No good scripture this week. besta read your scriptures and find one for yourself haha

Hello everyone!

So I’m being better and I’m writing this at the beginning of my email time instead of the end!  Yay! I kept my commitment!  Now maybe we’ll have more investigators keeping their commitments haha. 

 Anywayss how was your week? I hope it was great and I hope it’s not getting too cold there.  I don’t mean to scare you all but this next week is NOVEMBER!  How that happened so fast…I have no idea.  But it is what it is and the truth hurts hahah.  And whether or not you are prepared…Christmas is 59 days away!!  Too soon?  Ok I’ll let you enjoy your thanksgiving first.  But for us it’s all Christmas now!  There was a little Halloween celebration but not much.  An occasional kid going up and down the street and getting candy.  The crazy thing is that it isn’t even Halloween yet.  Just whenever is convenient I guess hah.   It’s sad to not be able to dress up and eat tons of candy though!

 This week as far as missionary work goes…

Time just keeps flying by and we just keep working every day.  We had a super bummer week this week though.  We found out that one of our investigators was moving L  They were super progressing and we LOVED going to them because they always had tons of questions.  But wala na!  Hopefully we can get their address and forward them on to the next missionaries.  They’ll be ok. But it’s still hard to let them go. 

One of the days this week we went to an appointment and got punted and we were kind of exhausted.  So we just sat there for a minute.  And then one of the kids pulls out a little ball and kicked it around.  So I went over and played some street soccer with a bunch of 8 year old kids.  And it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.  They were all like attacking me trying to get the ball.  And I’d just dribble around them and they would just laugh and laugh.  Our ward missionary kicked the ball pretty hard and it just smoked one of the kids!  But they were tough and didn’t even cry.  I about died laughing though.  It was super funny.

Our favorite ward missionary turned in her mission papers last week!  I’m praying she goes to America so that I can go visit her when I get home J

This week I also gained some serious respect for the missionaries in America.  We OYMd an American guy.  I’m not going to go into detail.  But shout out to all of you missionaries in America.  You can do it! You’re amazing J I know mission calls  are inspired…because I don’t think I could make it in America.  Haha but the funniest thing was that I forgot the word for pagbabayad sala in English. And it was awkward.  And wow teaching a lesson in English is awkward and super hard.  I love it.  I still feel like I’m in the awkward stage of Tagalog…like where I think that I know it but I still am super bad at grammar.  So I’m hoping I outgrow that fast.

We had an awesome experience this week.  We taught a bunch of people…not a family but they all live in the same area.  So they all come to the same lesson.  Anyway we actually had one of the priesthood leaders come with us.  Which was the best because he was friends with one of them.   But yeah.  They had requested that we taeacht about holy ghost.  It was cool because we got to answer some of their questions and teach them what the holy ghost really was.  Then we had planned to watch the Restoration video.  But let me tell you.  When you try and watch the restoration video with investigators, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.  First they didn’t have a cd player. But thankfully our ward missionary brought her laptop and had the video on a jump drive.  But it still didn’t work. I was just praying and praying that it would work.  It took about 10 minutes but she finally figured it out.  It was really super quiet and it was in English.  But I really hope they felt the spirit.  One of them asked for the other CD so that he could watch it later. The highlight to that story is that three of them came to church on Sunday!  What can you say?  The church is true haha.

But for closing I really do want to bear my testimony that the church is true.  It may sound crazy to others but I know that this is the only place where you can truly find everything that you are looking for.  Prayer is one of the best things ever. And I promise that prayers are answered.  Even the littlest prayers.  So don’t give up. Just take a moment and say a prayer.  There is always someone listening.  And there is always a way to keep going.
I love you all and I’m super thankful for your prayers and your support!  The best po kayo talaga! Miss na miss ko kayo! Mahal ko kayo. Ingat palagi at keep doing your missionary work!

XOXO from Molino!

 Sister Van Tassell

Proverbs 25:25 Write your missionaries :)

Hello family

   So I had an awesome plan of writing first before I did anything else.  And then I didn’t.  And now it is time to go and I am barely starting to write.  Sooo short and sweet :) 

  So this week was really good. I was sick but we had more lessons and it was fun not to have to just walk around on the streets and try to get people to talk to us.  We have some really good investigators. And they are all doing great.  We love them and so it hurts a lot when they don’t come to church.  The mission is really focusing on getting people to church. So I swear every lesson we have ends in inviting people to church. It’s a good thing though.  It really does help.  Because they get to find friends at church and realize that it isn’t a scary place to be.  I just kind of wish that I had a huge van and I could just go all over the place and pick everyone up. But we can’t.  So it ends up on their desire.  And so that’s hard.  But they can do it.  So if you need something to pray for this week. Pray for our investigators to come to church!

   So we had a crazy experience this week.  A preacher showed up to our lesson.  And proceeded to try and bible bash with us.  We ended our lesson with some difficulty...because he kept interrupting.  But then we proceeded to have a conversation with him about the bible.  In which he ended up telling us that we were wrong and our bible was wrong. But instead of getting us frustrated, it just made us laugh because it was so crazy!  Gotta love the life of a missionary.

   We had a really funny thing happen.  I discovered a new fruit.  Atis.  I don’t know what it is in English. But its super masarap!  Anyway so every day we walk around and look for ripe Atis on the trees.  There is never any.  But one day we were fasting.  And we found the most beautiful Atis in the entire world. It was ripe and it looked really good.  It was within arm’s reach.  We had forgotten that we were fasting and so we grabbed it and split in in half and each took a bite. But then we realized that we were fasting so we spit it out and threw away the rest. But then we just laughed about how it was such a temptation.  Which even though it was such a small thing, it was such a big temptation.  Anything to keep us away from doing good things.  Tricky tricky.  

   Also that day we saw HUGE SPIDERS.  If I saw that thing in the house I would probably run out and refuse to ever go in again. I probably couldn’t even squish it.  It would probably just eat me alive.  I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been thankful for the size of hobos haha.

    Ok I promise I’ll write more next week.  I really feel bad. I could make the sisters wait.  Actually that sounds like a really good idea.  Because I actually don’t care that much.  But I’m trying to be nice.  Argh it’s hard to be nice sometimes hahah.  Love you all so much.  Be better than me and keep trying to be nice to others.  Even if you don’t want too!

 XOXOX from Molino!

Sister Van Tassell

Short and Sweet

Hello America!

  How goes the battle? Things are going good here.  Our mission president told us he was tired of us using the word hard.  So we are banned from using it in letters to him.  So I’m going to carry that over into my letters from home. Because even though there are difficult times, you’ve got to go into it with energy and hope so that you can get through it.  So I’m going to start by saying there have been a lot of "learning experiences" this week of the mission.

  So as you all know.  We had transfers this week.  I got a new companion!  Her name is Sister Raterta. She is Filipina.  From Mindanao.  So she speaks bisaya.  But she is really good at Tagalog so it’s not a problem.  We’re trying to speak Tagalog 24/7 so that I can improve. Because when I speak, people understand me but I don’t have the sentence structure and grammar down very well.  So were hoping that practice makes perfect.  She’s been in the mission for 6 months. She’s really quiet but we get along well.  I just have to work on having energy and being loud.  Oh boy.  

     But with a new companion comes the task of leading the area.  I’ve only been here for 3 weeks so leading is kind of really stretching me.  I am super-duper stressed and sometimes we just walk and walk and walk.  The people here are very straight forward.  I used to wish that the ones that weren’t interested would just tell you...but now that it’s happening...I don’t like it to much anymore haha.  The positive side is that the ones that we find really do care.  But other than that there isn’t much.  So it takes a lot of faith in finding.  We just have to really try and keep up the energy with every OYM that we have.  We’ve gotten lost a few times and we can’t always remember which way to go.  But it’s getting better.  And every day we get home and were straight up exhausted.  But somehow we have the energy to do it again the next day.  

   This Sunday was rough because none of our investigators came to church.  Of course it was conference and it was far away.  But the ones that committed to come had other excuses.  I had a really bad day on Sunday. I really just wanted to give up.  I was super grumpy and just could not understand how they could be so sure about coming and then just drop us.  I was actually struggle with the idea that we had to go visit them later on that day.  Because I wondered how I was going to be able to teach if I was so frustrated.  But we finished conference and went out to work.  And when we got to the appointment later that night and taught, it wasn’t hard.  I didn’t remember my previous feelings until we had left.  Then I realized that I had felt that same love for them that I had before conference.  And before I knew that they weren’t coming.  When we taught, I felt the desire to help them keep their commitments, solve their problems, and build their testimonies.  I know for a fact that the love I felt for them is true charity.  Even though I am farrrr from being a perfect missionary.  Sometimes I question whether I’m even a good one.  But moments like that help me know that Christ is helping me be the kind of teacher that he would be.  I’m so thankful for that help and I know for a fact that I could not succeed without it. I hope that I can continue to live and qualify for that help through the rest of my mission and even afterwards. I’m so thankful for the chance to be here and to grow so much.  Even though I count down months and sometimes even days. (9 months left guysssss)!!  I really do love it here and I hope I can touch some people’s lives.

  You are all awesome and I miss you all so much.  Every day I love seeing the ways that you have helped me and being able to use them to help others.  Remember the talk by elder Bednar.  It’s true.  Use the things that help you to help others and you will feel the love of Christ working through you.  Love you all soo much!

  XOXOX from Molino!

Sister Van Tassell

TRANSFERS AGAIN, but don’t worry, I’m staying.  

Hello everyone!  Another week has come and gone and I once again have to think of something to write that will let you know somewhat of what my week has been like. 

   So not a lot happened until the end of the week.  We had a district activity of watching how to train you dragon 2 which was amazing...and playing sports...which sucked.  Because all the athletic elders went and played basketball and I couldn’t go play because obviously I’m a sister so I was stuck playing volleyball and we couldn’t keep score and half the people didn’t know how to hit the ball.  So I quit and went and taught the kids there how to throw a football.  That was super fun. They didn’t quite get the hang of it but we all had a good time. 

   Also sister Sevia got sick so we just camped out at the mission office for a while and she slept on the couch.  It was nice.  Aircon is nice.  But I think I’m going to die when I get home because when we go into air con we just freeze and need to wear jackets and stuff like that haha.  So I’m not looking forward to next winter in Idaho!!

   Also we didn’t really have any of our investigators at church.  That was a serious bummer and I’m really hoping that changes soon.  

      But I’m going to spend most of my letter talking about our Friday and Saturday experience.  So if you’ve been keeping up with my letters you can probably remember that I REALLY dislike exchanges.  They always turn out ok in the end but the idea of having to go on exchanges is like death and I really dislike it.  If it was my way I would never do it. But unfortunately that isn’t an option haha.  So we had our exchanges Friday night to Saturday night.  We thought we were going to be able to go to the women’s broadcast in our stake on the Saturday so we only planned half a day’s work and everything was good.  Because I’m not super familiar with the area so I was a little worried about not remembering how to get to all the houses.  But since we didn’t have much time to work I was ok.  All was well until we received a text from the bishop saying the broadcast in our stake had been postponed till next week.  I kind of wanted to die because I had absolutely no idea who we were going to go to.  So I just dramatically laid on the floor and then took a nap hah. In the face of crisis what do I do?  sleep it off!  :)  But I woke up a little while later still not ready to face a full day of work when we received a text from president Tye saying we had permission to go to the neighboring stake to watch!  We were ecstatic and hurried and got ready...because the next stake is an hour and a half away.  And we headed out the door.  Just as we started walking the rain started too.  It felt like I just stepped into the shower.  We were soaked in like 2 seconds.  But we just kept going because we didn’t want to be late to the conference.  Anyway we braved the elements and found a member to show us the way to get to Dasma.  It took an hour and the conference actually started earlier than they said, so we were pretty late.  But it was still fun.  And we only got a few lessons in with the STLs hah.   The highlight of the story was that the whole day we were praying and our prayers got answered.  First we prayed for a chance to be able to see the women’s broadcast, then we prayed that we would get there on time, then we prayed that it would stop raining so the sisters baptism could go through, and many many more.  And all of them were answered to some extent.  Even though they were super duper tiny prayers they were all heard.  I’ll tell you what.  My testimony of prayer has grown a ton since I’ve been here on the mission.  No matter what happens there is always someone who knows how you feel.  And can take care of you. And prayer is the way you talk to him. So just remember to pray always.  Especially the times when you don’t feel like you should.  It doesn’t have to be long, it just has to happen. :)

   That’s all the good stuff I have for you today. Hope it was entertaining hah.  I’m just really hungry and I kind of want to go get lunch before we head off on our zone activity to Tagaytay haha.  So sorry :) But I love you all.  And I’m thankful for all your prayers.  You are always in my prayers too.  So don’t worry! Keep being good examples and don’t waste the time you’ve been given.  You are all amazing!

 XOXOX from Molino! 

Sister Van Tassell