Celebration

Dear Family,

I named this letter celebration cuz its finally time to CELEBRATE! I am up and going and working harder than ever, I have a great companion and we finally got to celebrate our 1 year mark, Kayli and Chris had their beautiful baby girl (I loved the pictures) and it's just been overall a celebration type week with the work and with the family back home. But seriously I am so grateful to be up and going again. We went to MLC this last week and it was amazing. We also had to drop off Sister Ortea (a 2 week part time missionary who was staying in our kabahay working with Sister Tekanene and Sister Gabriel) at the mission home on wednesday and President and Sister Ostler invited us to stay at the mission home for the night and guess what that means... HOT SHOWERS AND AIR CONDITIONING! So that was awesome! MLC was as good as ever and I even got to do my interview with President Ostler because I was sick when he came to Palawan. Man, life was great to me this last week. And to top it all off on the way back from Manila to Palawan we got Krispy Kremes and McDo to celebrate our year mark finally! hahha so I hope you like all our funny pictures... :) This week was so great.

Also after 2 weeks (feeling like 14 weeks) of not working WE WORKED. Man, it was such a great feeling. I'm kinda on house arrest during the day so I don't over do myself and get sick again.. but later in the afternoon we get to work everyday and it is amazing. We got to go finding this week and we had the coolest experience ever. The area we have right now is sooooo dead... so to brighten it up a bit we decided to walk around and just talk to everyone to see if they are interested in the beautiful message us missionaries have to offer. We decided to just roam around our area a bit and we came to this river place compound called Barangay San Miguel. It was really close to the church and many people lived down there where we decided to go. It was a really interesting place. As we were exploring we asked a man if there was a lot of housed down this certain alley way. He said yes there was many and we went ahead into the compound. We saw this lady and started to talk to her and she told us it was just a dead end... so that made us feel kinda dumb considering we had pretty much just walked into her house without an invitation, but the spirit lead us so I guess it was fine and polite and things. She then went inside her house and stoped talking to us and Sister Holzworth and I felt a little uncomfortable, but we just decided to stand there until she would let us teach her. So as we were standing there we were talking to some kids and just a bunch of people were down in this little dirty place and it was awesome. Then the lady came back and she agreed to hear our message. As we were teaching her just more and more people started to join. At first it was just her, then her sister, then her dad, then her two kids, then her sisters kids, then her brother.. and so on. By the time we were actually teaching we probably had around 15 people just listening. It was amazing. Turns out the compound was actually full of one big family. The parents have 7 kids and 18 grand kids so far. Ahhhh it was the best experience ever. They did have many many many mosquitos around their home and i almost had a panic attack, but I put on off lotion like it's no ones business, so I think i'll be fine :)

Seriously after not working for the longest time to have such an amazing experience of letting the Spirit direct us into finding such a great family who seems ready to accept the gospel was so great. I am so excited to see what happens to them. Not to mention we had some amazing lessons with Less Actives as well, through asking inspired questions. My testimony just continues to constantly grow as I teach and testify about this beautiful gospel every single day. I really love this work and I love being a missionary of the only true church on this earth. 

Sometimes its really hard to think I could be transferred next week, but at least I am giving it my all now that I can. I really hope and pray I will stay in this area for just one transfer longer so that I can help this area grow and see the work prosper more in Puerto Princesa. I'm so grateful for this work and honestly for just the ability to be up and walking and talking to all those who will listen. That's the best part about being a missionary. You get to talk to everyone and just talk about the gospel all the time. I love it! I really think this is the happiest time of my life. I am just so grateful and I can't wait to continue to have so many more experiences.

I love you all and I'm grateful for the support I receive from you every week! I love all of your emails and the updates on all of you. You are all wonderful and I encourage you to keep striving to be the way Christ was. Christmas is soon and in the Philippines it is here (It starts is September). I am so blessed to have you all in my life. Continue to read the Book of Mormon everyday and keep choosing the right! 

Mahal ko kayo,

Sister Barton