We got to talk to Lillian

After about 10 dropped calls Lillian's phone call from the Philippines came through.  It was Christmas morning about 7:00 her time and 4:00 in the afternoon for us on Christmas Eve

Proselyting in a typhoon #adventures December 17, 2015

Proselyting in a Typhoon # adventures

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Lillian Ruth Evans	7:48 PM (22 hours ago)
to alyssapeterson., brock_karina, brooklynfarar, cameron.morten., charlottepeter., crickmart4, dcsanders, dorntoflip6, Emclonts, gm_evans7, Janelle, jjwet10, josie.brinkerh., Kaelycluff2010, kcutchen, kdolan, Kempton310, lela_herrington, lisacaddy, marissa.green, missa567, nielsonbryn, patrick_eady, pollymaeevans, ryliealder

Haha I am sure you all  qucikly opened this email huh?? haha dont worry it was sooo mcuh fun!! it has been raining here the past 3 days. we are in a number 1 taypoon out of 4 ( they rate them like earthquakes and tornatoos etc.) but honestly we have gotten harder rain storms in AZ. But it was still a taypoon soo ill claim it and add it to my adventures here in Philippines list haha

Wow, is time just flying for you all beacuse it sure is for me! I have already been here a month! thats not even real! I miss all of you soo much, I feel all of your prayers and supoort and i cant thank you enough!

This week was awesome! It felt about an hour long haha but thats beacuse we are so busy and i love it. Welp where do I even start? let me just start off by saying that I havent seen this many americans in the past month then i have this week haha it used to be just me but now we basically role the MTC, besides the filipions obviiously but still! its excting :) a bunch of missionaries came from provo beacuse they didnt want them to fly during christmas whcih means my tiny district of 4 grew to 11! phew what a change! but its so fuuuun! I actully feel it is easier to lerarn the langage with more people!

On sunday we got to watch the 1 st presidency christmas devotinal, ahh that was sooo good! I hope you all watched it! I was soo happy to see all the christmas lights back in america! sooo pretty! After that devotinal we watched another devotainl by Elder Holland, "open your mouths" oh my goondess is it such a powerful message. and definalty a call to action! I liked what he said" we are the Lords investigators, he has given us commitments and we need to follow up on them just like how we asking our invesitagors to do the same thing" that really stood out to me. Its so true! Ahh i just feel soo blessed to be a missioanary, every time i testify I learn somehing new. something that i didnt know before but something that the Holy Ghost needed me to know. 

Now that I can talk english to all the provo batches that were added to my distirct time goes by soo mcuh more faster! dont get me wrong, i love my samaon people but its just nice to talk to some people from home some time :) also samoans feel like every american hates them, its kinda offensive and it hurts my heart that they would think that! so i just go tackle all the samoan sisters and squeeze them with love haha then they just pick me about and say its okay haha

we taght Jason, our pretend investigaor. he is a pastor for a diffrent church so wev had some intresting conversations, even more intresting in our tag-lish haha but from the very begining of our lessons weve asked hime to be baptized, hes really faithful but it has taken him a while to know for him self that this gosepel is true. Our last lesson i shared with him Alma 5: 62 ( read it ) i then said  something like " we are extending to you this invitaion brother Jason, but we are not the ones actually inviting you to be baptized. It is a direct invitaion from God to you!" we used the " power of a pause" and he just had this change in his eyes. The spirit was so strong. The Holy Ghost is defintly the true teacher, we are just ther to show our witnness and giver our tesimony of this gospel :) I love this power! ahh I cant get over it haha :)

SOOOOO about proselyting (yesterday) it is the happiest I've been in my entire mission so far, and I've been pretty happy haha! but honestly these people here just make me soo happy! Yesterady we started by driving an hour to a chappel in Manila, we met our "in-feild kasamas" we said hi, prayed, planned, prayed agian and then went out in the pouring rain and started proselyting! :) i was drenched within a miniute haha luckly i was wearing my crocs. the area that the 3 of us were going to was far far away so we immediatlly hoped onto a JEEPMY!!! haha ahhhh that was such a fun experiance! holy cow we fit about a million people on there ( luckly all the filipions are tiny) there was even people hanging on the back of the jeepmy. Eventually ill get a picture for you guys. as soon as i sat down I OYM ( opened my mouth) haha i dont know if english, spanish or Tagolog came out but something did and i tried talking to everyone! the in feld sisters kept handing me pass along card after pass along card to give to everyone in the jeepy. It was a pass along card about  christmas, the filipions i talked to just smiled and my kasama next to me was helping me out when i got stuck haha. we took several jeepmy rides and eventually got to our area where we were to teach an investigator Sherly. We walked down the streets of the actaull philippines. Little filipons were everywhere! they were all playing basketabll in the middle of the street just having the time of there lives! We got to the investiagtors house knocked on literlly a tin door with handkerchiefs covering up the spaces where the tin door wasnt covering. it was so humbling. We took off our shoes, and walked into a members home, about the size of Dallins room, or smaller and that was their entire house. The family was soooo happy to see us, they the investigator sherly living with them. we sat down on the floor and started teaching the lesson! The sheerly was sooo excited to see blue eyes! she was just staring at me the whole time, she is such a cute little lady! we taght her about the presithood. I was following the lesson in tagalog pretty well but not really catching speficis. My kasama sister Te'o asked me if i would share my experaice I had when my dad gave me a preisthood blessing! Ahh my heart was soo touched :) I love talking about the preisthood and I love talking about my dad adn family! I bore my testimony and shared my experaicne with her in pretty good broken tagalog. some words that i said i didn't even know myself, but they were real tagalog words! IF you just open your mouth and have faith, the spirit will fill your mouth with words. the spirit was soo storng! she is such a faithful investigator and was very patient with my tag-lish. our area was so far away from the chapel we only had time for one appointment so all of our contacting was in the jeempy. Traffic was craaaazy!  if you just reach your hand out of the window you can literally touch hands with the jeempy next to you haha soooo i took advange of that! traffic was jammed so i yelled out of my jeempy to the other jeepmy and said " kumusta sister!!"i shock their hands and  i showed them my name tag and smiled real big and gave her a pass along card haha i then yelled out " masaya mensage tunkols sa jesucristo!! " ( this is a happy message about jesus christ!!)  they reached out of their jeempy and grabbed the card! haha i did that several times ahhh it was the funnest thing eeeevr!!!  

I dont know if all the was understandable but I sure hope it was haha anyway I had a lot of fun and i got to see how it is to be a "real missionary" beacuse i still feel like im not a missionary beacuse ive been the the mtc for soo long haha i cant wait to go to my mission and talk to everyone! even if i dont have the langage yet! 

today is our pday so we woke up at 4 :30 and went to the temple! LOOOVED it! AHH i just loove this work! I love to be apart of it. I have come so mcuh closer to my heavenly father becasue i have needed to realy on him so much while teaching investigators and learing the language. I hope you are all enjoying the christmas season! This sesaon has given us the missionaries such an advantage beacuse our message is about christ and that is exatlly what christmas is all about. please remeber that! be happy with your friends and family, cuddel up next the the fire stare at the lights on the tree and just think of the ways that christ has been apart of your life. you will come to know just how loved you are and how important you are to your heavently father, no matter what you are going through! 

I just LOVE you all so much!! I get so excited when i email, i feel like a hyper minion just trying to type super fast hahah

with all my love 

Sister Evans 

12-17-15

The Power of a Pause: WEEK 3 December 11, 2015

The Power of a Pause: WEEK 3

Lillian Ruth Evans	Dec 11 (6 days ago)
to alyssapeterson., brock_karina, brooklynfarar, cameron.morten., charlottepeter., crickmart4, dorntoflip6, Emclonts, gm_evans7, jjwet10, josie.brinkerh., Kaelycluff2010, kcornelius, kcutchen, kdolan, Kempton310, lela_herrington, lisacaddy, marissa.green, missa567, nielsonbryn, patrick_eady, ryliealder, savannahlopez9., Thomasbiggs

I will get to the subject line a little later :)

This week went by so fast holy cow!! The first week here felt like a month! But it feels like just yesterday it was Pday haha!

Last friday the new batch of missionaries came in, so now there is more then just 12 missiononaries in the entire MTC haha. we got about 17 new langauge training missionaries and 100 ish regualr training missionaries so it was a big batch, but still small compared to the provo MTC haha. But I am still the only American sister here! This batch there is lots of samoans, austriallians ( who are really samoan) and jappannes people, and of course filipions, holy cow everyone is soo nice! I love them all. The MTC presidency keep apologizing to me for my traveling situation, they feel so bad I had to travel here all alone, but hey it makes for a good story now. Everytime I shake someones hand they always pull away cause I squeeze to hard, i guess haha then I told them its  beacuse I play tennis, they like that haha.

Saturday- Today we got a new "inverstigator" she is a less active. Oh my goodness the lesson was so powerful. I  love how as missionaries we just testify what we know is true, the lesson was all about families, so it was really easy for me to tell her what a blessing they are to me and how it is beacuse of the gosepl of Jesus Christ that we are a happy eternal family. The love and apprection for my family and freidns gives the spritit through me a chance to make the investigators feel our Heavenly fathers love through his familes. ( i dont know if that made sence but, yeah haha)

For one of my classes we went to the MAnila temple, right across the street and tried to teach people that were walking around outside. It is when we go out of the MTC that I realize how little Tagalog I know! everything that i have learned just escapes my mouth, so I am just left standing there smilling trying to figure out how to say hello to these wonderful people but nothing comes out! ahh I know its only my 3rd week but i want so badly to be able to speak taglod alreay! but I need to be patient and work hard and i know the langauge will come :)

Oh my goodness, for dinner I had a little peice of home. Bananna bread! absoutlely no ones banana bread can compare to my moms but this one comes in 2nd, haha proably beacuse it was something other then rice ;)

I got to play the piano for the missionaries, it was awesome! I was a little nervouse, but it was great :)

Sunday- here in the MTC you always need to be prepared for anything,last week I was called on to give a talk and this week I was called to conduct the music for sacrement haha I didnt know until I looked at the program. But it is always fun, I love it, we just always have to be preapared haha. Sundays are such a treat!! We finally have a diffrent scedual from the rest of the week! and its always sooo spritual! One of the MTC leaders bore his testimony, about how much he loves his wife. he said that "she is my passport to the celetrail kingdom" ahhh it was so cute! and it is so very true :) Later in the evening we got to listen to a devotinal given by Elder Bednar "the charcters of christ" holy cow everyone go listen to that talk its amazgng!

beacuse it was fast sunday that evening the cooks served a feast! well everyday is a feast but today was speacial beacuse we got ice cream for dessert! yumm :)

At the very end of the evening a Filipino Skake Choir (Tatay Stake) came to give the missionaries a specal christmas program. they sang the entire time, it was so amazing and peaceful!! It totally made me homesick! haha but its all good it was such a beautiful program :)

Its hard to even rememer its christmas beacause it is soooooo hot here, mostly just humid but its so werid that its hot! but thats not very diffrent from AZ huh? ;)

Monday- nothing to exciting happened today but we were walking back to our rooms after gym and my gurro (teacher) sister abalota, comes to me and wraps her arms around my waist beacuse she is so tiny and i am so tall ( for the first time ever, i love filipinos they make me feel tall) anyway, she was asking me how i felt being the only american sister here. she goes on to say " you are the cream of the crap" haha i start dying laughing!! she gets so confused and then i tell her that is not a compliment hahaha its "the cream of the CROP" hahah and she started laughing! oh my goondesss it was sooo funny! and it was even funnier with her filipino accident.

Tuesday- I read the Book of mormon almost all day long, I couldnt put it down! Reading the BOM now means so much more to me beacuse im not only reading it for myself but I am reading to for my inverstifgators, the spirit is defintly wanting these investigators to feel something and that is through the truthfullness of the BOM. I love it :)

Tonight Elder Ferdnand Pangan from the aera 70 came to the MTC to give a devotianl, wow it was sooo good and powerful! we all got to shake his hand 

Wednesday- We had fish again!! with the scales, fins, and eye balls still on it haha i am used to it now. in fact it is super delicious! :) We got to study at the temple, I love how close it is to the MTC! just right across the street!

Thursday- The Power of the Pause! In lessons my kasamas and I just want to talk the entire time and tell the investigator everything we know and feel but we have never really given the Holy Ghost a chance to teach the investigator, who is really the true teacher. Once we paused in our lesson and gave the ourselves the missionaries a chance to feel the spirit and to guve the investoagiatores time to reconize the spirit that is when the whole lesson changed. Hearts were changed beacuse the Holy Ghost was so stong! I wish i could accuratly describe how i felt at that moment, it was just so amazing i cant put it into words!

I learned the power of a pause. take a moment and LESTIN to the Holy Ghost. The spirit is sooooo powerful it is also very sensitive. I always pray to be worthy of the compainoship of the Holy Ghost, there is a big diffrence when the spirit isnt present and when it is. I love that feeling and I never want it to leave! I want so bdaly for others to feel that same way. So i chalenge each of you to PAUSE and let the Holy Ghost touch your heart and let is teach you something incredible that will impact your life forevrer! :)

Friday- PDAAAY! this morning we got to go to the temple agian! I absoutlely loooove it! 

Well, my lovely family adn friends! I love you all so much! I appreciate your prayers, not just for me but for all the missioanries thougout the world. We feel your prayers and support and we love it! I know I couldnt do this work without each one of you by my side! I cant explain how grateful I am to be apart of Heavely Fathers work! I am honored to be a representive of Jesus Christ and have the privlege of wearing his name on my chest and bringing happiness to all those that I can teach! I love this gospel, i know it is true, with my whole heart! I love my family adn friends, each of you are in my every prayer!

ps sorry for all the miss spelt words haha hopefully it all still makes sence! and anyone who really knows me, knows there is no fixing this problem of mine haha

We get to proselyting on Wednesday! wish me luck! I have to sepak Tagalog to real life people now haha

I love you all!! 

Mahal Kita