Sister Hannah Haviland

Kumusta Friends!

Time is flying by here in the Naga Philippines mission. I cant believe that it has already been a whole week since I last got to email! This week Sister Morris and I did a lot of looking.  Our area is a city area which means people are always busy working.  However we were able to find a family this week! The Morada Family is super cute. They have three little kids, the oldest being around five or six and the youngest being seven months old.  The only problem with teaching them is I understand less of what they say than most lessons. In my area, the people speak a lot of Bicol, another dialect of Tagalog.  I thought learning one language was going to be hard but boy oh boy did that one throw me for a loop. Sister Morada had to leave for a second half way through our lesson, and after she had left Sister Morris leans over to me and said "She is speaking mostly Bicol so I am kind of confused because I am not really sure what she is saying."  Sister Morris, welcome to my life here in the Philippines! haha, but it is great.  Every day I am beginning to understand a little bit more than the day before. Lucky for me I can understand most of what Sister Morris is saying.  In the middle of this very noisy lesson, sister Morris started to testify of the truthfulness of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The room was still very loud, but for me everything started to stand still.  My Friends, we are truly so blessed to have the restored gospel here on the earth and I know that it is true with all my heart. If you have not had your own witness, I invite you this week to really read the Book of Mormon and ask God with a sincere heart if it is true.  I promise that if you do this, you will receive a witness.  God wants to bless us and God wants us to know of the truthfulness of his gospel.  this knowledge brings so much happiness!

This week we had ward conference which was fun.  Ward conference here is a big deal for some reason.  Everyone gets extra dressed up for church and most of them actually show up on time! adjusting to "Philippino time" has been a bit of a stress for me. Everything starts thirty minutes to an hour later than it is supposed to. It makes it hard to want to show up on time some times haha! But Sister Morris and I got to participate in the Ward Choir.  They start their ward conferences of with the special musical number so that was interesting.  We sang "I Feel my Saviors Love" which is one of my favorites!  Our Savior truly does love all of us so much and shows his love to us through everything we see and receive.

A funny story from this week.  When Sister Morris and I walk down the street, we are very often stared at by like....everyone.  This particular time however, we were walking down the street and a group of six or seven kids, probably around the age of ten, started staring and pointing at us. As we walked by them, one of the little boys started to talk to us (in English so I actually understood what he said) "HEY! I love your skin! I need your skin! Give me yours skin!" to which sister Morris responded "yeah well I need it more" and then the kids just laughed and continued to walk away.  In hindsight, those comments coming from anyone besides a kid would actually be really terrifying. 

That's all for this week!  I hope that you are all doing well. I love hearing from you all and I am so grateful for your support and love.