SOMETIMES IT'S A LITTLE ROUGH

Pinakamamahal Pamilya:)
Hello family,
     Thank you for the updates. So a couple of you asked what happened to Tina... actually it wasn't all that happy of an ending... yet. We taught her last Tuesday and found out that she was leaving on the 24th for sure. If she came back, she would come back to Quezon City, not here (I don't remember if I told you that last week). But we taught her Tuesday a really good lesson, and then we set up again to teach Thursday. Then Thursday when we came back, the other Nannay that lives in the Que family's house told us that she left to go back to her province that morning. We don't really know what happened. We tried to text her but no reply, and we haven't had a chance to talk to Sister Que yet so we don't really know what happened. But she has such a strong desire to get baptized and was so happy to always learn more from us and to go to church that I'm just sure she'll get baptized in her province or when she comes back to Quezon. All I have to say is: those missionaries who get to continue teaching her are very lucky!
     Then with Lace, this week for the colleges is finals week so we haven't heard from her because she's busy studying along with all the other ward missionaries and other college students.

     It is now summer here in the Philippines, and man it is HOT!!!!! I thought it was hot in December when I got here, but nope that was the cold season. I'm about dying! Before when I said I was sweating all the time, I didn't know what that meant. Now as soon as I get out of the shower and go to put my makeup on, I have sweat dripping from my face. The electric fan is now my best friend:) Yeah basically all I'm saying is man you don't know what hot is. When Nicole says that I should enjoy the heat that I have... sometimes it's a little rough:) haha.
     So this week, as I told you, would be our week for finding new investigators. We actually were blessed and were able to find 15 new investigators as well as 10 new less-active members. We'll see as we visit them for the second time this week if they really are interested or just being nice. That's one problem here in the Philippines is everyone here is so nice that they will act interested; they’ll listen to you; they'll say they want to be baptized and go to church and all that; but they're only doing it to be nice. So we'll try and find out this week who out of those 15 are really interested.
     You asked if it’s hard to find less active members, yes. The membership records that they give us, some of the names don't have addresses at all; some just have a general area where they live; some that have addresses don't even live there anymore; and also we find some that aren't even on the records at all. So yeah it's a challenge sometimes to find these members. But the good thing is sometimes as we are trying to find inactive members, we'll end up asking people for help. It's a good way to talk to them about the gospel and gain new investigators. That happened once this last week. So yeah I don't have a lot of news right now on investigators other than we have a lot of prospective investigators we'll be working with this week.
     We were one week away from reactivating Juliet, whom I've visited ever since I got here. She was actually my first lesson here in Carmona, and we finally got her to come back to church. She had been three weeks in a row, and then yesterday morning she left to go to Davao where her parents live. So that was another instance where it was a bummer she left right before we got to see her active again in the church.

Probably not pork adobo . . . do you think?

     But on the bright side... this week I cooked pork adobo for the first time all by myself. :) Sister Abanggan taught me how a month or so ago, and I wanted to see if I remembered. I did, and it was delicious:) (even if I say so myself). So yes I'll have to make it for y'all when I get back. And speaking of food, my stomach is looking rather large these days. I think I'm seeing the curse of being a sister missionary. All this rice is finally getting to me. So I'll have to see what I can do to fix that. haha.
     Anyway I think that's about all I have for this week. There's a member in my branch right now that had her baby on March 3^rd, and when I saw her cute baby girl, it made me think of Betsy and cute Cameron. All of you take care. Thanks for the never ending support that you all show to me each week. I love you all so much.
                                                        Mahal ko kayo!
                                                        Sister Stromberg