Sister Pike goes to the PHILIPPINES!: Week 50

Yay, I'm in my second transfer and my second companion and it's going great!! Yeah mom, you are SO right! I have had the best companions ever and have gotten so lucky and my luck is continuing! The cool thing about getting a new companion is I am able to really see how my strengths have changed and how I've grown in the last transfer! For example, my weakness as been what we call FTE-find the elect or talking to everyone we pass and share a short message and invite them to listen or go to church etc. Anyway, that's a HUGE focus in this mission, we need to talk to 100 every week but in my last mission, we never tracked the numbers and it wasn't a huge focus. So I've been working on that for the past 6 weeks and my companion told me that was my strength. And I thought, What?! No way, that was totally my weakness. And I can also see that in many of the compliments she gives to me are the things that I have learned from past companions and it's so cool!

The other day, our investigator, Leogie, is the wife of a recent convert. When the missionaries were teaching Ken, her husband, she was not interested at all! But the other day, we committed her to be baptized on the 26th!!! And now she is just so happy and so is their whole family and they are so excited to all be members so they can start preparing for the temple. I have seen a HUGE change in the life of their family and through their examples I have really seen for myself that the gospel really does bless families and when our relationship with god is good, everything is better too! I was seriously soooo happy. And just sad that Sister Mendoza wasn't there to witness it cause she's been teaching their whole family for so long.

And we've had a lot of success with finding and teaching new investigators too, it was just a really great week! It's amazing to me how much leading the area and introducing your new companion to all the people in the area makes me love them so much more! I'm so excited for her to meet everyone and to teach everyone. You can't help these people if you don't love them and with these people, you can't help but love them! I'm so happy and I have definitely received great blessing from working as an instrument of the Lord. Nothing better than that. I love you all! thank you so much for your support and prayers!

Love, Sister Pike

Sister Mendoza from before Christmas

Breakfast with the whole zone

Our investigators Roel and Natnat getting married soon!

Daniel's Baptism!

Cutest kids ever of a family we're teaching. The Dad already got baptized and is the best recent convert ever and the mom is getting baptized this month!