Two by Two: Philippines Week 69

This week has gone by really fast. It feels like I just emailed you all. This week was filled with spiritual ups and downs as we have been going through our area trying to help people to get ready for their baptisms in March. I am so happy for all of them but it is a little sad for me knowing that I wont get to be there for them. We've spent a lot of time this week working with the branch to make sure that our goals are in line with theirs. But other than that, this was my week:

Monday- We had a family home evening with the Tacuyan family.We played a couple of games. The penalty was getting lipstick drawn on your face--as you can see in the pictures, I won. (No lipstick for me:))

Tuesday- We taught a lot on Tuesday. Then we went to Nanay Silao's to pick some vegetables so that I could cook tinolang manok. There was also a HUGE birthday party at the Mercurio family's cousin's house.... In the Philippines, when there is a party, EVERYONE is invited. So we went and I was actually able to talk to their cousin who lived in America until high school and has been in the Navy. He is actually super interested-and it was fun to whip out some English... I'm not very good at small talk in English.
Wednesday- Sister Hart drank bad water... So the other sisters in the apartment weren't able to work. So we worked half the day in our area and then Sister Manilingan and I went home and Sister Manilingan and Sister Pinto went to work in the other area while I stayed with Sister Hart.
Thursday- I went on exchanges with Sister Bautista! It was super fun. I loved it. I've missed her. It felt so normal teaching with her (I followup trained her in Abucay for 12 weeks). But at the end of the night, we learned that the water pump at our apartment was broken-no water! So I spent about an hour on the phone with repair people, our apartment owner, apartment manager, and Elder Gorringe. All of these people informed me that it would not be able to be fixed for a few days. So I called Sister Dahle who sent President Dahle to pick us up so that we could go take a shower at the mission home. Perks of living down the street from the mission home.
Friday- We has mission president interviews and a big zone meeting. Kind of uneventful. We still didn't have water so we ended up showering and eating dinner at the mission home again.
Saturday- Worked all day. We've started incorporating Mormon messages into our work (my companion has a usb of them) and even though they are in English, they really help invite the spirit.
Sunday- We had a ton of investigators come to church! IT was awesome. Some of them even payed tithing-we were shocked. In our classes, we talked a lot about pagmamahal sa loob ng mag-anak.(Love inside the family) We were all talking about the ways to show love. It made me SUPER excited to see my family.I also went back to the American guy that we talked to at that birthday party. We taught him in English. It was hard. He is fluent in Tagalog as well but we were also teaching his 16 year old daughter who doesn't speak Tagalog. It was a good lesson- although he did drop a couple of bad words that I haven't heard in a really long time :)

SO that was my week. I hope everyone is happy and well.

I love you all and I'll see you in two weeks!

Love, Sister Raynor