Santa Clause is coming to town in 30 days

hah oh shoot I have to write this fast.  So this week...not much happened.  Sorry to say but it’s true.  We started a new transfer.  Our planner right now lasts until January 2015 so that made me about die. Because in January it means that I have been away from all of you awesome people for 1 whole year!  So that makes me sad and happy..because you are all crazy haha just kidding. But yeah were in the fast lane of the mission right now.  Christmas is just around the corner and were just here doing the work like no bodies business and hoping like crazy that we will get a Christmas baptism. Also my English is getting awful.  Don’t judge me if my sentences don’t make sense.

  This week was like 10000000 degrees outside. I swear I almost died. It was worse than summer because at least in summer you are just hot all the time.  But now it gets a little cooler at night and there is a really nice breeze a lot of the time. So the days when it gets hot are like the worst.  We went to a Tindahan to buy water and they didn’t have anymore but the lady went into her house and got me a glass of ice water.  It was probably the nicest thing that anyone has ever done hah. We didn’t even teach her or anything. She just did it.  That was amazing.

   Also the Filipinos in my house laugh at me because I apparently don’t know how to wash clothes very well.  They said I was 'Cute.'  And then they both spent the next 30 minutes trying to teach me the proper way.  I think I kind of got it. I had to explain that I come from a place where laundry means filling a machine with clothes and pushing a button.  So I have kind of a big learning gap haha. They thought it was funny because "malaki ang katawan mo pero mahina talaga ang mga kamay!" (great body but really week hands) haha.  So yeah, that’s how that went.

    We’ve been going through a phase of showing Mormon messages to some of the less actives that we are teaching. It is amazing and it is working miracles. I love Mormon messages so much and even though they are in English..the spirit is still there so we just work off of that and the response is great. "You can put your money on the Prophet" --the district haha. totoo yun (is true).

       What else...one of our members is moving to California.  So that’s cool.  And another one just got engaged to an American guy. That was also cool.  And the boyfriend of one of our investigators is coming this week so she is going to come to church.  And that is the most cool thing of all. 

   I’m loving it so much here even though everyday seems like the hardest day. But every day I just get stronger I guess and so I just get to have more trials and come out even better in the end!  My investigators probably get bored because I feel like I always teach about making it through trials. But that is the thing I love to teach the very most.  Because I know for a fact that the days that are the very worst are the days right before you see the best blessings.  So you just have to lean on what you know and remember that there is always a way (1 Nephi 3:7)  and through the atonement we can overcome everything. Not just some things.  Not just most things.  EVERY THING. (D&C 6:34)  So remember that. And I’ll remember that.  And we’ll just all keep on keeping on :)

 LOVE YOU ALL 

XOXO from Molino

-Sister Van Tassell  

(or more commonly Sister Van) 

(or even sometimes 'Elder')

One transfer older and wiser too hahah  

Magandang umaga sa inyo lahat. Soo I’m not very smart because for the last ten minutes the internet here has been going crazy and not working…and it wasn’t until now that I figured that I should just open Microsoft word and write the email here first. So I kind of wasted time. But oh well.  So kumusta po kayo? I’m doing well here in Molino. Today is the day of transfer calls but I’m not worried. I’ve only been here for a transfer and a half. And we still have a lot of work to do here.

   So this week was good. But this Sunday was amazing! We had 9 less actives come to church.  We were soooo happy.  We’ve been working with them for quite a while. And to see them progress is probably one of the best feelings in the entire world.  I can’t even hardly explain it cause we were so happy haha. We saw the Pabilin family walk in and me and my companion literally ran out and hugged her and then I said to my companion that it wouldn’t even matter if anyone else came to church. Just as long as she was there.  I guess that was kind of an overreaction. But still haha.

This week we also got to teach sister Marnila. She is one of my favorite people here. She is so nice and so willing to listen to everything we teach.  She works sooo much so we don’t get to see her very often. But those lessons are the ones where you leave and you just have soo much energy.  She saw that we were drinking water out of just regular water bottles like those we bought at 7/11. And she got mad cause those aren’t healthy for us. So she went and bought us real water bottles.

I have officially no time this week because we had to change computer shops and people are rushing me. I don’t like to be rushed.  So I’m taking my time.  Haha I’m so mean. But we can hang out all day for the rest of the week and I only get to talk to you all for 1 hour. So they can just chill.   And I am sorry for everyone that I couldn’t email back. I LOVE getting emails and I just sit there and read them and laugh and it’s the best. And then I don’t have much time to write back.

But this week I was just thinking about everyone that has helped me so much in my life.  Kind of a long trip down memory lane last night. Because we taught a lesson and I told a story about a lesson I learned at girl’s camp one year…the one about the iron rod.  How even the smallest temptations can pull us away and stuff. And I just wondered how in the world I would even be able to be on a mission if I didn’t have all of you guys helping me and teaching me back when I was a kid haha. So don’t ever take for granted the callings you have or the chances you have to teach others. Because for sure I remember the lessons that I had from young womens’ and everywhere.  And even if they didn’t really hit home that much then…they do later on.  So yeah .  I love you all and I really hope you know that.  You don’t realize it until you’re on the other side of the world I guess haha.  But if I was mayaman I would write every one of you a letter and say thanks and say how much it meant….but I don’t have the time or money for that haha. SOoo maybe when I get home I’ll try and do it. But for right now just know that I am thankful for the time you have given to help me and you’ve made the missionaries who they are today! So you’re awesome!

 Have an amazing week!  It’s almost Christmas! Love you all

Sister Van Tassell

Choose ye this day

Alrighty well sorry about this week but there are no pictures. I chose the wrong computer. And its USB slot is broken.  So it will be all up to your imagination this week.

  Not a lot has happened this week to be honest. We had one day that was pretty good.  We have two subdivisions in our area that are closed, because of the security. You can’t go in unless you know someone that lives there. And you have to know their name and exact address and all of that good stuff. And of course we didn’t know anyone there. But I just wanted to try anyway. Maybe because I don’t like when people tell me no. (I’ve got both Van Tassell and Stapelman in me, I can’t help it hah)   So we went and walked straight past the security guard...no problems.  It was too easy.  And did a little OYMing there.  And then we went to go into the other subdivision. That was a little harder.  The guard stopped us and we didn’t know anyone there so we just said we were going to the house "over there" and he let us through. So that was awesome.  Anyway we did finding there too and we ended up finding a few people. So now we won’t have a problem going back. :)  One of the people we found was because our ward missionary said she remembered teaching there one time. So we just went up and said tao po.  It’s so fun because you have no idea what you’re going to say and you just have to go with it.  Anyway this big guy came out of the house and I was kind of intimidated cause he just said what do you need? But we just oymd and talked and sure enough he let us in.  So that was awesome.  Also there was one rich house in our area and so we decided to go ring the doorbell and just talk. That was also scary but we just chatted and gave a Book of Mormon and he said he would let us in but he wasn’t the one who lived there. He was just the brother.  So he couldn’t. But it was still fun to just OYM and see what happened.

     We had kind of a rough week this week.  On Saturday we got punted from every appointment.  The highlight of my day was a little boy that gave me a high five. But everyone has those days. But I still stick to my theory that the hard days are the days when you learn the most.  So I’ll take a hard day once in a while.....but only once in a while haha. I will take a lot of good days too. 

     We taught one of our investigators and she has 3 kids. 3 yrs. old 2 yrs. old and 1 yr. old. We watched Finding Faith in Christ with her.  And in order to try and help her feel the spirit I spent the entire time 'entertaining' the kids. I hope it worked hah.  I just gave them water bottles and things to play with. I now know why dad had me go with the missionaries to baby sit while they teach. 

  Well that’s all I’ve got for today. I’ve renewed my theory that people that help missionaries receive a lot of blessings.  So let’s make this week say hi to your missionaries’ week.  That way you can get blessings and we can feel loved haha. Love you all so much! Keep on keeping on.

Love 

Sister Van Tassell

It’s still hot in the Philippines

Hello everyone! 

This week was awesome because it was my 9 month mark.  I burned a shirt.  That was fun.  And also because Elder Oaks came….I actually just typed elder Holland.  Wishful thinking I guess haha.  But Elder Oaks was great! We had just a meeting with our entire mission.  We all woke up really early and gathered in Las Pinas and got some great advice about how we can improve our missionary work.  One thing I especially loved was the fact that everyone got something so different out of his visit.  We have been trying, as a mission, to get really spiritually prepared for his visit.  So when he came we could get the things that we needed to hear.  And it was evident after he left that we had accomplished our goal.  We got a chance to share with each other what we learned.  And most people said lots of different things.  So it’s true.  It’s not about what is said.  It’s about what you hear and what you feel. 

 The biggest thing that I got was that missions being hard isn’t a new thing.  He actually took a minute out of his talk and said he was prompted to talk about Noah.  And how the people in that time were really really “hard.”  But Noah still had to do his part and teach and try to help as many people as he could.  The same with us.  We have to do our part as missionaries/members/children of God and help as many people as we can.  It doesn’t affect us whether or not they accept us.  What affects us is whether we have put in all the effort that we could.  And if we did that.  We’re ok.  And God will take care of the rest in his own ways and his own time.  So that was really helpful. We just have to be faithful and diligent and God won’t leave us alone.

Well besides Elder Oaks…we had a pretty good week.  We kind of had a lot of learning experiences this week.  After the mission conference we had some amazing lessons.  It was cool how strong we felt the spirit.  And then the next day our lessons struggled..big time.  It was really confusing to us how lessons can go from amazing to….not so amazing in just one day’s time.  We talked a lot about it and thought about it and prayed about it.  And I think that we really need to make sure to prepare for each day.  Because of course we prepared so much for Elder Oaks.  And then the next day was just ‘normal.’  But in reality it wasn’t. It was just as important as the day before.  We still had to have the spirit and still had to teach.  So yeah haha.  And that kind of goes along with my quote of the week that came from April 2014 conference.  Something to the effect of,”Think how much time we waste looking for the rainbow instead of thanking God for the rain.”  So everyday counts and every struggle makes us stronger. 

Ok sorry for going off about all of that.  Its good stuff.  So I shouldn’t apologize. But let’s carry on with what happened this week.  I got my package of letters and beef jerky.  It was like heaven on earth.  That’s probably the best package I received.  Letters are the best…and the jerky really was amazing too.

I learned that Filipinos do not have the same taste as Americans.  Ok I already knew that. But this week we had pretzels and I ate my.  I offered all of these to both Filipinos and Americans.  They were gone in about a second.  It was like giving out money.  But only the Americans liked them.  It’s funny.  And great because that means more for me haha. 

We attended a funeral.  It was a lot different.

We had exchanges….you already know how I feel about those.  But I guess it wasn’t too bad.

And Sister Tye fed us all sandwiches at the mission conference.  They had cheese on them that tasted almost like real cheese.  It was AMAZING.  I miss cheese hahah.

I got told this week that I was getting fatter and that I was getting skinnier.  So I just don’t know what to believe and I’m going to keep eating as normal hahah J

That’s about it.  I don’t want to take up too much of your time because I know that you are all very busy and you have a lot of things you can be doing.  So enjoy the rest of your night….But wait before you go!  I forgot to tell you that one of our less active families all came to church yesterday!  All 4 of the siblings.  We were only expecting one of them.  And we looked back and all four of them were there.  I was so happy I could have died.  But the only thing that was better than that was the fact that the members were fellowshipping them and making them feel at home. (they were so worried that things at church have changed)  And if that isn’t a beautiful sight then I don’t know what is!

So I hope you have a great week and you keep working on your missionary work and your fellowshipping.  It’s worth your time.  Keep on keepin on. I love hearing about all of you and all the things you are doing.  I love you but most important, God loves you!

Ingat palagi

XOXO Sister Van Tassell

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