The Rains Came Down... And the Floods Came Up


Well if you think that last week was exciting with my hospital stay, hold on to your hats folks, because this week was even more exciting.

So on Tuesday we had a Zone Conference. It was awesome. It was so incredibly inspiring. My companion gave this AMAZING training about recognizing the spirit. The Assistants also gave amazing training and it was just a great day. Well the whole time we had been in the conference it had been raining. That's not such an unusual thing here, it is the Philippines. But apparently things were worse than we realized. Our district leader, Elder Newman, told me that the roads had been a little flooded but when we left it had subsided. I didn't think much of it until we tried to get home. Our whole district was going to go home together on a bus and so we tried to catch one, but there were none. So then we went to the actual terminal and saw a ton of people sitting around and no buses going anywhere. After asking for some information we found out that it had been raining A TON in the mountains and at the same time there was a really high tide at the beach. Those two things combined made for a HUGE flood. We sat around at the Ceres terminal for about 2 hours, hoping it would subside, but it wasn't. So we texted the AP's. They came to rescue us. They wanted to drive us home, but when we tried we found out that the bridges were totally washed out and nothing was getting by. So we went to take some of the sisters that lived closer home. When we got to there house there was a huge flood there as well. We all had to run in and try and save whatever we could. There was about a foot and a half of water. We put everything up high and the sisters tried to grab what they could. It was a huge mess. Meanwhile, we have no idea what is going on back in our area. None of our members are answering our texts. So the AP's take us to the mission home. President welcomed in the "refugees" as he called us. We stayed the night there and then the next morning he drove us back to our house on the way to another Zone Conference. That night we finally got a text from a member that said our house was fine and there was no flooding there. We were pretty relieved.

We knew however that not everyone in our area was so lucky. So that morning we put on our CSP clothes and just went to our investigators and members homes to see how we could help. Most of the water was gone by then, but they all told us it had come up about 5-6 feet. It was pretty crazy. Not a lot of people wanted in our help in one area, well they were just done, so we went to the place we knew it had been the worse. It was pretty bad, there was a lot of damage and the roads were just full of mud. But we just went from house to house and tried to help. It was awesome. Usually these people stay behind their gates and hide from us, but they couldn't hide after the flood. It turned out that we found a ton of new investigators, did a lot of cleaning, and also taught a lot of lessons. It was an amazing experience. We had made it a goal to just slap our area in the face this week and with the flood that made it a lot easier. People really respond to seeing us out, wanting to help. It was amazing.

This last week, even with the flood was just so good. I can't even really explain it all, but we just had some really great experiences. We were able to give out 4 baptismal dates to solid investigators, we had miracles occur with some of them, it was just such an a amazing week. The Lord was definitely with us.

So now for the big news. Today was transfer announcements.... and I am staying in my area. But my companion is transferring. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bummed. I really thought we might stay together for one more, I feel like I still have so much to learn from her, but apparently the Lord has other things in store. So I will stay in Victorias 2nd ward and she will go somewhere else, where, we don't know. But I will miss her, she has been an amazing companion and has taught me so much! Pray for her and for whoever my new companion will be. I will find out Wednesday. We have a new transfer day. Crazy!

Well I love and miss you all. I hear that the weather has been kind of crazy in the US. I hope you are all safe!

Sister Jackson

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