kumusta pamilya!

Heyyyy!!!! i cant even tell you how excited i was for p day.  The elders are playing the ukalale and singing so its setting the mood and making it awesome.  My first week has been so amazing and honestly a roller coaster!  I love it here.  Like i really do.  Everyone is soooo nice and i just love it. My companions are so awesome and we all get along really well.  Im glad i have a 3 some cause it just works haha.  our district is amazing too.  The Elders are soo sweet and are always there for us and walking us home at night.  Oh my gosh so the other day at gym i played four square and the girls were super boring to play with so i left and went to play with the elders and i was the only sister there and i totally kicked butt!  and it was awesome and all the elders were like SISSSSTER!  they say it super funny like seester. We can always hear our elders cause they are loud and dont know how to whisper. but we love them mahal ko kayo!  They are like our family and we kneel and pray together like twice a day and sing tagalog hymns.  An elder from hawaii told me he liked my accent and it was so country and he could totally just listen to me talk all day.  That made me laugh.  The food is acctually good.  
Yesterday was fast sunday and it was the first time  ive ever fasted for 24 hours so it was hard but i had to be happy and it acctually felt good.  at dinner i ate soo much!  and they had ice cream and cake and steak and shrimp and we ate till we wanted to die!  oh and its AMAZING how many people there are here and that we were all fasting at the same time.  The spirit gets so strong its crazy.  Its just good.  Like we pray so much.  i had to pray in sacrament meeting yesterday but it wasnt bad because it was just our zone and our zone is cool.  They have some amazing testimonies.  I havnt had a problem making friends with them at all.  like i have so much to say i cant even decide where to start.  There are times when i get really down but ive been reading a lot of scriptures about being humble and it really helps.  I memorized a scripture in Tagalog already!!  

   The language is good but hard.  but ive studied more this week than i ever have ever!  its crazy that in 5 days i can pray and testify and say other things.  our district is super smart so we catch on fast.  the other districts say were doing really well but they might just be saying that hahah

 soo much has happened but i have to tell you of this one. The most amazing thing ever happened saturday.  Well friday we taught our first lesson in tagalog.  We taught brother danilo.  and before i came here i thought that the "actor" investigators were a joke and it wasnt really a real life experience but it so is!  we were scared out of our minds but it went ok.  Like not perfect but we did ok.  We just memorized a script and did it but saturday our teaching appmt got moved up from 6:30 to 3:15 so we lost tons of study time so we just had to whip up a lesson with what we knew.  We have learned so much though so it wasnt impossible.  We honestly didnt know what all we were going to say and we were switching off a lot so before we went in we were honestly shaking cause we were so nervous but we said a prayer and it calmed us down so much.  We went in asked him to pray because the day before he said he was too uncomfortable to say a prayer on his own.  So today we taught him how and he said the best prayer ever and we felt the spirit super strong .  and then we had him read some scriptures and asked if he felt the spirit and he said YES!!!  We asked him if he would be baptized because our teacher said we should at least bring it up so he knows what our intentions are for being there and he said YES!!!  we were soo excited.  We tried to set a date but he didnt agree to one because he sad that his parents dont like mormons.  We offered to teach them too but he said they lived in california.  Then i just got this strong feeling to bear my testimony and so i just did (and im not good at testimonies right now)  i always forget the words but i just did it and it went well and it just ended our lesson so good.  After we got done we left the room and all three of us just started bawling.  It was easily the best feeling in the whole entire world!!  like just the spirit and love for brother danilo and love for mga kasama (my companions).  the elders probably thought we were crazy but we were so excited and said a thank you prayer and then had to run outside and jump around.  Then when the elders were done we ran to our class to tell our teacher how it went cause he practiced with us before we went in.

      I miss you guys a lot and i cant believe ive only been here for 6 days!  but honestly during the day all there is time to think about is tagalog.  Like in class we have to listen so hard and focus 100% constantly!  When we go to bed our brains about explode.  And we are exhausted all the time but we work hard so it helps.  There are so many people speaking all different languages.  Ive heard so many australian accents i just love it!

well i probably better call it quits for the day.  You guys need to use dear elder because it seriously is such an exciting thing to get mail and dear elder is fast and just as good as a handwritten letter.  so use it!  and tell other people to use it :)

    mahal ko kayo.  langit

         Sister Van Tassell