Philippines Week 50

I have five months left on my mission.

I remember back in February when I still had 13 months left on my mission. It felt like forever. I was so excited for those months to pass.

Now, many of those months have passed. I am still a little bit excited to see my family…(that might be an understatement.) I am very excited to see my family but now the thought of going home is exciting but that thought also contains a little bit of sadness and dissatisfaction. 

I love my mission. Sure, there are many, many ups and downs but it is all so worth it. I worry that time will continue to go by too fast! I still feel like I have so much to do. There are so many more people that I need to talk to here! (We did the math- if I talk to 30 people a day each day of my 18 months, that’s about 16,200+ people!) 

For the next five months, I am going to actively be talking to those 16,000 (plus some).  President Dahle once told me “I don’t care what you say but say something.” I have decided to have that become my new motto. We don’t have time to not share.

I know that 16,000 people is not all the people in the Philippines. But I know that “what we do is one drop in the ocean but if we didn’t do it, the ocean would be one drop less.” (Elder Holland quoting Mother Teresa)

• I got to watch General Conference--it was the best.
• There was a full red moon eclipse in the Philippines. Interesting. The end is near :)
• I'm sending a TON of pictures because my camera broke and so I made my first "big" purchase of my mission and bought a new camera. SO you should expect 20+ pictures every week. I am going to use it a ton to make sure that it was worth buying :)

I love you all! I hope everyone is having a great week. 

Love, Sister Raynor

baha. (flood)

Cooking fish for lunch!  

The calagos kids.  The mom, dad, and three of the kids were just baptized last week. The grandmother and aunt and uncle will be baptized next month. 

Also, if anyone wants a little Asian baby, I could probably buy one in the market. I'm just kidding, that is totally racist and inappropriate but they are pretty cute...

Me and my housemates last week.

There is a white guy in the background... that's a thing here--old white men come here and marry super young pretty Filipina women.

One of the mountains that we climb everyday. 

Cooking pancit bihon with Sister Colina (one of my housemates).  Its like the ultimate filipino party dish-- I'll make it for you when i get home.

Lesson with the Calagos family.

The beautiful philippines.

Housemates and me.