New Investigators!!

Yup... you read that right!  We actually have new investigators... 5 of them!  Okay, so right now they're technically still only potential investigators, but we taught an actual lesson to all of them and have return appointments with all of them so yeah... I'm pretty darn excited!  The first two are Alex and Nora.  I met them while working with Sister Wilson about a month ago when Sister Quinco was sick.  Sister Wilson OYM'd (open your mouth) to them and we got their contact info, background, and left.  Sister Quinco and I tried to visit them a few weeks ago, but ended up talking to Carina, another one of our new investigators, instead, who lives a few feet away from them and told us that they were sleeping.  You don't mess with people's nap time here, so we got Carina's info, got to know her a bit better and left.  So last Tuesday, we knocked (actually you don't knock here. instead you yell, "Tao po!" which means, "People!")  on Alex and Nora's door.  Nora answered it and was obviously surprised to see us.  She surprised me by letting us in right away.  She was there, alone, with her four-yr-old daughter, Mary.  She and Alex have three other children, all boys older than Mary.  They're all catholic and pretty religious.  A lot of the Catholic people we've met here don't know very much about their religion, or religion, period, but Alex and Nora do. Alex showed up about half-way through our visit and joined us.  We talked to them about faith and eternal families and Nora soaked in everything we said like a sponge.  Several times throughout the appointment she told us how grateful she was to us for visiting her.  She said that they've had other people of other faiths come and visit them, but we're the first she's let come into their house and she didn't know why.  She said maybe it was just because she wasn't expecting us.  We just smiled.  :)  We told her we knew it wasn't by accident that we were there and shared more about our message.  At the end, we invited her to pray, briefly teaching her how to do so.  She gave a beautiful prayer and I felt the Spirit so, so strongly.  I know everyone else did too, because after she was finished we all just kept kneeling there and then Sister Quinco and I both broke into choruses of "Wow!  Maganda! (Beautiful!)."  Sister Quinco asked her how she felt.  It was funny, she looked really happy, but confused as to why she was so happy.  She told us that she felt really peaceful and happy, and went on to thank us some more for visiting her.  It was awesome!  I'll briefly talk about one of the other investigators we met, Mary Ann.  We were visiting Meriam, one of our less-active members, when her neighbor, Mary Ann saw us and then showed up at Meriam's door as we were about to begin the lesson.  After getting to know her a little bit, we invited her to join us and so she sat outside of the door of the house (Meriam's house is literally the same size, if not smaller, than my bathroom back home) and we taught her.  It was wonderful because Meriam was able to be part of the lesson as a friend and a member instead of the less-active that we are desperately trying to invite to come back to church.  Mary Ann was really interested about eternal families just like Nora had been.  Mary Ann has four kids, I think.  The youngest is less than a year old and super cute!  Mary Ann is also Catholic, but doesn't know very much about religion at all.  As we were teaching, she kept on reading one of the pamphlet's we gave her and then kept reading it.... and reading it.... and yeah, was super interested overall.  We have another appointment with her in a few days.  I'm super excited to visit our new investigators this week.  Really, we've only had one potential investigator since I came here and she ended up not really being interested, so while I enjoy visiting less-active and recent convert members, I'm really excited to get to teach new investigators!  I know a lot of prayers were given that Sister Quinco and I might be able to find investigators.  Thank you!  I feel so blessed that we were able to find them and I'm hopeful that they will all continue to want to let us share our message with them.  :)

One of our zone goals for this transfer is to try to do more service projects.  Our district is supposed to have one once a week but this was the first week we actually had one.  We actually did two, one in the Elders' area and then one in Sister Suminguit's and Sister Tereke's area.  For the one in Elder Malmrose and Elder Holden's area, we helped a rich, non-member clean the backyard of one of her houses.  The house has been a work-in-progress for like, almost ten years now and is the nicest house I've seen since I've been here.  For the other service project we cleaned the backyard of one of the Sister's in our ward.  Both service activities were really fun.  I miss doing work like that and I miss guys, really.  Being with girls 24/7 is fun most of the time, but yeah... I miss my brothers and my dad and my mtc elders and just guys in general.  Sister Tereke found this huge spider on an old ironing board.  She calmly pointed it out to me to which I responded, "Ew. Gross."  We then showed Elder Malmrose and Elder Anderson who both freaked out and started screaming (I was just glad they didn't swear... Elder Malmrose sounded like he was going to)  and they both ran inside the house, still freaking out.  The rest of us were dying of laughter... so much for them being tough men.  The spider then jumped off of the board and scurried off into more of the trash.  The elders screamed again, afraid it was going to come after them I guess.  They spent the rest of our time there working on the opposite side of the yard, jumping at anything that moved, and telling us that if we saw it, we needed to tell them so they could get a picture of it to send to their girlfriends... If only their girlfriends knew how they reacted when they saw it... :)  

 

Anyways... so overall this week was awesome, talaga.  I miss everyone and I've especially missed watching general conference with my family at home, but I'm really excited to get to watch it here with our ward next weekend.  

 

Hope everyone has an awesome week!  You're all in my prayers always!

Love, Sister Dickison