Madison on a Mission

Yes!!!!

Soooo, Niimbag na malem sa kanyam! So much happened this week and I just feel so happy! All the time! It's the best feeling ever! I don't think I've ever been so excited in my life! There are miracles that are going to happen in the next 3 months.

So, don't laugh too hard, but I have the best trainee ever ever ever. Her name is Sister Ballesteros, she's from Quezon City, and I'm exactly 1 foot and a half taller than her. It's seriously hilarious. She's the sweetest, she's is so magaling, and we hit it off really fast because even though we may be FAR from twins physically, I feel like she is my Filipina twin spiritually and personality wise. We are so excited to share the gospel with everyone, in any situation given us. I LOVE IT. She's an exactly obedient companion and we are having a blast. We are both completely new to the area, but open areas are seriously the bomb. Naguilian might be the best area in the entire Philippines. It's the prettiest area ever. Trees and fields and the nicest and friendliest people I have ever met in my whole life. You can love everyone from the first 10 seconds you talk to them. Honestly we are equal companions and our intentions are the same so we just yield to each other and help improve each other in everything we do.

Sobrang masaya kami dito. I love my companion Sister Ballesteros and I truly believe that the Lord blessed me with the privilege of being her companion. We are so so full of excitement to share the gospel to everyone we can, no matter what. Even the first day we found people that were willing to listen to us. Sister Ballesteros has an incredible testimony of the gospel and we got to start kaagad with everything. The first day we had to figure out where we were but Sister Johnson and Sister Aldred were so helpful and welcoming and helped us get an idea of where to start. Everyone was so helpful, helping us clean the apartment and get settled, so trying to get everything oriented took a little time, but we are ready to get up and running this week full blast. We are full of energy, full of hope that everyone needs to hear this gospel. We had great studies and practiced TCing so Sister Ballesteros is already at an incredible start. I am feeling confident that this might be the best 12 weeks of my life.

We are preparing Sister Emilia Rosario this week for baptism. She is such a humble sweet lady who as soon as we met her told us how excited she was to be baptized. We will have her interview tomorrow with the zone leaders in Neguillion. She is fellowshipped by all the members and recent converts that live on her street. So she is at church. She has been taught all the lessons and believes, even though her knowledge isn't perfect. She notices the feeling that comes every time she is at church. She is willing to follow the commandments. So we feel she is ready for baptism, and is ready to start on the journey of gaining even more knowledge as she receives the gift of the Holy Ghost after baptism. She is getting baptized at the Naguilian chapel at 5:30 pm on Saturday, October 7th. We are so excited for her. We are hoping to start teaching her anak din.

We explored a little of our area and met some of the members. They were so kind and welcoming and it was so fun to get to know them. So so many of them are already asking to work with us -- teenagers and mothers especially. We found that many of those members are actually part member families and we have permission to teach them this week.

We met President Baybay on Saturday morning and he told us the ward mission plan and what he is hoping for us to do as missionaries. We are going to help him locate members in our baranggays and then find lots of investigators that way. In my experience in Lingsat I have found that our pinaka progressing investigators are results of part member families or less active families. We are going to help President with helping members work with us too. We are so so excited to work with the ward. We had an appointment with the Javier family too and helped establish a relationship with them. They are such great members of the ward. We met the Pimintelle family and the Manalo family too.

We had an idea to try to invite as many people to one big lesson of the Restoration just like the missionaries did in the 1800s. We are hoping to reach as many people as possible.

I feel overwhelmingly blessed with this opportunity to serve here in Naguillion. We are 100% confident that there will be a lot of baptisms in this area, and we are going to work as hard as we can.

Sister Porter