TIME RAN OUT.. :(

HELLO, EVERYONE!!

I am so sorry, I literally have no time to write about this week :( I spent my time trying to find some lds pictures to print off for our investigators..

To put it all in a nutshell...

-EXHAUSTING

-Never-ending miracles!

-pure inspiration

-13 new investigators!! These people are being so prepared!!

-running away from drunk men... (that'll be another story to tell)

-peeing my pants because of ipis (literally, i'm not joking)

-ABSOLUTELY LOVING EVERY SECOND OF MY MISSION!

I love you all so much!

MAHAL NA MAHAL KO KAYO!

Sister Oyler

(Pictures from last week)

 

 

Nose-masking with Sister Andrada!

 

Timboy's school project!

Sister Ordakowski!

and Salve

The kabahays

Ay naku, Mangboy.. (He's 65 years old! Do you believe it??)

 

Ward Valentine's Party

I love my little bundok :)

 

 

(This week's pictures)

 

Sister Ordakowski and I in the computer shop last P-day

 

 

Higad! (caterpillar)

Pinoy version of hackysack

"God knows who does not pay" haha

So yesterday, we were fasting... And we lost our house key... so when we came back to break our fast, we realized we were locked out of our house! We couldn't go buy food cause it was Sunday. Ha! I had an apple in my bag, and Sister Ordakowski had some crackers...that held us over for the rest of the day until we came back around 8:30pm...haha kawawa

 

Always SO tired.

FHE!

 

 

 

  



 

 

 



 



 

 





 

 





 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



THE MIRACLES NEVER CEASE...

This week has been so amazing! Since it's the first week of the transfer, we didn't go on any exchanges yet, so I was so excited to focus all of our efforts on our own area!  And I have just been in awe of His hand in all things. That was one thing I struggled with last transfer, was just hardly ever being in our own area, and I worried that our work would suffer because of it. But at the end of this last transfer and now as this new one starts, we have seen so many  miracles and tender mercies coming from Him. We have so many people that we are teaching that have been so prepared! And baptisms are beginning to line up for March. I just sometimes sit in stunned silence and witness the things that are happening here in our area and I know it is not because of us. This is truly the Lord's vineyard. And He has it all in His hands. Every night, me and my companion literally come in the door and collapse because we are so exhausted. But I have never felt such fulfillment.

The baptism that will be coming the soonest is Timboy! He is 12 years old and his dad is a less-active member that just came back to church. He is so awesome! He always wants us to come teach him every day! And every day that we come back, he has read chapters out of the Book of Mormon and is just jumping with anticipation waiting to tell us about it! He can't wait to be baptized!!

A funny experience happened with cute ReyAnn, too. She's 9, but we still don't have permission from her dad, for her to be baptized. But we go to her every once in a while and have a lesson with her. We laughed when her mom told us, that sometimes, she takes her Book of Mormon and goes outside and plays "missionary" with the little kids! Do you know how when we were all little, we'd play "school" and be like a teacher and stuff. Well, ReyAnn plays "sister missionary" and she goes out and teaches the local kids and reads to them from the Book of Mormon. I love that girl!

Well, this week, I have just been getting eaten alive by bugs!! I don't know what's happened. I woke up in the middle of the night, itching and looked and saw a bunch of bed bugs all over my sheets!! Ay naku! Then, there are these little weird bugs, that have gotten in my bag, and I will start getting bites up my arms as we are teaching lessons. The Permethrin isn't seeming to get them all. I am about to just set everything on fire to get rid of these bugs!! I look like a monkey scratching myself all the time.

So, these last few days, I've been starting to lose my voice...and I think we found out why. My companion told me this morning that every night, I have been non-stop sleep talking. In straight Tagalog and setting up return appointments with people in my sleep!!! Oh my gosh, I feel so bad for my poor companions!  Sister Valikoula was a heavy sleeper, but I think I'm keeping Sister Ordakowski up at night. :( I'll have to get her some ear plugs or something. I don't know what else to do. Hahaha.

So the other day, I had two unique experiences in a row, where the Spirit was literally guiding me. We had discovered a random part of our area that we had never seen before, so we decided to go explore. As we were walking, I just started walking somewhere like I knew where I was going... It's like my feet knew where I was going, but I had never even been in this place before... Sister Ordakowski just followed me and we went right up to this dead end road and for some reason I just kept walking, right up to this little gate at the very end. Right as I got there, a lady came out and I started to talk to her. She was super open and receptive. She said that some missionaries had come to their house one time years ago, but then they never came back. She said that we could come and teach them when her husband was home. So we set a return appointment for her! I was amazed.

Then literally 5 minutes later as we were walking to one of our appointments, I saw a little boy on the side of the road and for some reason I just went right up to him and asked him what his name was and where he lived. He took us down this path to his house and we met his mom, who was happy to see us! But they were busy and she said come back tomorrow. We came back the next day and she was waiting for us to come back! We taught her all of Lesson 1 and she just absorbed it in. It was a powerful lesson, and she accepted the invitation to be baptized!! Hopefully, we will be able to get teach her husband as well and baptize their whole family!

I'm almost out of time, so I've got to go, but I have just been amazed at the work this week. I love being a missionary. It is the most fulfilling thing. I feel the most happy when I know it's not me doing anything, but the Lord. I am just His hands, here in the Philippines, doing what He would have me do, going where He would have me go, and saying what He puts into my mouth.

I know this church is true. It is the loving and perfect way that our Father prepared for us to return to Him again. I just have this burning desire for every one to just understand those simple truths!!

Thank you all for your love! Take care this week!! Oh P.S. Happy Valentine's Day!

Mahal na mahal ko po kayo!!

Sister Oyler

 

P.S.   I'll have to send pictures next week! Sorry!

TRANSFERS AGAIN

HELLO EVERYONE.

ay naku, time is ticking fast.

TRANSFERS are this week!  Sister Valikoula actually left on Monday morning though. She finished her mission! I miss her so much. We had such a great transfer together. But I know she will be happy to be back with her family in New Zealand.

My new companion will be Sister Oradakowski! She was actually my kabahay back in Quirino. She's American, I think actually from Utah too, so it'll be a good transfer. This will be her last transfer too, so...I'll probably be here in Cogeo for a while haha. 

We still have no water in our apartment.. Ha, can you believe it??  And they said we probably won't have water for another 2 weeks!! The local water pump is broken.. The water we have to use is in this big basin out infront of our house...sometimes a water truck will come by and fill it up...sometimes it never comes around, so we usually end up hauling it in a trike to the chapel and filling it up there...and my some miracle, and sweet-talking to a guy that owns a cart-tricyle, we get it back to our apartment. Haha, but the water isn't always that clean....sometimes it has stuff floating around in it, so we have to end up filtering it through some fabric to catch the nasty stuff, before we shower with the water. Ay naku. It's more fun in the Philippines! :)

The only really bad part though is that now our drains are dry....and cockroaches are crawling out of them EVERYWHERE!!    I FREAKING HATE IPIS!!! 

No, I have not overcome my fear.... There were literally like 8 giant cockroaches crawling out of our drain in the kitchen when we got home the other night. I havent stepped foot in our little kitchen area for weeks.. Ahhh patay.

Well, I wish I could tell you about all the amazing things that happened this week, but I honestly have no time. One of the exchanges I got to go on though was with Sister Lopez!!!! It was so good to be back with my MTC companion for a day :) She is doing great!  

We had a really powerful MLC this week. My eyes have been opened. I wish I could write about it right now. But my testimony about the Book of Mormon has deepened by leaps and bounds. I can't even explain right now. But it was an experience that changed me.

I wish I could tell you the stories of our amazing investigators right now. Ahh. But just keep them in your prayers! Especially little Timboy who should be baptized in March. And Jeff, who hopefully will be baptized this month, if he can overcome smoking. We are seeing so many miracles. I wish I just had time to tell you about them all. 

HIGIT SA LAHAT, I love you all so very much. I pray for all of you, I wish I had time to reply to everyone who emailed me. But aside from this email, I've only had time to write to Mom, and then report to my mission president, and also to his wife. But that doesn't mean I don't love each of you SO MUCH. Thank you for all of your support.

I just want to leave you with an excerpt from a talk by Brad Wilcox called, "His Grace is Sufficient". It is a REALLY good talk. I hope you all will read it. I learned so much about grace.

"I have born-again Christian friends who say to me, “You Mormons are trying to earn your way to heaven.”

I say, “No, we are not earning heaven. We are learning heaven. We are preparing for it (see D&C 78:7). We are practicing for it.”

They ask me, “Have you been saved by grace?”

I answer, “Yes. Absolutely, totally, completely, thankfully—yes!”

Then I ask them a question that perhaps they have not fully considered: “Have you been changed by grace?” They are so excited about being saved that maybe they are not thinking enough about what comes next. They are so happy the debt is paid that they may not have considered why the debt existed in the first place. Latter-day Saints know not only what Jesus has saved us from but also what He has saved us for. As my friend Brett Sanders puts it, “A life impacted by grace eventually begins to look like Christ’s life.” As my friend Omar Canals puts it, “While many Christians view Christ’s suffering as only a huge favor He did for us, Latter-day Saints also recognize it as a huge investment He made in us.” As Moroni puts it, grace isn’t just about being saved. It is also about becoming like the Savior (see Moroni 7:48).

The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can live after we die but that we can live more abundantly (see John 10:10). The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can be cleansed and consoled but that we can be transformed (see Romans 8). Scriptures make it clear that no unclean thing can dwell with God (see Alma 40:26), but, brothers and sisters, no unchanged thing will even want to. "

MAHAL NA MAHAL KO KAYO! 

Sister Oyler

 

Jeepney all to ourselves! ( but not for long :) )

 

 

 Singing with the street kids on exchanges in Antipolo

 

 

The cute group that followed me around to sing to me

 

 

 

Teaching Record of "Ton-Ton"

Me and Sister Lopez were reminiscing about the MTC while we were on exchanges and later that night, she pulled out the TR of one of our MTC investigators... We were shocked to realize that one of the lessons we had taught that day had been the very same lesson that we taught together in the MTC exactly one year ago!! I don't believe in coincidences :) We taught about the Restoration on February 5, 2014. And then on February 5, 2015, we happened to be together on exchanges and taught all of Lesson 1, focusing on the Restoration. :) 

 

 Cutest bread!

My anak!

 

As we were coming out of district meeting on Monday, the power lines in the road just collapsed.... Yeah... It's more fun in the Philippines.

 

My companion is gone :( Going solo, working with a ward member.

(Salve, Timboy, Hanna, and Naui)

 

 

ONE YEAR NA.

KAMUSTA ANG LAHAT?

Hello, everyone! I can't believe I have hit my ONE-YEAR MARK in the mission. I went into the MTC on January 29, 2014. I can't even grasp the fact that another year has already passed. The time goes too fast for me. I have no idea how many months/weeks or whatever I have left, because I don't want to count. I don't want to go home... (Haha sorry mom.) This is such an amazing work.

Gosh this week has been crazy and amazing and fun. We got to go on exchanges in Morong!! I want to be assigned there so bad! But I have no time to write, I'll try to hurry.

OH, so guess what? We still have no water in our house!! It's been more than a week now. Haha...and last P-day we were just praying we would get water by the end of the day because Sister Valikoula and I were completely out of clean garments... But by the evening.. we still had no water to wash our clothes. 

So... we had this "brilliant" idea to hike down to this river in our area (by the hanging bridge) to wash our clothes in the clean water of the river. 

Hahaha...oh boy. So here we are, 6:30 at night, carrying 2 big laundry tubs, soap, and our clothes, hiking down these mile-long dirt stairs in the mountain... Haha when we finally made it down to the river, it was already dark. (The sun sets really early in the Philippines). So we had flashlights in our mouths as we washed our clothes!! Haha!

As we started washing, this old tatay came wandering over with a flashlight and started talking to us. We could immediately smell the alcohol on his breath and by the way he was talking, we could tell he was drunk.  But, we found out that he is actually a member!! He was baptized in 1990, but he has been inactive for a long time. His name was Romeo and he lives right by the river. He thought we were thieves trying to steal his chickens. But nope... just 2 crazy foreigners washing their clothes in the river at night. Hahaha, ay naku.

 

 

 

  

When we were done, we had to hike ALL the way back up the mountain loaded with the tubs and all of our wet, heavy clothes. I ended up falling like 3 times! Haha my feet were so wet from the river and my pants that I was wearing were too big for me so they kept falling down. Ha! So I'm like tripping and sliding backwards down the mountain holding this heavy basin and cracking up with a flashlight in my mouth.

Ha. It's more fun in the Philippines.

I have no more time. Ah! Hopefully next week, I'll write about the Sister's Conference that we were able to put on. It was SO GOOD. :) We also got to watch the movie, "Errand of Angels".

Anyway, I have to go. 

MAHAL KO KAYO!

Sister Oyler 

Pictures:

Morong is so beautiful!!

 

SOBRANG GANDA! I want to be assigned here so bad.

 

My legs.... I wish I had time to tell that story. That was a rough night. Haha..

 

 

 

Puttin on my Pinoy pants

 

 

Paglalaba sa ilog!

 

 

I got the squat down!

It was literally by flashlight...

 

 

 Exchanges in Morong! (we were so tired)

 

 

 

 

 

 Sister Wiradi! (from Indonesia)

 

Fiesta na!

Package from Mom

 

Our dinner?....haha

 

Creepy old guys hitting on me, but hey, I got chocolate:)

Thank you, Maricel, for posting these pics!

You are the best member missionary EVER!!!