First Day of School

Today is the first day of school for a lot of the kids here in the Philippines. Happy first day of school!!

This week has been a good one. It started with a Parade on Monday celebrating Tarlac Day. Then on Tuesday we had a zone service project where we helped a school clean up and get ready for the first day to start. Afterwards we got to go out to McDonalds!! It was nice to have some American food. (I actually get "American food" pretty often.

My dear sweet new convert of a companion was not able to get her Patriarchal blessing before her mission, so I got to be with her as she prepared to receive it this week. I wasn't in the room when she received it, but I felt the spirit, and have reread my own blessing with more perspective.

I want to tell you a little about one of our new investigators, Bengie and Nick. One night as we were walking home we passed by Bengie holding her almost one year old daughter Jenel. We stopped to talk to her for a second and told her about who we are as missionaries, what we do, and if we could come back sometime to teach her. She said we could and pointed to where her house was. We set up an appointment, and a couple days later we returned hoping she would still be interested in hearing from us. She was! And so was her husband Nick. We taught them about the Restoration of the gospel and other eternal truths. The lesson was cut short a little because little Jenel was cranky and ready for bed. We have returned a couple times and they are always happy to let us in. We taught them about prayer, and how to pray (Though both claim to be Catholic, they have never really gone to church or prayed) At first neither of them were comfortable with praying in from of us. But they promised they would next time. When next time came around, they were both pretty nervous. But they both did so good. Bengie had even prepared by writing down the things she wanted to say in the prayer. So cute. Saturday night we spent some time explaining to them what church would be like so they would now what to expect. We were super hopeful that they would come. But come Sunday we didn't see them. We are not giving up on them and we will continue to help them progress, even if it is just a little bit at a time.

This week I was reminded of how great the commandments are. Every commandment has a blessing attached to it. When we are obedient to a commandment we get a certain blessing. We are so lucky that there are so many commandments because that means there are so many blessings available to us. Especially as missionaries we have so many 'rules' but really they are the greatest blessing ever.

I love you all!!!!

Sister Abish "McDonalds" Curtis

Picture: Me and Sister Avancena (my first name twin)