Beautiful and worth it

Magandang hapon family!
     So it's coming to the end of another very fast transfer, believe it or not. We're pretty sure that Sister Afu will be here one more transferwith me. Let’s hope so for my sake because our area is very big, and I don't quite have it all down yet.

     But it's been a very good week here in Santa Monica. I actually just got back from a branch missionary activity with all our branch missionaries and our new branch mission leader. We went on a hike to this waterfall and played games and ate and had testimonies and such, and it was a lot of fun. I'm exhausted now, but it was beautiful and worth it.

 

      Our investigators are progressing but not all of them with baptismal dates, about half of them. This week will be a very important week to see if they will be ready for their baptismal dates of May 26. We had a neat experience with one of our investigators. It's a family Felix and Rejina, and they have two little cute kids. They are so ready to get baptized! They have a testimony; they love the Book of Mormon; and their prayers are SO sincere and come from their heart. I love listening to them. But the only problem is, they're not married yet, and when they went to get married, Brother Felix doesn't have a birth certificate. So now they've been saving up to send money back to his place of birth to have it sent to him so they can get married. (I think I explained that before). Well a couple weeks ago we taught him about fasting and then suggested that we could all fast together to help them get his birth certificate, so everything would work out. Well Sister Rejina is pregnant, so she can't fast with us, but Brother Felix really wanted us to do it with him his very first time and was a bit nervous. It even took him a couple weeks to get ready, but we finally all did Saturday night. We went over to their house, and we all ate, shared a little review on fasting, and then had Brother Felix open the fast. And man, it was just really neat, and he was so humble and was just crying throughout his prayer. The spirit was so strong. I'm excited to go to them this week and see how the fast went for them. And hopefully they should be getting their certificate this week. So we'll see:)

      Then we have these other group of investigators that are just so fun to teach, Milene, Aylene, and Maryjane. They all live together, and all of their husbands are brothers. So it would be like Jasen, Ryan, and Kip all living in one small house with all of their wives, and then all of their wives being taught by the missionaries while the husbands are working. One of the husbands is actually a member but less active. But these pictures that I'll attach are from one day we went to teach them, and we found them at the beach:) haha Their house is super close to the beach. They love to go find shells and then cook them. That's actually where I ate my first shells is at their house. And then they have two kids each so six little kids running around. And they actually attended church for the 4th Sunday in a row:) So that was really exciting! They just, of course, have their own concerns right now that need to be worked out first. But we have a lot of fun teaching them and seeing them slowly change.

 

  
      Then we have Sharly which he has a lot of obstacles he needs to get over before he wants to get baptized, but he has a desire and a strong faith. He shared with us this last week that when his sister, Myla, got baptized his parents weren't happy with it at all and kind of treated her differently and still to this day say stuff about her. He doesn't want that for him. So he's worried about what his parents will think. He's 23, and sometimes reminds me a little bit of Kip:) hehe. Also there’s a branch missionary in my branch that reminds me a lot of Ryan. I just realized that today, and it's kind of weird. Anywho those are some of our investigators right now.
     So it's been a good week. We actually probably had dinner appointments every night this week which is very rare here in Palawan. Usually it’s just once a week at the branch president’s house. But it's a good way to get to know the members in your branch.

      I think that's about all for today. Hope we can get everything figured out with the phone call. I'll probably end up getting a calling card and calling you for five minutes tomorrow to figure everything out. I sure am excited!:) Well I love you all so much and thanks for the updates. Take care.

Mahal ko Kayo,
Sister Stromberg