Called to Serve: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

HELLO EVERYONE!

Kamusta kayong lahat?

This first week of the transfer has been great!! I got another anak! Ha! There is a sister that just came from the MTC and will be assigned to Mindoro, but they didn't get a flight for her yet, so this whole week, me and my anak adopted her and became a threesome. She is Sister Molar from Bicol, Philippines. Haha it was fun to be able to train her for her first week in the field. She left this morning at about 3am to catch her flight.

So I realized that this week is Thanksgiving!!! There is no Thanksgiving here, of course. haha. So I hope you all stuff yourselves extra much this week. I realized something funny as well... Do you know how I mentioned that our district has started fasting one day each week. And we've set the day to be on Thursdays...so while all of you are feasting this Thanksgiving...we'll be fasting. haha :) But we'll all be in the same spirit of gratitude and Thanksgiving. I hope you all pause an extra while this week and consider at how blessed we are. We have such a loving Father, who is so concerned and eager to bless us. I see witnesses of it every day.

So, we have a cute little investigator, Charles!! He is 8 years old, but my goodness....I am just amazed that he is only 8. When we teach him, it's like a 15 or 16 year old who's talking back to us. He is brilliant! We are teaching his mom, grandma, and uncle, too. But he is really the only one progressing. He is reading the Book of Mormon and asking questions..good questions!! I am just blown away with him. :) I also bought him a Book of Mormon Stories picture book so he can understand a little more. He came to church with us yesterday! We picked him up and went with him. He was all ready and excited to go with his Book of Mormon and some snacks in a Cars lunch box. It made me smile. :) It's hard though because with the rules here in our mission, we can't baptize any body under 12 years old unless we baptize the parents too. I'm hoping we can get his Mom progressing. I know little Charles will be the way for his family to accept the gospel :) After church, when we dropped him off, his mom said that she wanted to come next week! We were so happy!

So yesterday, we split to be able to teach more lessons in one day. My two mga anak went together and I worked with Maricel. It was such a good day! I could see the Lord's hand in the work. We were able to teach Maricel's cousin who is from Bohol but here in Manila as he applies to work on ship. It was such a good lesson, he had so many good questions. We ended up teaching all of lesson 1 and I could just see that he was soaking it all in. I could see how smart he was and how much his soul was hungry for the knowledge that his Father has for him.

We were also finally able to contact Hernan again!! Do you remember him? The Balut man with a Book of Mormon? He was finally home when we stopped by! We went right in and taught him a lesson. He was so ready and receptive. He said he has been discouraged that we haven't stopped by because he is so busy. But he said he has been praying that we would come. And yesterday we were able to teach him and his nephew! It was a great lesson as well!

So...Maricel and I also got attacked by a bottle rocket gang....ha. While we were crossing the highway on the bridge there were 3 little boys playing with bottlerockets and they thought it was funny to shoot them at us! We went running!! as they shot them off after us!! Then they started chasing us lighting them on the way. I felt like I was in the middle of a war!! Ahh! Haha I was so scared but it was also kind of funny...haha we were laughing but running for our lives hahaha. But we didn't get hit. I know we are protected :)

Sorry, the internet went down and back up again, but I am running out of time, so I've got to go. I wish I could go into more detail about this week. It truly has been a great week for us. I hope you are all doing well too!! Enjoy the snow that you'll be getting! That's something I'll miss this Christmas.

MAHAL NA MAHAL KO KAYO!!

Sister Oyler