Sister Harris // Philippines Cebu Mission: Another great week in Labangon‏

WOW what a week for emails!! I was bombarded this morning with emails when I logged on! Thank you all so much for thinking of me and for not forgetting me haha

First of all, I have a few shout outs...do you guys miss those?
-Shout out to my lovely ginikanan (parents) because they are having an anniversary on the 25th! Happy Anniversary you two! I couldn't ask for better parents!

-Shout out to Trudy Palmer, because she has a birthday this week too, I wrote it on my calendar :) Happy Birthday Trudy!! Love you :)

-Another shout out goes to one of my favorite missionaries, Sister Velasco! We lived together in Toledo and she is a great friend of mine and she has a birthday this week too! Mahal na mahal kita at ang galing mo :)

This week we have been participating in something called the "Peace Walk". There is a plaza here in Cebu and all different religions are gathered and have booths to talk about their religions and it's supposed to be a demonstration of peace. Yesterday, our zone hosted the booth for our church. It was so great! We would go find people and invite them back to the booth to learn more about the church. I found someone who only believed in the dictionary because he said it's the least translated book...until we introduced him to the Book of Mormon! Hopefully he'll read it. Tomorrow us missionaries are singing "Amazing Grace" and we have this really cool rendition that we've been practicing so hopefully I can get it on video or something.

Our house flooded! Well we live on a hill so it didn't get inside our house (thankfully) but the area outside our house was really muddy and dirty...so Thursday morning we did a CSP and helped our neighbors clean too. I love giving service!

Amada is doing great and she is going to be baptized on October 4th. I have realized that part of the reason Heavenly Father sent me to Labangon is because he knew that I would have the determination to make sure that Amada would be baptized. This experience teaching someone who has Alzheimer's has taught me a great deal of patience. It's really interesting because since we've been teaching her, she's been forgetting less and less. Other missionaries just gave up on her too early! She is great.

We had a great lesson last Wednesday night with a less active named Queenie. She is in her 20's and is a single mom of 2 little girls, one with some birth defects. We had planned to teach her a lesson, but completely changed the lesson last minute and it was one of the most spiritual lessons I have ever taught on my mission! We were all in tears by the end of it! We taught about the strippling warriors, and how they never feared or doubted because of their mothers...and even though she is a single mom, she can use the church to raise her children and they will look up to her forever and thank her for her example to them. She said she will never miss a Sunday of church again. Good for her! I love her.

Thanks so much again and again for your love, support, letters, packages, etc. I am so thankful for my family here in the Philippines, and of course for my family back at home :) I love you and hope you are all seeking out opportunities to invite your friends to this wonderful gospel. Have a great week :)

Love, Sister Harris