEGAR

HELLO ANG LAHAT!

Ha...so the subject line pretty much describes our life sometimes... haha that's what me and sister Quiban ate for breakfast this morning while we were deep cleaning the fridge... Haha, we didn't even realize it was weird until halfway through eating it and then I paused and looked at her and was like, "...ano kinakain natin..??" (..what are we eating?) haha we burst up laughing. Life gets weird here.

Well, this transfer has started out great! I'm glad to still be here training my anak :) I really love this area and all of the wonderful people here. We were able to watch General Conference this weekend! Ah. It was not nearly long enough, I loved it so much! I wanted it to still keep going, I was being so spiritually-fueled with everything being said. There were so many of my prayers and pleadings that were answered during Conference.

There was a cute moment as well during the Sunday session, when the choir began to sing, "I Am a Child of God". I was sitting next to Nanay Delia, and she perked up and whispered to me, "This is the song we sang!" Ha, we have sung that song a couple times in lessons with her. She was so happy and she started to quietly sing along. I just smiled. :)

This week, I had a cool experience... We were walking down the street and I saw a woman ahead of us. I really wanted to try to talk to her (we try talking to as many people as we can as we're walking), but as we got closer she started to get into a car. At first, I started to look away like ah, sayang, she's leaving. But suddenly there was almost like a distinct voice in my head that said, "Smile."

I looked back at her even though she was kind of far away, but we ended up catching eyes, and I smiled. She stopped as she was getting in her car and smiled back, "Good Morning!" she almost shouted haha.

"Magandang umaga naman po!" I replied and we began to walk towards her. We ended up talking to her for a good 5 minutes. She was in her late 50's, never married, but she has a PhD, she's been studying like her whole life, she is an absolutely brilliant woman! She told us she would like us to come visit with her sometime, she wants to learn about our church. She's read many things online daw, but she is interested in meeting with us. She is so busy...but we got her information and she took our number and hopefully sometime soon we will be able to teach her. I was just amazed at how the Spirit guided us though. That was the first time in my life that I heard the Spirit as a distinct voice in my head! It was so clear. I walked away feeling so grateful that He blessed me with that prompting.

Me and my anak also decided to do some door-to-door tracting this week... haha I've got to be honest.. I hate tracting. Really. It's awkward, not usually successful...I just don't like it. Ha, I love just street contacting! I love talking to people on the street. That's the kind of contacting I like to do. But I've been wanting to give my anak some experience tracting...kept pushing it off...but last night, we decided to go tract. Well....it was the easiest and best tracting I have ever done. haha! The very first door we knocked on..someone in the window on the second floor answered, "Sandali lang!".....they came down and opened the door, "Pasok!" (come in!) We were like....uhh okay. haha no introductions, no, "Who are you?" but just, come on in! we came in, "Upo kayo!" (Sit down!) they pulled up some chairs for us to sit down. I was so suprised haha we sat down...and were like umm.. hi.

haha we asked them what their names were, introduced ourselves and explained why we were sitting in their house. haha they were unbelievable open and receptive. the main girl that let us in is 22 years old and she knows a little bit about who we are because she has some cousins that are serving missions right now! But she's not a member. We taught her and her 17-year-old sister there in their bahay and they are willing for us to come back! After we left, I just kind of laughed to myself at how much of a miracle that attempt at tracting turned out to be :)

So something I've been struggling with recently with learning the language here is how varied the speaking is here in the city. Almost everyone we come in contact with is not from here, but from other provinces that speak different dialects. So there is virtually no pure tagalog here where I am serving. Everyone has different accents and nobody speaks the pure, deep tagalog. In my area right now, lots of people are really good at english and especially when I'm there they speak in mostly english or tag-lish, even though I'm speaking in Tagalog. It's kind of bumming me out because I really want to learn this language to the deepest point I can. I was talking to another missionary that says in other areas, like Cavite, or San Pablo, the Tagalog is pure, but that you won't ever find that here in our mission.

I have been feeling recently that I'm not progressing really any further in the language, or that I'm even getting slowly worse. Sometimes though, I just can't see my progression in the moment.

Ah...so I'm running out of time. I wish I could share with you all more of my experiences this week. But I've got to go. Thank you all for your love and support and prayers!

It's good to hear from all of you, I'm sorry that I can't reply to everyone with the limited time that I have, but know that I still love you!! SO MUCH!

MAHAL NA MAHAL KO KAYO!

Sister Oyler