Oh man I miss y'all! I wish i had time to just type out responses to everything y'all wrote but now with the shortened email time, I am low on time always. So just know I miss y'all and wish I could've been there for the snow, family memories, fun Christmas traditions, and all. I miss y'all a lot around the Christmas season. Its still hot as ever here so doesn't quite feel like Christmas but I wish i could be with my family during my favorite part of the year.
My week has been good. Not quite as successful as last week but successful nonetheless. We found 10 new people and had SEVEN people at church which is HUGE. Seven investigators that is. We had more than 7 people at church in total haha. But we are on track to have about 5 baptisms this month which is SO EXCITING! So even though I won't be having a white Christmas in terms of snow, i will be having a white Christmas in terms of baptisms. Thats what we call it here. White Christmas because the people getting baptized of course wear white(: So yay!!!
Last Monday, we went fishing with my District at the resort in our area. We caught like 50 fish but they were all too tiny to eat but still super fun! We did it with water bottles and fishing reel so super filipino i loved it(: Made me think of our fun fishing trips with family. I love those memories. Oh and then also while teaching a lesson to an inactive member, he exclaimed that "Whoa, you're so brown! You are no longer American, you are now Filipino! You came here white and now you are brown!" Hahah it was cute and now I've been called a Filipino by my language skills and my skin sooo sorry family, I may come home a different race;)
Also, some funny, but neat things happened this week. So first, I was kind of feeling down one day just one of those days. A mission has them(: But I was reading in a Liahona and randomly caught my eye on an article from Randal Wright and it said "the author is from Texas, USA" so that was kind of a cool blessing. Out of all the magazines I could read when feeling down, I chose that one that happened to have an article from a dear friend of ours. Proof that God knows us and is looking out for us. It was all about sleep and how important it is for every aspect of our health which was a cool theme. And then second, Sister Ignacio and I had just gotten done teaching a lesson outside when all of a sudden we heard the youth theme song "Press Forward" playing. We found out it was coming from a random car wash, so naturally we walked over and asked if they were members. They said they weren't and that he, the guy playing the music, had gotten that song from a friend who also wasn't a member. So we have no idea where they got that song but it was cool to hear a church song being played in the city for everyone to hear. Definitely allowed the spirit to be felt and we gave them a pamphlet and hopefully it will spark interest in them. I don't know, but just kinda cool.
As for my subject line, this week was full of service. I don't know how this went in the United States or what, but for #LightTheWorld, December 1 was an official "Day of Service", so this last Saturday, we arranged with four different families to serve them (mostly gardening and weeding). Which this last Wednesday, we spent three hours weeding and cleaning a garden for a less active which was actually therapeutic for me! So I was excited to spend the whole day doing service! Well... the day didn't go exactly as planned hahha. We got up early and went straight to work. Sister Ignacio and I weeded and gardened for three hours at a member's house. We then had two more appointments (because our first one fell through because she forgot about us haha) but they were in the Elder's area so we waited for them to take us. Well, Elder Jarvis (the american companion) wasn't feeling well, so we ended up dropping our two appointments and running around town buying medicine, gatorade, bread, cooking soup for him, and just doing all sorts of things to help him feel better since he couldn't get out of bed. It turns out (he's in the hospital right now in Bacolod) that he has Dengue and is super super sick so pray for him! But a day when we expected to weed people's gardens all day, turned out to be a day full of different kind of service, trying to help a fellow friend. So that was kind of cool, because at the end of the day I still felt as though I had spent the day in service, even though it wasn't through the conventional way. It proved to me that service doesn't have one definition or it doesn't even need to be huge, just as long as you have a heart of service inside of you, you can still feel immense joy from serving those around you. I love this gospel and loved the opportunity to serve my Heavenly Father through serving His children!
Love y'all and miss you TONS!!
Sister Robertson
