The House of Crazy......
Well hello there folks!
So I'm happy to report that there were no natural disasters or any crazy illnesses this week! I definitely appreciated that, but the week was not uneventful. So last week we got transfer announcements, and as you will all remember (because you follow my blog religiously) that my wonderful companion, Sis. Elwood was transferring. Well on Tuesday we went to visit everyone we could so she could say goodbye and give a little goodbye testimony/message. It was so hard. I wasn't even leaving, but I got emotional at almost every place. It was ridiculous. I think I just started to feel a bit of the weight of responsibility as I am now the only person that knows this area right now. It was terrifying actually.
On Wednesday we went to Bacolod for the transfer. They changed everything, so we didn't have the big meeting like normal. They just got right to the announcements, well they told us who was going to what "checkpoint" but they didn't tell us where our companions were going! I hate that so much. So I just bugged one of the APs who used to be my Zone Leader until he told me and Sister Elwood went to La Carlota! Can you believe it? My first area! Well, she's actually going to the other branch, Sis. Stadler is still in 2nd branch. But I was so excited. It will keep us connected! I was definitely bummed to see her go, but of course that's just how things work around here.
So now... I have a new companion!!! And... she's a Filipina! I was so excited. I mean, I love Americans and all, but I'm in the Philippines and I haven't had a Filipino companion yet. So I was pretty stoked, and I already know her from when I went on an exchange into her area. Her name is Sister Tambolero and she is awesome. She's 5'2" (yeah, I stick out even more now) and a ball of crazy energy but she is HILARIOUS and awesome and I know I will be learning a lot from her. It's going to be a fun transfer. And in other news, Sister Vaipulu moved into my house! I couldn't believe that! So now we are together again. She's in the other ward with her companion, but it's like old times in the MTC.
So here's some updates about who we are teaching and all the amazing people I love here so much. First of all, lets talk about Kenneth Plaida. He's the one that got baptized on Christmas day. Yeah, he's pretty much the most amazing person I have ever met. He is ready to serve a mission now. We went to go see him (so Sis. Tambolero could meet him). I was following up on his reading. I was a little disappointed that he hadn't made more progress in the Book of Mormon, but when I asked him if we was studying other things like PMG, preparing for his mission, he told me that he read the entire Gospel Principles manual... in 2 weeks! We had just barely given that to him and he just raced through it. And it's in English! Seriously, he just amazes me. He told us also that he had taken a break from his readthrough because he wanted to study the sacrament prayers in Moroni more so he would be prepared to bless the sacrament in the coming weeks. Seriously, we need so many people like him in this world!
Okay, that's enough about him. So then we have Jeannette. I don't know if I've written much about her before, but she is solid. When I first met her I was pretty concerned. She's really smart, maybe even a little too much and she asked a lot of questions that were good, but just off topic and not really important for her progression with the gospel. I was always pretty frustrated after her teachings. They would last over an hour and were just exhausting. So S. Elwood and I had decided we would give her some space for awhile. She wasn't progressing at that point--no church, ya know. So we let about 2 weeks go by and then we went back. Let's just say that was the best decision we could have made with her. In that time she went from only having been in 1 Nephi 8 (after over a month) to being in Jacob 2. She read that far in 2 weeks! And she was different. She recognized the difference when we weren't there, she recognized the difference not having the spirit. And she knew it for herself. We had a really powerful lesson with her and S. Elwood extended baptism. We had done it before, and usually it was a fairly non-committal answer. But this time she gave a resounding yes. S. Elwood started crying, I started crying, Jeannette started crying. It was awesome. Since then she has just been progressing so well. She's been at church, she asks the right questions, she doesn't try to argue everything. She accepts the doctrine, she prays about it and she follows it. She's great!
Then there's John Ray. HE IS AMAZING. He is 15 and is the nephew of two of our other recent converts. Since he lives with them, they have been teaching him everything they can about the church. He lives WAY far away so we hadn't planned to teach him, but when he came to church 3 weeks in a row in a white shirt and tie and with his Book of Mormon, we decided we should teach him. And when we did, he taught us. He knew everything about Lesson 1, he was already praying and reading his scriptures. He is amazing. In fact he had all these deep questions for us. Can I just say how blessed we are with such solid investigators? We don't have a ton, but they are all QUALITY! They are the kind of people we know we can bring into the church and they won't just leave it. Seriously, I love being a missionary. I love everything about it.
Well, that's all for this week. I hope everyone is doing great. I hear there's been crazy snow all over the country. Well it's sunny and warm here everyday! Okay, actually it's been raining like CRAZY everyday and it's totally out of the ordinary and just about every missionary is getting sick. But not me!!! HALLELUJAH!!!!! Thank you for all of your prayers and love. I miss you all dearly!
Love, love, love!
Sister Jackson
P.S. I promise there will be pictures next week. I can't send them from this computer. Sorry!!!
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
Are you pregnant? and other fun experiences....
Okay, so I'm sure that you are all freaking out about my subject line. It's a joke. I'm not actually pregnant, and there is a story behind this. I will get to that in a second.
So this week was probably the worst week of my mission. Nothing could compare to it, I'm sure. I got really sick this week. I won't go into too many details, but I got some kind of stomach virus and couldn't keep any food or water in my body. The doctor was pretty concerned that I was getting majorly dehydrated and so she decided I needed to go to the hospital. I'm sure you can all imagine I wasn't too happy about that. I hate going to the doctor. My grandma will tell you all that I am stubborn about going and usually wait until it's worse than it should be. But this was kind of scary, so I took care of right away. So after not having worked all week, on Thursday I had to go to the hospital. Now, I don't know if you all remember, but I'm in the Philippines. Now, I love this place and sometimes I can't imagine going back to America, but let me just tell you that medical care here is NOTHING the same as the states. You all know, I know a lot about hospitals, I've spent a lot of time in them in my lifetime (not for myself of course) and my mom was a nurse. Hospitals are like my thing. This was pretty much everything you can imagine about a horror hospital. Okay, so it wasn't quite that bad, but let me give you some details. There were cockroaches in my room, the walls were leaking some kind of water, there was a crucifix hanging on the wall, I had to carry around my own IV bag (no carts or anything), the nurses never wore gloves to do anything, including removing my IV (yeah, she got my blood all over her hand... gross), they don't have any clean water ( you have to bring your own), they don't do anything nice for the person that has to stay all night with you and the food was... let's just say... anything but desirable. Back to my subject line: So my doctor is actually an OB-GYN. Her husband was our mission doctor but he is working abroad now. So she is taking over for him for awhile until their family moves to meet him. So because they all know she is an OB-GYN, EVERY SINGLE PERSON kept asking me if I was pregnant. It was ridiculous! I kept politely saying no, until finally I got kind of frustrated and said, "Um, no, I'm a missionary...", while I showed them my tag. I'm sure that didn't mean much to me, but I needed to make sure they all knew that I was definitely not pregnant. All in all it was a pretty traumatic experience. It scared me into NEVER getting sick again while I'm here, and hopefully never again in my whole life. It was also an incredibly frustrating experience since I wasn't able to go out and work. It was awful. But it also provided Sis. Elwood and I with some great laughs amidst all the craziness. And now, I'm totally better. The doctor thinks I just got the virus out and once I was rehydrated, she let me go home. After a little rest, I got back to work and I am SOOOO happy to be back. I was going crazy.
So that was really the majority of my week. I stayed in. I'm sorry to admit that, but that was my reality. But now we have these amazing goals for this next week. We kind of had to start over with this area because our investigators just weren't progressing. We're also supposed to be looking for the wealthy and the learned so that we can baptize leaders and not just people that will end up as a financial burden for the church or inactive. We have an area in our area that is perfect for that and so we are excited to find new people. We already have! And we have hope for a lot of referrals. Pray for us!!! :)
Well anyway, unfortunately that is all there really is to report about this week. All the illness stuff took a bit of a toll on my companion and our companionship. We ended up having a pretty intense talk about everything and then probably one of the best experiences of my mission talking everything out. I love Sister Elwood. She is amazing. She is teaching me so much. She is such a great example to me of faith and loyalty and dedication, and everything. She really is just incredible. And we have a lot of fun too. We have had some great experiences together, teaching, talking, etc. She's awesome! Next Monday we have transfer announcements (can you believe it?!) and she may transfer out. I'll be pretty bummed. I never feel like I am with a companion long enough to learn everything I need to. But the Lord knows best!
I love you all so much and hope that everyone on the other side of the world is healthy and happy and loving life. I am!
Love you all!
Sister Jackson
P.S. I know I said I would do pictures, but this computer is being retarded and I'm having problems, so hopefully next week! Love you lots!
Okay, so I'm sure that you are all freaking out about my subject line. It's a joke. I'm not actually pregnant, and there is a story behind this. I will get to that in a second.
So this week was probably the worst week of my mission. Nothing could compare to it, I'm sure. I got really sick this week. I won't go into too many details, but I got some kind of stomach virus and couldn't keep any food or water in my body. The doctor was pretty concerned that I was getting majorly dehydrated and so she decided I needed to go to the hospital. I'm sure you can all imagine I wasn't too happy about that. I hate going to the doctor. My grandma will tell you all that I am stubborn about going and usually wait until it's worse than it should be. But this was kind of scary, so I took care of right away. So after not having worked all week, on Thursday I had to go to the hospital. Now, I don't know if you all remember, but I'm in the Philippines. Now, I love this place and sometimes I can't imagine going back to America, but let me just tell you that medical care here is NOTHING the same as the states. You all know, I know a lot about hospitals, I've spent a lot of time in them in my lifetime (not for myself of course) and my mom was a nurse. Hospitals are like my thing. This was pretty much everything you can imagine about a horror hospital. Okay, so it wasn't quite that bad, but let me give you some details. There were cockroaches in my room, the walls were leaking some kind of water, there was a crucifix hanging on the wall, I had to carry around my own IV bag (no carts or anything), the nurses never wore gloves to do anything, including removing my IV (yeah, she got my blood all over her hand... gross), they don't have any clean water ( you have to bring your own), they don't do anything nice for the person that has to stay all night with you and the food was... let's just say... anything but desirable. Back to my subject line: So my doctor is actually an OB-GYN. Her husband was our mission doctor but he is working abroad now. So she is taking over for him for awhile until their family moves to meet him. So because they all know she is an OB-GYN, EVERY SINGLE PERSON kept asking me if I was pregnant. It was ridiculous! I kept politely saying no, until finally I got kind of frustrated and said, "Um, no, I'm a missionary...", while I showed them my tag. I'm sure that didn't mean much to me, but I needed to make sure they all knew that I was definitely not pregnant. All in all it was a pretty traumatic experience. It scared me into NEVER getting sick again while I'm here, and hopefully never again in my whole life. It was also an incredibly frustrating experience since I wasn't able to go out and work. It was awful. But it also provided Sis. Elwood and I with some great laughs amidst all the craziness. And now, I'm totally better. The doctor thinks I just got the virus out and once I was rehydrated, she let me go home. After a little rest, I got back to work and I am SOOOO happy to be back. I was going crazy.
So that was really the majority of my week. I stayed in. I'm sorry to admit that, but that was my reality. But now we have these amazing goals for this next week. We kind of had to start over with this area because our investigators just weren't progressing. We're also supposed to be looking for the wealthy and the learned so that we can baptize leaders and not just people that will end up as a financial burden for the church or inactive. We have an area in our area that is perfect for that and so we are excited to find new people. We already have! And we have hope for a lot of referrals. Pray for us!!! :)
Well anyway, unfortunately that is all there really is to report about this week. All the illness stuff took a bit of a toll on my companion and our companionship. We ended up having a pretty intense talk about everything and then probably one of the best experiences of my mission talking everything out. I love Sister Elwood. She is amazing. She is teaching me so much. She is such a great example to me of faith and loyalty and dedication, and everything. She really is just incredible. And we have a lot of fun too. We have had some great experiences together, teaching, talking, etc. She's awesome! Next Monday we have transfer announcements (can you believe it?!) and she may transfer out. I'll be pretty bummed. I never feel like I am with a companion long enough to learn everything I need to. But the Lord knows best!
I love you all so much and hope that everyone on the other side of the world is healthy and happy and loving life. I am!
Love you all!
Sister Jackson
P.S. I know I said I would do pictures, but this computer is being retarded and I'm having problems, so hopefully next week! Love you lots!
Waterfalls and other such sadja
Okay, so for those of you that don't speak Hiligaynon (and I'm going to guess that's most of you) sadja means fun. So with that little lesson out of the way, I will tell you about my week. So this week was good. We had to do some weeding in our investigator garden this week, which was hard. But on Fast Sunday we fasted about changing our focus to another area and we both feel great about it. The rich and learned live there and that's where President wants us to focus so that we aren't baptizing people that won't just become a financial burden. We've already had some little miracles in finding people out there too which is totally awesome and gives us confidence that that is where we are supposed to be.
So this week was New Year's. It get's totally buang (crazy) here. You can't even imagine. They light off fireworks ALL day, but at night it gets out of control. So we get permission in this mission to watch Disney animated movies that night since we have to be in early and it's so crazy. Drunk people. Fireworks.... bad combo. So we watched Toy Story 3, Mulan 1 and 2, and Bolt. It was great. We ate ourselves sick on Filipino junk food and had a great time all sleeping together in the same room. It was a blast. But exhausting too, because we didn't really sleep well because of all they gahud (loud noise).
Today we had an AWESOME district activity. Our district leader got permission for us to go up to this resort in the bukid (mountains) and go hike and see all these BEAUTIFUL waterfalls. We have an awesome district right now and so it was just a total blast. A lady in our ward organized this whole thing so we had a van and a personal driver. They were awesome to us. We had a great time and all bonded even more. We have great district unity now! I will send pictures next week of all the awesomeness.
Well I wish I could write more, but we are crunched for time tonight and I'm not feeling too well. So next week I will write some more and update a little more about the area and who we are teaching and all that. I love you all and hope everyone enjoyed the New Year! Keep me posted on your lives!
Lots of love,
Sister Jackson
Okay, so for those of you that don't speak Hiligaynon (and I'm going to guess that's most of you) sadja means fun. So with that little lesson out of the way, I will tell you about my week. So this week was good. We had to do some weeding in our investigator garden this week, which was hard. But on Fast Sunday we fasted about changing our focus to another area and we both feel great about it. The rich and learned live there and that's where President wants us to focus so that we aren't baptizing people that won't just become a financial burden. We've already had some little miracles in finding people out there too which is totally awesome and gives us confidence that that is where we are supposed to be.
So this week was New Year's. It get's totally buang (crazy) here. You can't even imagine. They light off fireworks ALL day, but at night it gets out of control. So we get permission in this mission to watch Disney animated movies that night since we have to be in early and it's so crazy. Drunk people. Fireworks.... bad combo. So we watched Toy Story 3, Mulan 1 and 2, and Bolt. It was great. We ate ourselves sick on Filipino junk food and had a great time all sleeping together in the same room. It was a blast. But exhausting too, because we didn't really sleep well because of all they gahud (loud noise).
Today we had an AWESOME district activity. Our district leader got permission for us to go up to this resort in the bukid (mountains) and go hike and see all these BEAUTIFUL waterfalls. We have an awesome district right now and so it was just a total blast. A lady in our ward organized this whole thing so we had a van and a personal driver. They were awesome to us. We had a great time and all bonded even more. We have great district unity now! I will send pictures next week of all the awesomeness.
Well I wish I could write more, but we are crunched for time tonight and I'm not feeling too well. So next week I will write some more and update a little more about the area and who we are teaching and all that. I love you all and hope everyone enjoyed the New Year! Keep me posted on your lives!
Lots of love,
Sister Jackson
Well I hope that everyone had the most amazing Christmas this year. I was of course missing plenty of things about American Christmas, but I also got to have some great experiences. So I'm definitely not disappointed. First of all, we had a baptism. So it was actually a White Christmas here in the Philippines! At least for us. Kenneth Plaida was baptized on Christmas day and confirmed on the 26th. He is amazing. He is so solid and has such a strong testimony. He's one of those "still waters run deep" kind of guy, but they definitely run deep. It was a great morning. He will make such amazing contributions to the church and hopefully in a year, he will serve a mission. He will make an awesome missionary. Did I mention that in 4 weeks of teaching he's already mostly through Alma? Yeah, he's a rockstar.
So Christmas day here was kind of crazy. We had present time in the morning and a big breakfast of french toast and hot dogs (yeah, there's no sausage here... we make do) and I made homemade syrup. It was delicious. Then, after the baptism we came back to the house so Sister Elwood could call her family. Then we went to one appointment and then went to a Christmas Celebration in the plaza sponsored by the other ward. It was awesome. There were a ton of people. They showed the "Joy to the World" video and The Restoration. We got up and bore our testimonies of Joseph Smith and then sang them a song. It was pretty awesome. We had a great time. Then some guy let off a firecracker right by our feet and we decided it was time to leave... Satan....
So this week was a great one too. On Tuesday we went to Bacolod to participate in a Christmas concert and presentation for investigators and recent converts. It was pretty cool, there was a missionary choir and we sounded pretty awesome. The spirit was strong and it was a great experience. It gone done late so we stayed in the mission home that night (which I LOVE doing because I get to spend time with President) and then the next morning we got driven the 2.5 hours to our Christmas Conference. I don't know if you realize the blessing of having President drive us... we didn't have to take a bus. It was a huge day. Christmas Conference was awesome. Inspiring and awesomely fun. Our district was in charge of putting on a little presentation (it was meant to be fun). So I re-wrote "Twas the Night Before Christmas" about missionaries in the Philippines. It was pretty funny. We presented it like a Family Home Evening with one elder and I as the parents and our district mates as the kids. It was hilarious. Everyone enjoyed it and it was a great time. So we definitely got plenty of opportunities to celebrate Christmas and it was great.
So this week was really good too because, and maybe this is because it's the end of the year, I did some self-evaluation and found some good places where I need improvement. I never thought I would say this, but I love those opportunities. They make me more effective as a teacher and a better missionary and so I love them. Don't get me wrong, they are incredibly difficult, but much more rewarding than they are hard. So pray that I will be able to achieve my goals and become an even better missionary. I need all the help I can get! :)
So being that it's almost the new year, I have a challenge for everyone. Get yourselves immersed in missionary work. Some of you might already be doing that, then keep at it. As a missionary, and especially with the focus we have here in this mission, I have really been able to see how simple efforts can make a huge difference. Maybe you won't find 12 people for the missionaries to teach, that's okay. Work at strengthening your ward. You may not realize it, but that is an INCREDIBLE form of missionary work. It makes it easier for missionaries to get people to church, and keep them there, if the ward functions properly and if ward members fellowship! Volunteer to go out with the missionaries, even if it's just for one teaching in a week, or even a month. They need your help SOOOO much. I'll let you all decided how best you can help, but I'm a missionary and so I can't do anything without wanting to commit people. So I'm going to ask you all, "Will you find ways of doing missionary work, no matter how large or small, to help further the Lord's work?" It will bless your lives, the lives of others, and the missionary efforts going on worldwide. I know it. I see it!
Okay, I love you all and hope you are all having the best holiday season. Keep in touch if you have the time, I love getting mail! :)
Lots of love!
Sister Jackson
So Christmas day here was kind of crazy. We had present time in the morning and a big breakfast of french toast and hot dogs (yeah, there's no sausage here... we make do) and I made homemade syrup. It was delicious. Then, after the baptism we came back to the house so Sister Elwood could call her family. Then we went to one appointment and then went to a Christmas Celebration in the plaza sponsored by the other ward. It was awesome. There were a ton of people. They showed the "Joy to the World" video and The Restoration. We got up and bore our testimonies of Joseph Smith and then sang them a song. It was pretty awesome. We had a great time. Then some guy let off a firecracker right by our feet and we decided it was time to leave... Satan....
So this week was a great one too. On Tuesday we went to Bacolod to participate in a Christmas concert and presentation for investigators and recent converts. It was pretty cool, there was a missionary choir and we sounded pretty awesome. The spirit was strong and it was a great experience. It gone done late so we stayed in the mission home that night (which I LOVE doing because I get to spend time with President) and then the next morning we got driven the 2.5 hours to our Christmas Conference. I don't know if you realize the blessing of having President drive us... we didn't have to take a bus. It was a huge day. Christmas Conference was awesome. Inspiring and awesomely fun. Our district was in charge of putting on a little presentation (it was meant to be fun). So I re-wrote "Twas the Night Before Christmas" about missionaries in the Philippines. It was pretty funny. We presented it like a Family Home Evening with one elder and I as the parents and our district mates as the kids. It was hilarious. Everyone enjoyed it and it was a great time. So we definitely got plenty of opportunities to celebrate Christmas and it was great.
So this week was really good too because, and maybe this is because it's the end of the year, I did some self-evaluation and found some good places where I need improvement. I never thought I would say this, but I love those opportunities. They make me more effective as a teacher and a better missionary and so I love them. Don't get me wrong, they are incredibly difficult, but much more rewarding than they are hard. So pray that I will be able to achieve my goals and become an even better missionary. I need all the help I can get! :)
So being that it's almost the new year, I have a challenge for everyone. Get yourselves immersed in missionary work. Some of you might already be doing that, then keep at it. As a missionary, and especially with the focus we have here in this mission, I have really been able to see how simple efforts can make a huge difference. Maybe you won't find 12 people for the missionaries to teach, that's okay. Work at strengthening your ward. You may not realize it, but that is an INCREDIBLE form of missionary work. It makes it easier for missionaries to get people to church, and keep them there, if the ward functions properly and if ward members fellowship! Volunteer to go out with the missionaries, even if it's just for one teaching in a week, or even a month. They need your help SOOOO much. I'll let you all decided how best you can help, but I'm a missionary and so I can't do anything without wanting to commit people. So I'm going to ask you all, "Will you find ways of doing missionary work, no matter how large or small, to help further the Lord's work?" It will bless your lives, the lives of others, and the missionary efforts going on worldwide. I know it. I see it!
Okay, I love you all and hope you are all having the best holiday season. Keep in touch if you have the time, I love getting mail! :)
Lots of love!
Sister Jackson
Well Family and Friends, Merry Christmas or Maayong Paskwa here in Negros Occidental,
Well I hope that everyone is having a great and wonderful Christmas season. I'm sure that I can imagine pretty well what everyone is doing... snow... christmas music... lights.... good food... (sigh). But it's totally great because I love being here and Christmas is still in the air. Christmas starts in about September here in the Philippines so I have been hearing Christmas music (although it sounds awful) for months! And there are lights and decorations up all over the place. Everywhere you go people call out Merry Christmas. Every night there are homeless, caroling children that break your heart. They come for money. They sound atrocious, but they are totally cute. All in all, there is a lot of the same "spirit" here, just delivered in different packages. But this Christmas will be especially awesome because we have a baptism on Christmas day! Talk about an awesome gift... for us and for him! He's an investigator that obviously was mostly taught before I got here, but I have been there for a few lessons and he is AMAZING. He has already ready through almost all of Alma... seriously... it's incredible. He is so solid and is going to do great things for the church here. He's also 19, which means hopefully a mission in a year! There is definitely a different teaching pool here than I had in La Carlota. Our investigators are all pretty solid. They just get it, ya know? We don't have to do to much to convince them of the truth of the gospel and most of them respond to commitments. I feel like I'm on a whole new mission here in Victorias.
So yesterday, Sunday here, was awesome. I had been sick for a couple of days, but still got to church because I had to speak and we had to sing. Yeah, it was the Sister Jackson and Sister Elwood show yesterday. But we had one of our investigators there that we did not expect to come and she came without having been taught the day before and without a reminder. WHAT A HUGE BLESSING! I'm sure only some of you can appreciate what this means to us, but it was awesome. She came to the ward Christmas party the night before too, with her whole family. Seriously, I feel like I'm living some other missionary's life here. It's so different. I'm also learning to have more faith here. My companion has INCREDIBLE faith. She is such a great example to me and it encourages me to exercise mine better. And when we do, miracles happen. This week we did a lot of walking and teaching and we found 12 new investigators. 12!!! I didn't even know that was possible after my last area. But it is and we were so blessed. The Lord literally put people in our way, people we never expected and it was awesome. My gratitude is increasing exponentially in this new area.
So I can just stay again how much I love this place and the people in it. I love everyone, but I especially love the kids and the old people. I've always loved those people the most, but here, I love them even more. The children just immediately become attached to you (mostly because we are huge white american women) and they always want to be around you. The old people are SOOOOO nice and so cute and I just want to hug them all the time. They grab onto your hand when you shake it and they just hold on and stare into your eyes and you just fall in love with them. I love old people!
It's definitely different here. When you transfer areas you kind of feel like you've changed missions, especially here. The cultures are mostly the same, but there are some important differences. It's hard to explain, but it's definitely different. But I'm loving my experiences here. The language of course continues to be a challenge, but I am being tested in new ways and I am learning a lot because of it. The more I'm forced to use, the better I get. I have greater confidence in just talking to people on the streets, on tricycles, it's one of my favorite things. And then when they see you being nice to their children, you've basically just got yourself right into their homes. Of course I still hear "Gwapa!" everywhere I go. I'll admit, when I come home and that doesn't happen I will probably be disappointed! But now, rather than feel uncomfortable I give them all a huge smile and happily yell, "Maayong Hapon! (good afternoon). When they hear that I actually can speak their language, they usually stare at me, open mouthed, disbelieving, and I just laugh. I have a lot of fun here amidst all the work.
So it's starting to get hotter here. Depending on who you talk to, the rainy seasons goes anywhere from 5-9 months. It's ridiculous. But summer here is about April to June... who knows. Apparently it gets hotter... yay! You learn to love it. It's going to be weird not sweating all the time. I actually get cold here, though, believe it or not. At night I basically freeze and then sweat all day long. It's awesome!
Well, some of you I will get to talk to for Christmas and for the rest of you, I hope you all have the best week ever and find lots of opportunities to serve others and help them to remember the reason for the season. I love you all and miss you! Merry Christmas!!!
Love,
Sister Jackson
Well I hope that everyone is having a great and wonderful Christmas season. I'm sure that I can imagine pretty well what everyone is doing... snow... christmas music... lights.... good food... (sigh). But it's totally great because I love being here and Christmas is still in the air. Christmas starts in about September here in the Philippines so I have been hearing Christmas music (although it sounds awful) for months! And there are lights and decorations up all over the place. Everywhere you go people call out Merry Christmas. Every night there are homeless, caroling children that break your heart. They come for money. They sound atrocious, but they are totally cute. All in all, there is a lot of the same "spirit" here, just delivered in different packages. But this Christmas will be especially awesome because we have a baptism on Christmas day! Talk about an awesome gift... for us and for him! He's an investigator that obviously was mostly taught before I got here, but I have been there for a few lessons and he is AMAZING. He has already ready through almost all of Alma... seriously... it's incredible. He is so solid and is going to do great things for the church here. He's also 19, which means hopefully a mission in a year! There is definitely a different teaching pool here than I had in La Carlota. Our investigators are all pretty solid. They just get it, ya know? We don't have to do to much to convince them of the truth of the gospel and most of them respond to commitments. I feel like I'm on a whole new mission here in Victorias.
So yesterday, Sunday here, was awesome. I had been sick for a couple of days, but still got to church because I had to speak and we had to sing. Yeah, it was the Sister Jackson and Sister Elwood show yesterday. But we had one of our investigators there that we did not expect to come and she came without having been taught the day before and without a reminder. WHAT A HUGE BLESSING! I'm sure only some of you can appreciate what this means to us, but it was awesome. She came to the ward Christmas party the night before too, with her whole family. Seriously, I feel like I'm living some other missionary's life here. It's so different. I'm also learning to have more faith here. My companion has INCREDIBLE faith. She is such a great example to me and it encourages me to exercise mine better. And when we do, miracles happen. This week we did a lot of walking and teaching and we found 12 new investigators. 12!!! I didn't even know that was possible after my last area. But it is and we were so blessed. The Lord literally put people in our way, people we never expected and it was awesome. My gratitude is increasing exponentially in this new area.
So I can just stay again how much I love this place and the people in it. I love everyone, but I especially love the kids and the old people. I've always loved those people the most, but here, I love them even more. The children just immediately become attached to you (mostly because we are huge white american women) and they always want to be around you. The old people are SOOOOO nice and so cute and I just want to hug them all the time. They grab onto your hand when you shake it and they just hold on and stare into your eyes and you just fall in love with them. I love old people!
It's definitely different here. When you transfer areas you kind of feel like you've changed missions, especially here. The cultures are mostly the same, but there are some important differences. It's hard to explain, but it's definitely different. But I'm loving my experiences here. The language of course continues to be a challenge, but I am being tested in new ways and I am learning a lot because of it. The more I'm forced to use, the better I get. I have greater confidence in just talking to people on the streets, on tricycles, it's one of my favorite things. And then when they see you being nice to their children, you've basically just got yourself right into their homes. Of course I still hear "Gwapa!" everywhere I go. I'll admit, when I come home and that doesn't happen I will probably be disappointed! But now, rather than feel uncomfortable I give them all a huge smile and happily yell, "Maayong Hapon! (good afternoon). When they hear that I actually can speak their language, they usually stare at me, open mouthed, disbelieving, and I just laugh. I have a lot of fun here amidst all the work.
So it's starting to get hotter here. Depending on who you talk to, the rainy seasons goes anywhere from 5-9 months. It's ridiculous. But summer here is about April to June... who knows. Apparently it gets hotter... yay! You learn to love it. It's going to be weird not sweating all the time. I actually get cold here, though, believe it or not. At night I basically freeze and then sweat all day long. It's awesome!
Well, some of you I will get to talk to for Christmas and for the rest of you, I hope you all have the best week ever and find lots of opportunities to serve others and help them to remember the reason for the season. I love you all and miss you! Merry Christmas!!!
Love,
Sister Jackson
Greetings from the Philippines!
Okay, so this is the slogan of my new area! So I am now in Victorias. For those of you who aren't following my transferring diligently with a map (although I can't imagine that's any of you) this is North of Bacolod City and as you can probably tell from their slogan, they are all about sugar. It is EVERYWHERE! This also happens to be the favorite area of my trainer, Sister Stadler, and so I'm even more excited to be here. I am serving in her ward. It's crazy! We live in what is known as the "mansion" here in the mission. our house really is ridiculous. It's 2 stories and huge and really nice. But I do get to shower with a bucket now, so I feel like a real Filipina. Haha. The area here is more of a city too. La Carlota was pretty big, but this is bigger, or at least it seems bigger and much busier. So I am in a new area, district, and zone. It feels weird, but I'm also excited to be here. The area is a lot more fruitful which is definitely good for the morale. I got here and there is already a baptism scheduled for Christmas day! It will be a great Christmas. There aren't a TON of investigators here, but the ones we have are AWESOME. Seriously, I couldn't believe it when we went to teach them. It was so different. But I am way grateful to be here.
So obviously, if I'm in a new area, I must have a new companion, and I do! Her name is Sister Elwood. She is from Utah, but she also grew up in Washington! She's from Spokane, but I don't hold that against her... :) She's great. She's been in this area for 2 transfers so she knows what she is doing. I have a lot to learn from her. She's a great teacher, she asks great questions and she is TOTALLY invested in the work. I am really grateful for that. I think that we are going to do great things here and I am excited for it.
On Sunday we went to church, obviously, and I got to meet the ward. Yeah, I'm actually in a ward. With a bishop. It feels weird after being in a branch. The ward is great, the bishop is AMAZING. He just has this spirit about him and it's contagious. He is all about the work and he works hard. He actually looks like a Filipino version of that guy who plays Perseus in the OLD Clash of the Titans. I can't remember his name, but Grandma, you will. He even sounds like him. Weird. But awesome! I got to bear my testimony. No talk, thank goodness because of the Primary Program. But next week we are speaking and singing. That should be fun!
I hope that you all enjoyed the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. We got to see it a week later and it was great. It was amazing. I love the prophet and his counselors. You get starved for hearing their voices out here. I hope that the Christmas season is a happy one for everyone. I know that none of you will be so lucky as to be in the Philippines teaching the gospel, but try to have a good Christmas anyway... :) Seriously, I couldn't imagine a better place to spend the Holidays. Of course I will miss you all, but this work is so amazing, I don't ever want to come back. Okay, that's not exactly true, but I do love it here. This week I just got overwhelmed with how much I love these people. They are incredible and so loving.
Well, I think that's it for me this week. I love and miss you all!
Sister Jackson
Okay, so this is the slogan of my new area! So I am now in Victorias. For those of you who aren't following my transferring diligently with a map (although I can't imagine that's any of you) this is North of Bacolod City and as you can probably tell from their slogan, they are all about sugar. It is EVERYWHERE! This also happens to be the favorite area of my trainer, Sister Stadler, and so I'm even more excited to be here. I am serving in her ward. It's crazy! We live in what is known as the "mansion" here in the mission. our house really is ridiculous. It's 2 stories and huge and really nice. But I do get to shower with a bucket now, so I feel like a real Filipina. Haha. The area here is more of a city too. La Carlota was pretty big, but this is bigger, or at least it seems bigger and much busier. So I am in a new area, district, and zone. It feels weird, but I'm also excited to be here. The area is a lot more fruitful which is definitely good for the morale. I got here and there is already a baptism scheduled for Christmas day! It will be a great Christmas. There aren't a TON of investigators here, but the ones we have are AWESOME. Seriously, I couldn't believe it when we went to teach them. It was so different. But I am way grateful to be here.
So obviously, if I'm in a new area, I must have a new companion, and I do! Her name is Sister Elwood. She is from Utah, but she also grew up in Washington! She's from Spokane, but I don't hold that against her... :) She's great. She's been in this area for 2 transfers so she knows what she is doing. I have a lot to learn from her. She's a great teacher, she asks great questions and she is TOTALLY invested in the work. I am really grateful for that. I think that we are going to do great things here and I am excited for it.
On Sunday we went to church, obviously, and I got to meet the ward. Yeah, I'm actually in a ward. With a bishop. It feels weird after being in a branch. The ward is great, the bishop is AMAZING. He just has this spirit about him and it's contagious. He is all about the work and he works hard. He actually looks like a Filipino version of that guy who plays Perseus in the OLD Clash of the Titans. I can't remember his name, but Grandma, you will. He even sounds like him. Weird. But awesome! I got to bear my testimony. No talk, thank goodness because of the Primary Program. But next week we are speaking and singing. That should be fun!
I hope that you all enjoyed the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. We got to see it a week later and it was great. It was amazing. I love the prophet and his counselors. You get starved for hearing their voices out here. I hope that the Christmas season is a happy one for everyone. I know that none of you will be so lucky as to be in the Philippines teaching the gospel, but try to have a good Christmas anyway... :) Seriously, I couldn't imagine a better place to spend the Holidays. Of course I will miss you all, but this work is so amazing, I don't ever want to come back. Okay, that's not exactly true, but I do love it here. This week I just got overwhelmed with how much I love these people. They are incredible and so loving.
Well, I think that's it for me this week. I love and miss you all!
Sister Jackson
Well family, unfortunately I am not bearing the best news today. Of course for you all it won't seem quite so tragic, but my whole life is about my mission, so you know... Well, today were transfer announcements and I am transferring. We were so sure that my companion was going to be the one to go, usually President keeps people in their first area for awhile, but apparently the Lord has other plans for me and so I will be leaving La Carlota. I would be lying if I said I wasn't bummed. I'm actually kind of devastated. I love the people here and I feel like this place is my home. It's just hard because this is my first area and I feel very attached here. But I have faith in the inspiration of my mission president and so I will go where I am assigned to go. I still don't know where, I won't find out until Friday at the transfer meeting, but there are a lot of possibilities. Please pray for me that I will be able to adjust to a new place and to a new companion...
This last week was pretty uneventful, sickness again kept us both from working too much this week. It was pretty frustrating, but we were still able to witness some tender mercies. With our one solid investigator, Ricky, we had to push back his baptism a week because we didn't feel like he was really prepared. He is doing well and following all commitments but he doesn't really understand everything fully that we have been trying to teach him, so we decided to make it more simple and it turned out great. We had to go over some things again, but we both felt better about it. I am super bummed that I will miss his baptism, but I know he will make a great addition to the branch here.
I can't believe that it is December!!!! It never ceases to amaze me how fast the time flies here. In one week I will hit my 5 month mark as a missionary and 3 months in the field. It is so crazy! I can't believe it. Honestly, I don't feel like it would ever be possible to do enough in such a short amount of time, but I am going to try my hardest. I am still progressing with the language. My companion tells me things all the time that I am doing amazingly and that she can't believe how fast I get it, but you all know me, I am a perfectionist and I never think it's good enough. I am trying to practice more confidence in my abilities. I would always appreciate your prayers, especially for the language.
So I thought I would just share a bit about what I have been studying lately on the off-chance that maybe one of you is looking for a new study topic and you would like to join me. I've been studying about discipleship in the scriptures. As a missionary I am a representative of Jesus Christ everyday, it's my entire purpose and so I decided to start researching everything I could about it. I went through the scriptures and found all the places that the Savior has said that if you do something specific you are one of his disciples. It's amazing how many things there are. Now I am researching individually each thing and how I can learn more. I cannot tell you, it's probably the best experience I have ever had with the scriptures. There is so much to learn about being a disciple of Jesus Christ and it is something we should all attain to. I will share one of my recent insights.
I was reading about what it means to be a light to the world. It says that repeatedly in the scriptures and originates when Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount. So I started looking into what it means to be a light to the world and found a lot of scriptures and alluded to being a good example and helping to lead people to Christ. I felt inspired to look up the parable of the 10 virgins. I have always loved this story and was always inspired by the need to be prepared and focused on what is important, but this time I found a different application. It wasn't just about the fact that the 5 foolish virgins were excluded from the marriage festivities, although that was incredibly tragic. But they also gave up their opportunity for discipleship. In Jesus the Christ, Talmage talks about how with marriage customs, it was necessary for the people in the wedding party to carry a lot of torches and lamps (it occurred at night) so that they could light the way and other people would see and know when they should come to meet the bridegroom and be admitted into the party. The lights of the 5 wise virgins provided them admittance but it also was a fulfilling of their responsibility to light the way for others so that they would be able to say that the bridegroom knew them. Basically if we are unwilling or unprepared to be disciples than the Savior will not know us because we did nothing to prove ourselves to him. This project has been wonderfully insightful and I have found so much application. If you're interested I highly encourage the project.
Well, that's all for this week. Next week I will be emailing you from a new area. I could use all of your prayers this week! Love you all and miss you!
Sister Jackson
This last week was pretty uneventful, sickness again kept us both from working too much this week. It was pretty frustrating, but we were still able to witness some tender mercies. With our one solid investigator, Ricky, we had to push back his baptism a week because we didn't feel like he was really prepared. He is doing well and following all commitments but he doesn't really understand everything fully that we have been trying to teach him, so we decided to make it more simple and it turned out great. We had to go over some things again, but we both felt better about it. I am super bummed that I will miss his baptism, but I know he will make a great addition to the branch here.
I can't believe that it is December!!!! It never ceases to amaze me how fast the time flies here. In one week I will hit my 5 month mark as a missionary and 3 months in the field. It is so crazy! I can't believe it. Honestly, I don't feel like it would ever be possible to do enough in such a short amount of time, but I am going to try my hardest. I am still progressing with the language. My companion tells me things all the time that I am doing amazingly and that she can't believe how fast I get it, but you all know me, I am a perfectionist and I never think it's good enough. I am trying to practice more confidence in my abilities. I would always appreciate your prayers, especially for the language.
So I thought I would just share a bit about what I have been studying lately on the off-chance that maybe one of you is looking for a new study topic and you would like to join me. I've been studying about discipleship in the scriptures. As a missionary I am a representative of Jesus Christ everyday, it's my entire purpose and so I decided to start researching everything I could about it. I went through the scriptures and found all the places that the Savior has said that if you do something specific you are one of his disciples. It's amazing how many things there are. Now I am researching individually each thing and how I can learn more. I cannot tell you, it's probably the best experience I have ever had with the scriptures. There is so much to learn about being a disciple of Jesus Christ and it is something we should all attain to. I will share one of my recent insights.
I was reading about what it means to be a light to the world. It says that repeatedly in the scriptures and originates when Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount. So I started looking into what it means to be a light to the world and found a lot of scriptures and alluded to being a good example and helping to lead people to Christ. I felt inspired to look up the parable of the 10 virgins. I have always loved this story and was always inspired by the need to be prepared and focused on what is important, but this time I found a different application. It wasn't just about the fact that the 5 foolish virgins were excluded from the marriage festivities, although that was incredibly tragic. But they also gave up their opportunity for discipleship. In Jesus the Christ, Talmage talks about how with marriage customs, it was necessary for the people in the wedding party to carry a lot of torches and lamps (it occurred at night) so that they could light the way and other people would see and know when they should come to meet the bridegroom and be admitted into the party. The lights of the 5 wise virgins provided them admittance but it also was a fulfilling of their responsibility to light the way for others so that they would be able to say that the bridegroom knew them. Basically if we are unwilling or unprepared to be disciples than the Savior will not know us because we did nothing to prove ourselves to him. This project has been wonderfully insightful and I have found so much application. If you're interested I highly encourage the project.
Well, that's all for this week. Next week I will be emailing you from a new area. I could use all of your prayers this week! Love you all and miss you!
Sister Jackson
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