Cause youre gonna miss this....

Hey everyone!

I like how Jenna did it and just sent a picture. That’s what I want to do this week. But I guess I’ll write a little bit so that you don’t get mad at me! Hah so this week was hot. Like so hot! I’m trying to love it because I know I’m going to miss it when I get home but it is a little rough haha. I know that it doesn’t seem that hot..just 90s but I think it’s just the humidity that gets you. 

So this week we focused on finding. Because obviously if no one is progressing you have to find new people. So we talked to just about everyone that we saw. We got a lot of nos and a lot of people who wouldn’t even look at us.  But there were also a lot of people who listened.  Even if it was just because I was white…it was still nice.   But at least we see the success coming from our efforts.  On exchanges I got a referral but I didn’t think it was in our area so honestly I didn’t think much of it. But then yesterday I finally noticed that it was in our area so we went to contact them. And surprisingly they were super excited and willing to listen to us. They are just looking for a way to make their family happier and we told them we had the solution haha. The dad even joined the lesson half way through and committed to go to church and said the closing prayer.  Which was pretty cool because by the way the kids acted we got the feeling that he wasn’t into church too much. But we are going back to them on Wednesday so well see what happens.

Also we were finding and talked to this girl and she just asked us out of the blue if we could teach her and her family. Of course we agreed and ended up teaching their whole family about the plan of salvation.  Then the next day we saw the dad and he told us that the mom had died that morning (she had cancer).  We were so sad because of course it was such a shock. But we are hoping that through teaching them we were able to give them the comfort they need to get through this trial in their lives.  I just hope that they are doing ok. Cause they were the nicest family.

And last but not least.  We taught the husband of one of our recent converts this week.  He doesn’t want much to do with church to say the least. He doesn’t pray and he doesn’t like us telling him to pray. He’s a little offish but he let us teach him. So we tried really hard to be nice and loving and try and teach in a way that he would understand/accept.  We decided not to try and commit him to do too much because we didn’t want to scare him away haha. So we committed him to read one verse in Alma and come to church for one hour.  (he came to church a long time ago but got so bored and never came back)  So we said ok brother, 1 verse and 1 hour.  And when we got to church on Sunday he was there!  He didn’t stay for the whole 3 hours but at least he kept his commitment.  I was stoked. Oh the little things that make the biggest difference.

So even though this week was a little bit of a struggle…..we did see a little bit of success.  And sometimes the little things make the biggest difference.  And the lesson I learned this week is to find the happiness in every day.  And do all things out of love. And if you do that…you should have a pretty good week.

Love you all!

XOXO from Noveleta

--Sister Van Tassell

These are some pictures of some of the graves for the wealthy people in the Philippines.