I just love you all wayy too much

HEY :) Love you, did you know that? 

We FINALLY got our Liahona magazines, I am EATING them up. And okay, MORIAH is just in it, I died!!! And no one cared hahaha I was like "Hey! Everyone! This is my cousin!!!" They were like "... um.. cool Sister Manwaring.." hahahaha. 

I read this morning in Ether 2:25, okay LOVE it. So it talks about obviously when the brother of Jared needs light for the barges and the Lord asks him what his suggestions are then says that He doesn't expect them to cross the deep in darkness and whatever light he asks for it will be given him. This is the coolest verse and super cool applicable to almost-leaving missionaries. You will find that in your life up to this point you had many sources of "light" to shine in your "dark" or stressful times; family, friends, sports, movies, music, naps, things you will no longer turn to as a full time missionary. The Lord doesn't expect you to cross the "deep" of your mission without light. There are lots of sources available to everyone, scripture study, prayer, singing hymns, sacrament, a companion, etc, but what this verse is teaching us is that we can ask the Lord specifically for a personalized light to be with us. Take some time to think about that... what is your light going to be? A simple preparation like that can be so super duper helpful for your entire mission- now in preparation, the MTC, and the field. I encourage you all to come up with a personalized light and then present it before the Lord, I know He will help us :)

OH YEAH. I had the worst possible thing that could happen to a missionary happen to me this week. I LOST MY NAMETAG. We were riding the ceres bus on the way home from trainings in Bacolod and we couldn't get an aircon bus so the window was open and my tag was flapping and I had the thought to make sure it was on secure and I check and the magnet is fine.. the second I take my hand off, while still looking at it, I watch it fly off my chest and OUT THE WINDOW. :O I DIED. I didn't even know what to do. I was like SISTER MY TAG JUST FLEW OUT THE WINDOW. It was like some sick joke. OH IT WAS AWFUL. I have had that tag almost 15 months. Its the tag they clipped on me in the MTC. AH. And I had to ride the whole 6 hours back to Sipalay with no tag. I spent the ride thinking about the time when I won't be able to wear a tag on my chest and just made mental plans. But that is still far off and I was soooo glad to run into the apartment and get my replacement out of my suitcase. Its fresh and new, the lettering still white, not reflecting the months of service I've given, but its a nametag and thats what counts. 

Sergio was baptized and confirmed this week!! He is such a "funny" investigator hahaha. He doesn't click things in his head correctly all the time, we had to do his BIQ's like 3 times in preparation because he kept just trying to bear a testimony of every question instead of answer it. Example "So brother, what do you remember about the word of wisdom?" , "I know that is a true commandment of God. It is so true and it changed my life." "Thats awesome, so what is not allowed for our bodies?", "Yeah, its straight from God cause He made our bodies so He knows!", "Yes, but WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED." "Oh yeah, drugs, smoking.." hahahahaha oh Sergio. His baptism day was a little rough going... lets just say that I am so excited to come home and be an uber supportive member of the ward ;) But it all went through and was a special experience as always. Sergio is super stoked to bear his testimony in fast and testimony meeting and on Sunday when he went up to be confirmed he thought that it was testimony time so he strides over to the pulpit and starts out "GOOD MORNING MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS", then the branch president calls him over to the chair and sergio realizes all embarrassed and yells "Sorry! Sorry!!" to the congregation as he goes and sits to be confirmed. Hahahahahaha classic. Also, on our phone we have a signature that says "Sipalay Sisters" because people always think its just our personal phone and just want to chat us all day, but Sergio has started replying to our texts with his own tag, "Brother Sipalay" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh he is so special hahahahaha. 

Well, I LOVE YOU ALLLLLLL  and DAD I am SO SUPER PROUD of you!!!! Thanks so much for all of your emails, I love you all more than I can say!!!!!! have a great week!!!!! 

Sister Manwaring 

all my lovez

Hey guys :) 

Mom, congrats on your race!!! You never cease to amaze me!! And how lucky to have Dad, the perfect race partner/ aid station/ husband. You two are the coolest. 

So as you saw in the pictures we had MLC this week. President Lopez is the best. Its ridiculous to me what our mission is accomplishing. I wish you could all be there!! After MLC we came back to Sipalay and thenthursday we had our zone meeting and me and sister cinco and the zone leaders gave our trainings from MLC. 

In MLC we studied a bit from D&C 122 and what came to mind what that book we read when we were like "Going on a bear hunt." You remember that one? "We're going on a bear hunt, gonna catch a big one, what a beautiful day! We're not scared!" then they have all those things that pop up in their adventure, like long grass and mud and at every sublag they say "We can't go over it, we can't go under it, we'll have to go through it!". We often forget that life is MEANT to have trials haha. I hear latter-day saints say "Why did this happen, I'm doing whats right! I'm keeping the commandments!" we forget that righteousness and obedience doesn't exempt us from trials and tests, if we didn't have trials what would be the point of even coming to earth? So when we face those times we need to adopt the character of the people in the book "we'll have to go though it!" and do we realize how incredible it is that we don't have to ever go through any of them on our own? Jesus Christ literally went through each and every trial that we will ever go through, and not only went through but won. He can literally help us to win every test as long as we remember to include Him. 

Its mango season gid and everyone is giving us mangos, i swear we've gotten like a thousand mangos this week from investigators haha, they just give us like 20 and we shove them in our bags and at the end of the day we just unload all our mangos and our shoulders are so sore haha. 

Guys, I just love the gospel. Back in the MTC I remember thinking one of my first days while reading in personal study "If all of this really really is true, what does that mean?" (forgive me if I've already emailed about this before) and not that I had ever thought that it wasn't and not that I didn't already know that it was, but it was like letting the reality of if really sink in. And BAM. I was a gonner. It sunk in and its never coming out. We can literally live in the Celestial Kingdom. Jesus Christ is really our savior. We can literally live forever with our families. We really can be forgiven of sin and improve ourselves so we don't have to keep sinning. We literally are children of GOD. He is really our Heavenly Father and He really is listening to all of our prayers and always watching us. He knows us soooooo much better than we know ourselves. There is nothing so hard and sad and scary about life that we cannot overcome through Christ and His gospel. The Book of Mormon is literally written by people who lived in ancient america and they literally had all of those experiences. All the commandments are true and are from a Heavenly Father who knows perfectly how to make us perfectly happy. We literally have a member of the godhead, the Holy Ghost to be with us ALWAYS, we have access to heaven. Priesthood power is real. ITS ALL REAL. Don't hate me for saying "literally" 54 times and don't judge my inability to express myself normally over email. I just love you all so much and I'm so glad that I can serve a mission, no matter how hard it is, cause it isn't about me! And I love it.

 And thats all I have for this week. There will be more pictures up on presidents facebook from our zone conference so enjoy those hahahaha I'm sure they'll be wonderful because sister lopez likes to take pictures of peoples participation and I have to give a training so there will be great "in action" pictures hahaha. 

LOVE YOU ALL SOOOOOOOOO MUCH. 

Sister Manwaring 

leaving the 99 for the 1

SO. As you saw from president's page, we had a baptism this week. I have no possible way of getting all of this down so I'll just have to compress, bear with me. 

Saturday morning. Aiza (our baptizee) texts at 7:30 and says that she can no longer be baptized.. she has gone home to the bukid. I KNOW this is not true so we rush over to her aunts house and find her sobbing her head off. She won't tell us anything or why she is crying or why she won't be baptized. We tried to ask if she was just scared, or nervous, couldn't get a word out of her. We stayed trying to figure it out for like 20 minutes, her crying into her hands the whole time, before we finally had to just go because we can hardly drag her bawling to the font. My feet were sooooo heavy walking out the door. We got home and quietly started studies, I read the words of like every comforting hymn in the hymnbook, and we start personal study and both just sit there silently crying. I KNEW that she was supposed to be baptized!! The spirit was telling me!! I had no idea how but I had not given up hope. We decided to go by her house again on our way to the church to see if anything had changed. Thats when she texts and says that now she has really gone to the bukid. So we just go out to work. First appointment we go to is a LA family with one active RM son, the second we get there the son goes "Your baptism isn't going through, huh?" and we were like "How did you know?" and he says "I went and told her not to be baptized. She is going home to the bukid and its too far to go to church so I told her to wait and find some other missionaries some other time." My mind is shouting YOU SAID WHAT and me and Sister Cinco look at each other and just leave and go right to her aunts house, she really has just left and we missed her by like 2 minutes, but there is a cousin there that is replacing her who knows how to get to her house so we get the cousin and head off into the bukid on a trike to find Aiza, BAPTISM OR BUST. On the way it starts raining like noah is on the earth again and a jeep drives by and splashes a wave of water onto my side of the trike and it completely soaked me and got in my mouth and the driver slows down to stop and i'm like DRIVE ON so we keep going and 40 minutes later we are walking out into a muddy rice field to her house. We see her, she was SO super surprised that we were there and her parents were like "Oh my gosh! What is a white person doing here!!" and we found out that she still wanted to be baptized but thought she couldn't and was too shy and scared to tell us, so she gets her stuff together, we sing hymns to her parents, trump back through the rice field, BAPTISM BACK ON. We get to the church 40 minutes later, 2 hours late for the baptism but thank goodness to filippino time no one cares and the elders who also had a baptism had waited. THEN as we're taking pictures President Lopez shows up with Sister Lopez to see our baptism. We take more pictures with them and then the baptism starts. It was a glorious baptism. Aiza was smiling sooooo big, sooooo happy to be baptized, almost as happy as me and sister cinco. We took her home to her aunts house after for her to stay the night and be confirmed at church in the morning. I gave her one of the skirts that mom sent in my last package because she doesn't have one and I didn't want her wearing jeans to her confirmation (Thanks mom!!!). Oh, we were also fasting this whole time. We got home that night SOOOOOO drained but SOOOO happy. After her confirmation we took her back to the bukid again. She most likely won't be able to come to church for a while, its farrrrr too expensive for them to make that trip weekly. But I know that even though she may not be able to be fully active right now it was such an important baptism. I love every baptism, but there was something special about this one, Heavenly Father really wanted her baptized and I felt so much the reality of opening the door of the celestial kingdom to one of his children. 

I LOVE THIS WORK. I wish I could keep writing for forever but I'm all out of time!! Also sorry that this email is late, we are in Bacolod today for MLC and had to take the ceres bus into the city this morning. 6 hours with a vomiting girl next to us and the puke bag kept bouncing against sister cincos leg. Training tonight and tomorrow, soooooo excited. I ALSO SAW SISTER JUDD AND HAD LUNCH AT BOBS WITH HER BECAUSE HEAVENLY FATHER LOVES US SO MUCH. I love you all to death and I hope your week is amazing, I JUST LOVE YOU AND THIS WORK SO MUCH. 

ALL my love, Sister Manwaring