This has been a fantastic week! Many great things and many new challenges for the future.
Let me start off with a great experience we had on Friday. Rey Jay Bitasolo asked me to baptism him. He is 22 year old young man just joining the church. When he told his story while bearing his testimony after the baptism it was nindot jud (very great).
So he told of starting the lessons with the Elders and how at first he was not really learning. He said that he really was not searching for the truth. So part way through the lessons he realized that he really wanted to know and he would never obtain that knowledge unless took the lessons seriously, asked questions and prayed for answers from the Lord. So he did just that. He started listening with all his heart, and praying every night. For about a week he had not received an answer either way so he really prayed and asked the Lord to let him know. Well that night he had a dream and he saw two churches beside one another. And there was a young girl that told him to look up and he saw the Lord over the LDS Church. So he sent a text to the Elders phone and said he wanted to be baptized the next day. It just worked out that both the Elders were transferred that day and replaced by Sisters. When the Sisters finally got the text they responded and lined up his baptism for Friday morning.
It is special to see the brightness in his eyes as he received the Holy Ghost and know that he will feel the love of the Savior Kanunay (always).
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| Rey Jay Bitasol |
Next to the rain that started a month and a half ago. It rains for a couple of hours most every day now and it cools things off on the Island a lot. But with the rain come the Nindot Jud rice fields that grow in the rain. This is shot of the Racoma farm in Sagbayan. We just loved how the palm trees reflected in the still water of the rice fields.
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| Nindot Kaayo Farm sa Kalibutan |
We stopped by and visited the Elders in Talibon on Thursday. They live so far away that we do not have a chance to give them P Day breakfast ever. So we took them to lunch at Chellanne in Talibon. We had a wonderful lunch that only cost about $18.00 for all they wanted to eat and dessert. We love ever minute we have with all our missionaries.
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| Elder Mapel, Elder Wilson, Elder Gamolo, Elder Celada |
Now on to continuation of a story we started last week with Matt and Joy from Calape. They attended church last week and invited the Sister to come and teach them. We attended the lesson on Saturday with the Sisters. We could tell the lesson touched both of them and especially Joy. The Sister asked Joy to say the closing prayer. She was very humble and scared. After she stared her prayer the spirit was so strong and she started weeping. She prayed for 5 minutes and said the most heart felt pray I have ever heard in my life. We are going back on Tuesday night for dinner and another lesson. We will share next week pictures and updates on these special people.
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| A shot of the Gambe farm in Sagbayan |
We stop and pick up all the kids that come to seminary on our way. It takes us about an hour and a half because they all live in the bukid, just not the same bukid, so we travel a lot!
Well by the time we write this blog again the world in Bohol will change for us in a good way. We will have more responsibility and will be doing what the Lord sent us to Bohol to do.
I love the Lord and his work. May you have the opportunity in your life to experience the great joy we feel as we serve others.
Love ya all!
Elder Bell (Tatay, LoLo, Amigo)
Ayo Family and Friends!
Elder Bell is right…I do hope you all have the opportunity to serve in some way not only in the future but where you are right now. There are people all around you that need you. Be that one…the person who listens to the spirit as he guides you to those who need you. It is a remarkable experience to serve a mission. I think because for the first and only time in my life I am living fully the 'law of consecration' and the 'law of sacrifice'. And when you live like this something amazing happens, you grow and expand yourself. You learn to look at others through the eyes of Him who loves ALL of His children. You feel the refinement of your own soul happening. You feel an urgency to reach out to others and help them in the way the Spirit directs you. And then an even more amazing thing happens. When the Lord knows He can trust you….he sends you people that need Him because He knows that you will help them find Him and the gospel and all the things that will change their lives forever. All the things that will bring them back to Him. It is a truly humbling and gratifying experience. I am grateful to be able to serve here, beside my good husband, doing the things we do every day.
Now….on to our week!
Well, Monday is what I call a 'saved by the Bells' day. The missionaries needed lots of things that day. So we spent the day at doctor offices, dentist offices and transporting a missionary to the port, shopping for apartment things that several missionary apartments needed. So by late afternoon when we were finally heading home we were tired…but, the phone rang yet again. The Calape zone leaders had a flat tire way out in the bukid and could not get it changed. I told them to keep working on it and when we got within an hour of them I would call and see if they still needed help. Sure enough when we got close to Calape, they were still stranded so we headed their direction. It was quite dark by the time we got to them and even darker when we hiked back in to where the truck was. After great, great effort on the part of my pretty strong husband the lug nuts were finally freed and the tire changed. I won't even go into details about how hard it was to get the truck out of the muddy bukid road they had taken it down…..So Elder Bell tells me when we get home that his back feels pretty sore. Well, the next morning Elder Bell could not even get out of bed! Fortunately we have Chris our family Chiropractor, who graciously diagnosed and treated over a FaceTime visit! (Thank you Chris!) We followed his advice with ice packs and anti-inflammatory and stayed in bed all day on Tuesday. By Wednesday it felt better to sit than to lay so he sat and studied all day and we were on the go by Wednesday night. Did I mention he had a priesthood blessing also? The Lord really does take care of his missionaries and for that we are very grateful.
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Elder Bell on bed rest as per Doc Chris's orders!
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I don't know if I mentioned lately that Seminary is up and going again. The school year starts here on June 1 but we did not get seminary started until the first week of July, but we are in full swing now and so happy to have these wonderful young people back in Seminary.
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| We told them to do "Hoorah for Israel" but they have never seen the movie so they had no idea what we were asking them to do. We love these kids! |
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| It was this little guys first day in primary and he loved it. This is his mom helping him color. He caught on to the coloring and took to coloring all the papers of the other kids sitting near him. But he is too cute to get mad at so they just let him color away. |
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| More of our coloring primary kids! |
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| This is a young man mowing my yard! I have never seen a lawn mower on this whole island. And as you can probably guess, grass grows fast and furious here and almost all of it is mowed with a machete. This guy is high tech and is using hand held clippers! |
Well, I am going to wrap up this week for now. We had to go and get a sick sister a little while ago so we are a little late getting this published tonight. Please know that we love you and we miss you. We really appreciate the news from home and hope that this week you are all doing well. Summer is quickly fleeing so enjoy what you have left of it….however, here we enjoy perpetual Summer and so we never worry about getting all of our summer stuff done as we can do it anytime of the year!
Love you forever,
Sister Bell (Nanay, Lola, Amigo)
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