The baudelaire orphans

Yet another fabulous week here in the mission field!! I'm kinda scattered right now but I'll try and remember all the things that happened.

First off, I locked us out again earlier in the week hahaha. Not the whole house this time, just the back room with our clothes and stuffs. Meaning that we couldn't shower or change clothes or anything, so, gross haha. But! At least it wasn't the room with our beds! or the bathroom! And we have a spare key to literally every room in the house.. but that one haha. SO! You can basically say that we are the Baudelaire orphans because we took my MTC card and used it to bend the brackets on the window of that room, slipped out the panes of glass, took our mop and broom handles and roped them together with a strainer on one end, took our curtain rod and lashed a bucket ladel on the other end, slipped them through the bars and open panes across the room to the dresser with the key on it and using both strainer and the ladel captured the key and pulled it back in through the window.

Please hold the applause.

It's also the start of CHRISTMAS SEASON in the Philippines!! So MERRY CHRISTMAS!! We sing christmas songs in our comp. study every day and people already have fully decorated trees up in their houses. It's basically my dream come true. (Morg, *if you're reading this haha* remember how we started christmas in october last year? Yeah this is a whole new level of christmas cheer haha)

We have these two new investigators who are golden. As in, golden gid. (also, don't remember if I talked about them last week so sorry if this is a repeat). Juliet and Julian. They have a friend at their work who is a member and gave them a Book of Mormon and encouraged them to attend church, so they've been at church the past two weeks, reading for two hours every day, and all of this before we could even get out to their house to teach them. They live wayyy on the outskirts of our area and only have one day off each a week so we teach them separately and only once a week but when we went out to visit Julian last week he not only already had a testimony of the restoration but he wants to serve a mission. Yeah. They basically just fell into our laps and are ready to be the strongest members ever. God is SO preparing these people. I wasn't even sure I understood him right on the mission part so I asked "A mission for what?" and he holds up the Book of Mormon and said "To tell everyone that this is true".

We also had exchanges this week and I left the area!! I went to Paglaum to work with Sister Portugal and it was sooo great!! It's the first time I've left Sum-ag to work and it was so much fun to experience a different area!!! Sister Portugal is really really great and I always learn so much from her!! But I definitely missed Sister Peacock haha :) Speaking of that, transfers are on wednesday and I'm soooooo hoping that nothing will change and we can just stay comps and stay in Sum-ag. We have so much work to do here! Investigators to help, people to baptize, people to find, people to activate. But. I do know that whatever happens is exactly what heavenly Father knows is best for me. So I'm mentally preparing for change but holding onto a little hope that I get to have one more transfer with Sister Peacock in Sum-ag :)

Andddd I have pictures this week!! So I'll wrap this up and get those sent. Basically, I LOVE this mission, I LOVE these people, I LOVE my companion, and I LOVE doing the Lord's work every day :) I also LOVE YOU ALL. Like, you have no idea. Distance really does make the heart grow fonder! And stronger! And I completely cherish every day of my mission but I can't imagine the insane happiness of when we see each other again :) Until then! Know that I love you and that I hope you all have the best week ever and are so happy and have all the good things!

LOVE LOVE LOVE, Sister Manwaring <3 <3