Mother's Day

Mom's notes:  We got to Skype with Emilee on Friday night (her Saturday morning) it was so fun!  So good to see her and neat to see the background. (She is defiantly not in Kansas anymore)  :-)  I am thankful to the family who offered to let the missionaries use their tablets to Skype home.  Troy said it would take him a few days after calling home for Mother's Day or Christmas to get back into the swing of things because everyone felt a little home sick.  I thought I could see a little of that in this letter besides it HOT!!!  Poor girl, but, all these things build character and I could already see a change in her she is not the same girl we sent in some ways but, the changes are all good. We really love her and miss her but I wouldn't want to take this experience away from her for anything.

So.... guess who was skyping for Mother's Day and forgot to say Happy Mother's Day????????? Yep, me. Literally, five seconds after closing the window, I slapped my forehead and turned to Sister Feinga. "It's Mother's Day and I forgot to say HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!" 

    So... um... yeah. Happy Mother's Day. I love you. All those things I should have said the first time round. But really, yesterday at church I was struck with just how much I love you Mommy. And just how much I miss you... and wish that I could give you a fan- hand out that all the other mother's were getting here. At least, when you actually read this email, it will really be Mother's Day, right? 

Other than that... I'm already counting down the days until we can skype again! I was so happy to see you all! You probably noticed, but I was crying on and off throughout the whole thing.It was a little weird to see you all too, because sometimes I really feel like I was born here in the Philippines and I'm going to die here too. I don't feel like America is real... but seeing you reminded me, it's not a dream!!!!!! You all do exist and I'll come back one day. Weird. Weird. Weird. 

       But yep. I feel like I've already told you all the good stories for the week and I'm not really sure what to write right now. But here it goes. 

          I decided to give our investigators fake names so I don't have always say, "The family that we tracted into..." or "The family that is closest to being baptized..."

So, the family that I felt like we should talk to and finally tracted into is the... Smith family. Really generic. I know. 

And the family that is close to being baptized and wants to read the BOM before their baptism is the Lewis family.

There. 

         The Smith family is doing great. They still won't come to church, but they are reading the Book of Mormon and keeping their other commitments. We are going to have to teach Sabbath Day for the third time now. Our mission President says you have to teach Sabbath day in four different ways before they finally get it. Sometimes, it's really true. But I love them so much and I love seeing the light and spirit that has come into their faces and homes. 

          The Lewis family is due to be baptized March 31st. They have come to church every week since they started investigating and are all reading the BOM. Sometimes I'm like, "But really, are you all secretly members or something?" This week when we went to teach them, they had a friend over. The eight year old daughter came running out to meet us at the fence and the first thing she said was, "My parent's friend is here.She hates Mormons." I felt something sink inside me. What did this "friend" say to them? And fear that she was poisoning our investigators hut. Psh. I had no reason to fear. The church is true, duh. They were really strong about it and the father even said that he's beginning to feel it's true, despite her opinions. 

As we taught, we could see the friend tense a little about some things, but thankfully she didn't say anything.  After the lesson, we found out that she's Iglesia Ni Cristo. (Church of Christ in spanish. I don't know how to spell it.) That church is intense here. It's a Philippine church that is broken off from the Mormon religion. If you have time, you should read about it on wikipedia or something. Its really interesting how they broke off from us. Anyway, love them so much and so happy that they are staying strong!!!!!!!!!

        We taught a less active father this week. He lives in this jungley area surrounded by other less active siblings. Only one of his siblings is active and she helped us set up a lesson for him. He has three kids and no wife. I don't know what happened to her. Anyway, we watched Together Forever. It was amazing the difference we felt in their home from the beginning of the movie to the end. I know that the testimony of families has real power and we could see a change in him after it was over. We hope to help them more in this week. 

     Well, the stories of this week are....

  Sister Feinga and I had a really rough Weekly Planning. It was about 110 degrees upstairs and we had already been studying in that stuffy,hot room for about 5 hours. It was hard to focus and to stay awake and every few minutes we would talk about how much we hated doing Weekly Planning and how much we wished it was over so we could nap. (As if we could actually take a nap.) After about 5 hours, I went downstairs to get a drink when suddenly, I saw this long trail of hangers outside our downstairs window with asign. "Weekly Planning is boring! Ayaw ko!" (Ayaw ko means I hate/ don't like.) I go outside to see Sister Feinga on our balcony with hangers connected together like monkeys in a barrel. She made a face at me and I just laughed and laughed. I sent the pictures to you so hopefully you get to see them. (Speaking of pictures, the ones of me and Sis. Feinga standing dangerously on the balacony was when we were watching fireworks last week. That angle was the only way we could see them. It was pretty stupid of us because all it took was one second of leaning to far and we would fall.) 

  As we were singing a hymn to open our companion study, facing the balcony to get a better angle, we suddenly see our neighbor come out on to his balcony, in his boxers, big potbelly and all, holding his orange cat. He took his cat, and exactly like in Lion King, held it high over the balcony; Simba-style. I have no idea what he was doing or why- all I know is that Sister Feinga and I only made it through one verse of our song before calling quits because we were laughing too hard. 

Well, the time has come to get off. I love you all so much! I loved skyping with you! I can't wait to see you again this Christmas!!!!!!!! 

And... HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

-Love,

Sister Beaumont 

The pic of me with my pens and sissors is after our nightly planning. I just started sticking pens in my hair... and then the sissors... just happened. 

There is a pic with three people from tonga. They are all in my zone. Sister Feigna is in the the same stake as the one on the far left. 

Elder Richards was our post for a pinata a mother sent for a birthday present to another elder in our zone. He's really, really, really tall. Like 6 ft 10 tall.