Miracles

This last week was awesome in its own unique way. :)  It's been amazing to notice all of the little miracles happening in our missionary work right now.  I don't remember how much I talked about our plans with the branch missionary directory in my last email, but it really is changing our work!  I want to just let everyone in our mission know about what a wonderful tool this directory can be (this sounds so corny, but it's sooo true!).  I really think if everyone in our mission used the directory more, it would help out with the work.  So we printed off the directory last week and started bringing it with us to all of our appointments and asking the members (both active and less-active) if their information was correct.  Often times it wasn't, or people's names were missing so we wrote down the correct info and the proceeded to ask them if they knew people who were on the directory, and who's addresses were close to theirs but we haven't met them yet.  We've had great success in meeting other member now and I've loved the support we've gotten from the branch.  Yesterday, we brought it to church and had several small miracles happen.  It has helped us to put names to faces, find out if they live in our area or the other sisters, etc.  We also thoroughly went through our area books during weekly planning last Friday and made note of everyone who may/may not be a less active in the directory and then yesterday we were able to ask around about many of these people.... some of whom are active, some of whom are not.  There was an older women who practically begged us to come and visit her and her family.  She and a few of her grandchildren are active but her husband as well as all of her children are not.  She told us to PLEASE come and visit her... because they haven't had a visit from the missionaries in forever... and then mentioned the last missionaries who visited them, one of whom was Sister Fewster's teacher in the MTC and has been finished with her mission for quite a while.  Wow.  She told us she really wants her children to be active again, especially her youngest son and asked if he could come work with us to get him excited about the church again.  Of course we are going to visit them asap. :)  Last weekly planning was the coolest weekly planning ive ever had.  There is just so much work that needs to be done here and we are really going to try to change the work here.  We've also been blessed to quickly see changes happening already.... we were able to find and teach at least one new investigator every day last week... most often they just seemed to appear out of no where and sit in our lessons with other investigators or less-actives.  We've been able to teach less-actives that we didn't know existed and visit members that we didn't know existed either.  We almost reached our goals in how many lessons we taught to both investigators and recent converts/less actives... and that was even with not working for three days because I was sick/our trip to the hospital... more on that later.  :)  It's simply was an amazing week and I was shocked and how drastically the work had changed here.  God really is in charge of this work, and I just never want anything holding me back again from experiencing missionary work like this.  :)

Okay, so... last Thursday we went an taught Tatay in the morning and then I was just in too much pain to go back out and work.  We stayed home and slept until maybe 5pm.  Then one of the couple missionaries, the Jardines, stopped by to drop off a new mattress for Sister McCarthy and check up on me.  I was gently (and kind of forcefully at the same time :)) advised by sweet Sister Jardine to take the next few days off of work so that my body could finally heal.  Having her permission somehow made me feel less guilty about not working, so we rested on Friday and then on Saturday we woke up at 3 in the morning in order to make it to my appointment at the hospital on time.... that was a very short night.  We were blessed to make good timing though... however the Sister who was supposed to meet us there with the papers for the billing never showed up.  That was super stressful.  The doctor ended up making his rounds for an hour as we waited for the papers so that I wouldn't have to pay for the operation by myself.... with what money?  Yeah, I didn't have any.  :) Finally it all worked out and then I had a very smooth, quick operation.  The results that we got back say that they found one of those tiny kidney stones still in me...not sure if that means they took it out, like it was in the stent, or what... but it's tiny so even if it is still in me, shouldn't be too uncomfortable to pass.  Being very me, I was ready to get outta there as soon as possible so we made our way home, with me sleeping almost the whole jeepney ride home, and then sleeping again once we got home, walking up at 10:30 to eat something, take my pills, and then go back to sleep for the rest of the night. :)  All that sleep felt good.... even better, for the last two days I have been in no pain whatsoever!!  First time in over a month!!  It feels great :)  That stent was just so uncomfortable but I now have it in a little jar as just another relic from my mission :)

Thank you so much for all of the prayers on my behalf!!!  This recovery has been a miracle and it feels so great to be back to "normal."  So looking forward to another amazing week here.  :)

Love you all!!

Love, Sister Dickison