Can I stay here? :)

Hello everyone!!

The work here continues to grow every day and honestly... it has just been amazing to me!! :)  We stopped using the directory a few weeks ago as a finding tool.... we found about as many less-active members as we can currently handle with our schedules.  It's been cool to watch many of them  start coming back to church.  Sister Imelda came to church two weeks ago, then missed last week, then came again yesterday, all by herself, AND bore her testimony.  We're so proud of her!  We went and taught another less-active member for the first time last week.  His wife just returned from living away in a different province for like 6 years... we're still not sure why... along with their 17 year old daughter.  Both the mother and daughter are Catholic, but they enjoyed our lesson with them, asked if they could attend church (love it when people ask that!!), and the daughter even talked about serving a mission like us some day. :)  We committed them to come to church and I was pretty disappointed that none of them came yesterday... but we'll keep working with them :)  We had Family Home Evening with another less-active member last Friday.  His wife and kids are active... so we're not exactly sure why he just doesn't come.  The FHE was awesome though!  We brought a rope and some little oranges and acted out Lehi's Vision of the Tree of Life.  It was so much fun!!  It was the cutest thing to watch the dad, playing the part of Lehi, inviting his family to come partake of the fruit.  Then, at the end, they all just wanted to try walking with their hands on the rope with their eyes closed. 

We also had an awesome week with our investigators!!  It started off kind of rough.... we went to go have Family Home Evening with a family last week.  We had all of their fellowshippers with us, and when we got there, none of the kids were there and he was very drunk with one of his buddies.  He, however, was not drunk enough to not feel guilty.... actually he felt really, really bad.  In fact, when we returned on Wednesday, he said he was so grateful we came because he was afraid that we would never want to come back again.  We reassured him that we still love him (of course!) and then later on in the lesson committed him and his kids to a baptismal date in August.  They didn't come to church yesterday,  but we have a lot of hope for them.

There is this one man who just showed up to church two weeks ago.  We weren't able to meet with him until last Saturday, but it was worth the wait.  He's 26 years old and, as he puts it, "still seeking for the truth."  He started doing lessons with the missionaries in his hometown but then moved out here for work and showed up at church. :)  His coworker, joined in our lesson and then they both went to church yesterday :)  They're super interested!!  We're really excited for another lesson with them this Saturday.  We were able to teach this one family we found again.  We had an awesome lesson with them about prophets and Christ's life and then as we left, their little boys and their kid's friends, who joined us for the lesson, started clapping before we left :)  So cute!!!  We were pretty far away from their house when one of the little boys ran out of the house and started clapping some more :) 

Lastly, we went yesterday afternoon to try to contact this women we had talked to a few weeks ago.  She ended up not being there but her neighbor came up and started talking to us in English.  He said he was interested in learning how to speak English. :)  We kept on talking to him and asked him if we could share with him, the first two times he said no, but as we continued talking to him about the gospel and answering his many questions he finally invited us into his house and we ended up have a kind of lengthy/really good lesson  with him.... with basically me being the only person speaking in Tagalog... :)  (I just can't teach all that well in English!! :))  Basically everything he said had something to do with some aspect of the gospel and it was such an incredible lesson!!  We're so excited to teach him again next week!  And we knew there was a reason we kept on being drawn to that area :) 

So yeah... life is great and I so do not want to be transferred out of this area next week!  Hopefully President will receive revelation that I should stay here for another transfer :)  Oh yeah!!  We had our zone interviews last Tuesday and.... It's official.  I got the "okay" from President to come home a few weeks early so I'll be back for school (Winter semester).  

Love you all!!  Hope you have a wonderful week!!

Love, Sister Dickison