Kana!

Hey Family!!!

 

How are all of you?  :) It has been another good week. It is very true that the days are long and the weeks are short, I remember hearing that a lot before my mission, but it is definitely a real phenomenon. I can't believe I have been here for a month already. Weird. So, I think I'll start with some funnies. On Saturday, I finally got called tambok for the first time. hahaha. Tambok means fat in Ilonggo. Let's be real, I was waiting for that moment. In the MTC, the teachers told us that Americans get called fat all the time. We were teaching a Less Active woman and her husband showed us a picture of the Idahoan Sister who converted them. He said how she was tambok and then they said I was too. Hehehe. Also, after that lesson, we were standing on a street waiting to hear back from the Branch President, and there were a couple of little kids yelling "'kana" at me (short for Amerkana), but every time I looked over, they ran away. haha. Silly.

 

This week it was my first turn to conduct the Weekly Planning Session. What a headache. I was pretty stressed over that, but I learned that I need to take way more notes in my planner because I just can't remember everything I need to. However, because of that, I think I am really learning what it means to "lose yourself in the work." Planning was stressful, but when we got to go out and teach later that day I just forgot all the stuff I was worried about and focused on the people and it was so good.

 

I spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday on Obedience. President Aquino and his wife were there because he needed to do a baptismal interview for someone, so they spoke too. Preparing my talk was cool because of how quickly I was able to translate it. In the MTC it took foooorrreeeever to translate things for our fake lessons, I was so confused, but I am pretty sure I was able to translate my talk in less than an hour total, not that any of it was grammatically correct at all, but it made sense I think. That was neat to notice how far my skills have come. Again, I know the Spirit is helping me so much and the gift of tongues is absolutely real.

 

Also, Sunday was great because we had 7 less actives come to church! Yesssss!!!! It was awesome!

 

I am so sad to hear about Great Grandma West, I will be keeping her in my prayers. I hope all of you have a good week and become more converted to Christ every day. I know He lives and He loves us so much. He is our Savior and He redeemed us from death and from our sins and even our mistakes and weaknesses. I love all of you! Halong permi!

 

Love, Sister Winward

I love these people!

Hey Family!!!

How are you? I am doing so well!

So, I only have a little time left, but here is one of the best things that happened this week! We are teaching this young woman named Joy (She is deaf, so I'm learning some ASL too...at least that involves some English!). Two of her teenage brothers are active, but her mom is not. So her mom, Gloria, hasn't been to church in a loooong time. She is so nice and she is very patient with my language ablilities (which are improving every day-I am so grateful!). So on Wednesday, we reeeeally needed a member to come with us so we could have some member-present lessons. We tried at a few of the YW homes, but they couldn't come. So then Sister Mendez decided we should get Gloria to come with us. We went and got her and she came with us to a few appointments. Then she ran into her childhood best friend, and she was so excited, hopefully the friend will be willing to listen to us. Gloria was with us for maybe 4 hours and she loved it. She was able to help us teach a new investigator. At the end, when she was going to go home we could tell that she just loved it. She asked if she could serve a mission too, haha. But best of all, she finally came to church on Sunday! And the RS Sisters fellowshipped her and were so excited that she was back! Yay! I know her testimony was strengthened. It was wonderful! 

I had my first lunch and dinner appointments this week too. Yummy food! We had dinner at Rosemalyn Buenafe's (A branch missionary). So, she is basically just amazing. She is probably about 25 and a RM. She is the local seminary teacher. Her mother is wheelchair bound because she had a stroke and a coma a few years ago. Just seeing Rosemalyn care for her mother in church and at their home is a huge example of selflessness. She does all she can to make sure her mom is comfortable and safe. She is so like Christ. 

Anyway, those are only a few of the wonderful people here. More stories to come. I love you and I hope you are all doing well. You all have a light within you, keep feeding the flame and share it with others. Also, thank you Grandma and Grandpa A for the candy package and letters. Fun! I have been studying in Alma about Ammon...miracles can really happen but first we must have faith! I love you all! 

Love, Sister Winward

2 Months Already? Time Sure Flies!

Dear family,

 

Hello! How are all of you? I love you so much! It has been a great week. Every day I am able to love the work more and more. I am certainly having an adventure here, that is for sure.

 

A little more about life in the Philippines: There are lots of tiny lizards that crawl on the walls everywhere. One of my first days there was one hanging out next to me on the window screen. In our compound yard thing there is a stray kitten that likes to hang around. It is cute. It curls up next to me when I do laundry, and it hops up in between the window screen and bars and meows because it wants to come into our house. haha. Also (for Rachel), there are a lot of goats. I always think of how she likes goats whenever I see one. haha. Last Thursday/Friday, I had my first official brownout--no power and no water for like 15 hours. We had to manually pump water from a well to use to clean our apartment. So that was fun. Also, Electric fans are basically one of the greatest inventions in history. ;)   We shop at a store called Gaisano, kind of like Smith's Marketplace. The people really don't feed us that much, which is good...then I don't have to worry about how safe their food is. I have been eating a lot of apples, oranges and PB & J (seriously! awesome, right?!) I think I am still full from all of the food in the MTC. haha

 

The work is going well. The Branch President and Branch Council are making efforts to get more involved in missionary work and it is wonderful! We had a training with them yesterday and the STLs (Sister Butler and Sister McClellan) gave a great lesson on reactivation, retention, and converstion. The Branch Council made goals and committed to do their part to help the Oton Branch become strong. We have been teaching a recent convert named Rhyza, (9 years old). It is so fun to teach her and her siblings. Her parents are not active, but she and her older two siblings are. We hope their whole family will become active. We had FHE with them and their neighbors last week and it was great. We made sure the whole family was there and at the end we knelt together and the dad prayed. Ah! It was wonderful. One of the kids, Jarins, is 7 and he is like a Filipino version of Blake. So cute!

 

So, there is an investigator named Mylene whose sister, Jemma, is a member but has become less active over the last few years I think. Anyway, so Jemma has had a few nervous breakdowns in the last couple of months and now she is in the hospital. We asked the family if they would be interested in getting a priesthood blessing for Jemma. Long story short, We visited the hospital with President Catalan (Branch Pres) on Saturday to talk to Jemma. He wanted to see how she was doing and she if she wanted a priesthood blessing. It was definitely an interesting experience. The hospital was a pretty poor public hospital. After we walked out of the Psychiatric Unit, the Branch President noted how there was a marked difference between the feeling in that room and outside of it. It just felt evil or something in there, I guess. I don't know how else to explain it. I wasn't worried because I knew we had the protection of the Lord, but it was definitely weird. We just keep hoping Jemma can recover and return to her normal self.

 

My companion is a really good cook. She has made adobo a few times so far, and it is always tasty. (Basically whatever meat and whatever veggies you want all stewed together with some soy sauce. Yum!) I love her! Her sister got married last week, so that has been hard for her, but she is so strong. And so patient with me and my language learning. Grabe! I don't think I mentioned, she is a native Filipina, but she was an English major in college so there hasn't been a language barrier there. And actually the people do speak quite a bit of English, so it is usually an Ilonggish mixture.

 

I love you all so much. I have to go, so sorry I cannot send individual emails this week. I got the sister missionary mall package, Mom. Thank you so much. I am glad you all had a fun 4th of July. My comp. and I sang the Star Spangled Banner to celebrate. ;) Have a wonderful week. Make sure you do the things we are constantly committing people to do--pray, read your scriptures, and go to church! I love you all :) Halong!

 

Love, Sister Winward

 

 

Pictures in first area - Oton

P-day!

Yep, I CAN do this!

M

y dearest family! 

Kumusta kamo? How are all of you? I hope you are not melting into puddles with the heat wave there. Stay cool! 

It has been a good week. The first week was definitely rough--culture shock, adjusting to everything, homesickness. But now I am great. The language is still hard, but I do what I can to use what I know, and I know it will improve with time and study. I am able to understand, or at least get the gist of, most of what I hear, so that is good. In the lessons, my companion mostly teaches, but I can explain a scripture and testify and pray, so it is good. Many people know some English, so sometimes people say "It is okay Sister, we can understand, English." haha, I usually just keep trying with the Hiligaynon though cuz the gospel will be preached in every tongue, right? ;) My companion is great. She is silly and sweet, and she is a great example of sharing the gospel with everyone and having charity for everyone. 

So, I don't have an address for where I live, honestly I don't think they really have specific addresses here, just streets (so make sure you put the name of the mission on every letter you send). But I live in a little compound type thing. There are three little houses that share a pretty yard all surrounded by a concrete wall. For your Google mapping, my neighborhood (barangay) is called "Cagbang". Our house is pretty nice. I live with the Sister Training Leaders for our Zone, Sister Butler and Sister McClellan. We study a lot, then go out in the afternoon to teach. We are working with a handful of investigators, but a lot of the time we go teach less-active members (there are a ton in the Philppines). We are constantly inviting people back to church, they have so many excuses, but little by little I am sure they will return. There is once recent convert, Arnold, who still needs to be confirmed. He has been late to sacrament for a few weeks, hopefully he will come on time so he can finally receive the Holy Ghost! I surely love the Philippines lack of time management.... It is a blessing and a curse. 

So, most of the places we go are city-ish, but there is one barangay called Lumbayao that is so pretty. It is the jungle I expected the Philippines to be. There are bamboo homes and bamboo bridges and rice fields. I don't have any good pictures of it yet, but I will soon. :) I love the Filipino children. They are so cute! They can be super distracting in lessons--I am trying so hard to listen and understand what is going on (which is extra hard because everyone speaks very softly, and there is a lot of background noise)--but I still love it when they are there. On Saturday, there was a youth activity about mission preparation. After it, two of the Young Women, ages 17 and 13, came with us to teach some less-active members. They were so great. It is one thing for a missionary to invite someone to church, but it is so wonderful when a member invites them. We got to watch the MTC broadcast last night. Wasn't it so wonderful? I love the MTC. I am so glad to be in the heart of missionary work right now. I loved the broadcast because I really hope everyone takes it to heart. Members are so powerful in building up the church where they live. I definitely did not really realize that before my mission, but I know my work will not end when I go home. If anything, this is just preparation for the rest of my life as a missionary. 

 So this week I particularly enjoyed studying from Alma 5 and 7. Alma is an awesome missionary! He is a great example of humility and diligence. 

President and Sister Aquino arrived yesterday!! It was good to meet them, I think they were a little overwhelmed and tired from their flight, but I know they will be great. Also, they said they stayed with someone in West Jordan while they were being trained at the MTC. Cool, huh? President said: "I think it was 3200 West, there are so many chapels there!" haha, so true!

I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week. Pray for missionary experiences and think of the people you know who need the gospel or need a friend to help them come back. Thank you for the emails. I think it takes like 3 or 4 weeks for letters to get here, so sorry that it will take so long. haha

Love, Sister Winward

ARRIVED SAFELY IN THE PHILIPPINES...

Hey family! I love you!

So I arrived safe and alive in the Philippines Iloilo Mission on Wed 19 June 2013 at about 10:30 am. It has been the craziest few days of my life. Truly, that is the only way to describe it. Crazy...

I am doing well. I think I am adjusting well to the time difference, I only felt a little jetlagged the first day or two. The humidity is a little different to get used to, I am just glad it is the rainy season so it is not unbearably hot. Travel was good, a little wild, but this wonderful Filipinia woman named Victoria was seriously an angel. We sat next to her on the plane from LA to Manila, and she made sure we got through customs and to our next gate. 

 My companion is Sister Mendez. she is from a town on Luzon island (the big northern one, where Manila is). So she is a Filipina, she only knew Tagalog before, but she is already good at the language even though she just finished her training--so she has only been here for 3 months. I am assigned to Oton (area A), just near Iloilo City.

I live in a balay (house) with another companionship of American Sisters. We travel by jeepney (like one of those ugly cube cars but longer with 2 bench seats on the inside), tricycle (motorcycle with a sidecar), and sikad (bmx type bicycle with a sidecar)...google those (I'll send pictures next week maybe). They are quite the wild ride. On our way to church yesterday we had 8 adults and 7 children on 1 tricycle. They later that day I think I counted 10 adults on a tricycle. It is madness. And there aren't really traffic rules, just stay on the right side of the road, but even that is ignored if they want to pass. It is really funny to be white here because people stare at me as I ride past...I just smile and wave at them.
It is really noisy here...all the time. Roosters crow all the time (I think I found out where they got the sounds for Angry Birds from), dogs bark all the time, old men sing kareoke all the time, jeepneys blast music, the rain is loud, the wind is loud, etc. It's just a noisy place. But it's all good, I kind of just tune a lot of it out. It is a noisy, dirty city. Everything smells weird too. Fish, jeepney pollution, cigarettes, chickens, other mysterious smells. Including myself--Thank you humidity. To get to the jeepney stop from our balay, we walk past a market where they sell fish. Truly delightful smells right there, haha. It is definitely Asia. haha

The work is good. Every one is soooo poor. For real. My area is mostly made up of slums/squatter areas. Look that up too--Oton squatter areas. They have nothing. Their homes are bamboo and tin and concrete and other random stuff like street signs and junk all made into a makeshift house. The rooms are separated by a bookshelf or curtains. They are so poor, yet most of them have a TV. haha. One neighborhood is right on the beach, I don't know how those houses are even still standing, the wind blows very hard off of the ocean. The people are tiny, many are malnourished. I have seen elderly men who look like pictures from the Holocaust. They have nothing. But they are very happy people. They are very receptive to our message, but it is hard to tell if they really want to listen and become converted or if they are too kind to say they don't care. The church is very young here. But people know who the Mormons are and recognize our badges. Our branch is tiny and there aren't very many priesthood holders. Less than 10 probably.

I am reminded many times a day how blessed I am to have all I have--to have been born in the church and have a strong testimony and a strong ward and pioneer ancestors. I have a nice, huge home. Clean water, lots of food. Traffic laws. The FDA. haha. I am very grateful.

I don't know that I love it here yet, I am still adjusting, but I love the people we are teaching. I know I'll come to love it. It is certainly a fun adventure. I love the kids. They are adorable. I went through a pack of Juicy Fruit Gum yesterday (thanks to Matt & Britnee and family--Thanks for the package!) Also thanks mom and Grandma for the packages. Thanks everyone for all the letters so far, it might take a while, but I will try to write all of you back.

I love you all and I am so grateful for you. Please write letters and emails and DEARELDERS!! I love to hear from you!

Love, Cassie

PICTURES!!!

Sister Winward is on an airplane flying to the Philippines right now! Here are some pictures she sent during her stay at the MTC...