Yesterday we were able to hear from Elaine S. Dalton--the YW general president!--during relief society. I was on the second row. The minute she began talking, I felt her sincere love and humility and I thought about how badly I want to be like that. She talked about how wonderful we all are as sisters here, serving our God. She said something that I had never thought about before. She said that this isn't the first time we've done this. In the pre-existence we stood as witnesses of Christ as well. And I gained a stronger sense of my purpose here and that I am in the right place at the right time. Sometimes I forget that. We all stood and recited the Young Women's theme and it was so powerful.
I can't email Alainna as much as I can write her. All of my e-mail time is usually spent on writing you. I think I will have about an hour to email every Monday in the Philippines. Which is good. Right now I only have 30 minutes.
Can you believe I only have three weeks left here?! And I will be going to the Philippines?! A completely different planet?! We have been trying to speak our language as much as possible. Right now I'm trying to get down conjugations--they're tough. For each root-verb there are about 5 or 6 different conjugations you can use, depending on if you want to make the verb actor focused or object focused or nounified. So much to learn. But I know that I will eventually get it all down, line upon line. We taught in Tagalog this week and it was so great! I taught one of the former Tagalog teachers here, Sister Hawkes. She was supposed to act like an investigator for us, but the conversation ended up to where we began addressing her personal concerns. She opened up to us so much (This was all in Tagalog--in our broken, broken Tagalog). Throughout the lesson I was able to feel so much love for her as a child of God. It was interesting how automatic it was. Scriptures came to mind and I felt myself praying in the middle of the lesson to know what to say and how to help her with this concern she was having. I could also relate to her concern. I've been praying hard to have more charity for others. I think really the two most important things for us to have in this life is the Spirit and charity. I know I cant teach successfully without either one. I hope to instill both of those things in my children.
On Tuesday we had our devotional. Elder Lowell Snow of the 2nd 70 came to speak to us. He talked about choices. He brought up prayer and how the Bible Dictionary says that prayer is when we align our will with the Father's. And that it is up to us to CHOOSE the will of God. This requires so much faith on our end. And I thought to myself while he talked that probably the biggest trial of my faith has actually been to come on a mission. I've never wanted to come on a mission. But I'm here because I felt like I needed to come and because I exercised my faith and chose this. But I realized that even being here, my faith is still tried. I'm still constantly trying to align my will with God's. And man, it's hard sometimes. I thought to myself also, while he spoke, that God is all knowing, right? Why would I not want to align my will with a being who knows me better than I could ever know myself? Who knows where I need to be right now? And knows who I need to become and exactly how I could get there? I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm really dumb sometimes." Why is it so hard though?
Send me pictures. I need pictures of all of my family. If everyone can send some to me from each of their families that would be great! Thanks for the package in advance! I don't have it yet but will get it soon. I love you! I Love you all!!!
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