WEEK TWENTY-EIGHT   


While Jenna was emailing they experienced a "Brown Out" and she lost the letter she had just written home. She rewrote a few paragraphs but that's all she had time for...She is doing well.  We loved talking with her last week on Mother's Day. She told us about a family with 12 children she is teaching right now.  It is about 100 degrees everyday and 90 percent humidity:) She loves the Philippines and seems so very happy!!

The Garcia Family..we have been working with them for a long time now.  I love them so much..  they have accepted the Gospel and are living it.  They keep all of thier commitments..they're just unable to attend church because they don't have the money.  It is so hard!!  We just got Taytay a wheelchair through the welfare program at Church..he just had a stroke.

These beautiful children live in my area.  They literally SPRINT at me when they see me coming down the street and then they hold my hands and kiss my cheeks until we get to our appointment! They are the CUTEST!

Hello to the ones I love most,

As soon as our Christmas call ended the countdown began for our Mother’s Day phone call. Its what all us missionaries talk about and look forward to :) I can hardly believe how quickly it came! I feel like it was just yesterday Sister Houser and I were looking at the calendar you made me mom counting out the days until mother’s day.. how did five months already happen!

I loved every second of talking to, and looking at you beautiful people.  Words don't do any justice in how much I love you and am grateful to have you in my life.  It’s amazing that the loner I serve the easier it is for me to be away- the ache for you lessens but the love and appreciation for you grows.  

As you know I've been a little sick the last few days.. 

Our district leader came over to give me a blessing.  As the Filipino Elder put his hands on my head and blessed me on my front porch I listened to his voice and looked out at my surroundings.  In moments like these, I truly can't believe this is my life.  Its the most incredible thing.  I have such a testimony of Priesthood power.  I know it is real and I know that it truly is the authority to act in God’s name for the Salvation- or I like to think of it as the eternal happiness of His children :).

all i had time to rewrite of it.. ha sorry!! next week na lang! mahal kita!!!!!     

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I wouldn't trade this experience for anything in the world!

WEEK TWENTY-SIX

Journal entry May 3

Today.. medyo mahirap.  Thoughts of home and wanting to be there.  I felt discouraged and exhausted.  I prayed and prayed for a change of heart.  My merciful Heavenly Father heard my prayer.. Just about every appointment we set.. it fell through.  And so I took that as a sign that the Lord wanted us somewhere else.  So I tried my best to be as sensitive as possible to any prompting.  I felt the Lord put us exactly where we needed to be.  We sat on the side of the road texting investigators trying to make appointments when a tricycle driver and I got talking.  He wanted some of the pamphlets that I was holding.  I learned that he was a husband and a father.  Whose life had been very difficult.. sobrang mahirap he kept repeating.  He works all day everyday just to try to get enough money to take home to his wife and daughter.  As I explained the contents found in our pamphlets- I bore my testimony to him.  That our message has the power to change his life.  Sure, it won't take each mahirap thing away.  However, it will absolutely strengthen him and he can receive the help and strength he needs through our message.  I poured out my heart to him in just about all the tagalog words I could muster up.  I wanted him to feel and know the message I was sharing was true.  and was especially for him.  

We then made our way to an investigators home- Brother Rodellio, to find him gone working.  His wife's mother let us in to their small home, that barely fit the three of us.  We sat on the floor next to this sweet frail woman as she told us with shaky hands about her life.  She was fourteen years old during WWII when the Japanese invaded the Philippines.  She watched as the soldiers would beat her mother.. relentlessly.  At the age of seventeen she moved to Manila alone to find any kind of work.  She worked in a home and the man who lived there would beat her whenever he returned home and felt that her work had not been done well enough.  She married, had eight children, and then lost her husband.  She would stay up all through the night ironing clothes to provide for them.  One by one each child left her, and to this day she only has contact with the youngest- whom she lives with.

This woman attended church with us Sunday, with the only money she had.

Tonight was a night that I fell to my knees and spent a long time down there.  I prayed with a humbled heartbroken and grateful heart.  I am so grateful to be in the Philippines serving these people. These people who teach me through their kindness love and circumstances everyday.  I have every reason to be happy and grateful in every moment.  I am being taught lessons every moment of every day that will change my life forever.  and I pray it will bless others lives forever.  The plan of Salvation is more than just some chart of where we came from - where we're going- different kingdoms.  It is a plan of happiness from a loving Heavenly Father of how each of His children can find strength and purpose in this life.  How they can know exactly who they are and who they can become.  Its a plan made possible because of His son, our Brother, and loving Redeemer.  

“And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
“And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities” (Alma 7:11–12).

Thus, the Savior has suffered not just for our sins and iniquities—but also for our physical pains and anguish, our weaknesses and shortcomings, our fears and frustrations, our disappointments and discouragement, our regrets and remorse, our despair and desperation, the injustices and inequities we experience, and the emotional distresses that beset us.

There is no physical pain, no spiritual wound, no anguish of soul or heartache, no infirmity or weakness you or I ever confront in mortality that the Savior did not experience first. In a moment of weakness we may cry out, “No one knows what it is like. No one understands.” But the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He has felt and borne our individual burdens. And because of His infinite and eternal sacrifice (seeAlma 34:14), He has perfect empathy and can extend to us His arm of mercy. He can reach out, touch, succor, heal, and strengthen us to be more than we could ever be and help us to do that which we could never do relying only upon our own power. Indeed, His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

The unique burdens in each of our lives help us to rely upon the merits, mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah (see 2 Nephi 2:8). I testify and promise the Savior will help us to bear up our burdens with ease (seeMosiah 24:15). As we are yoked with Him through sacred covenants and receive the enabling power of His Atonement in our lives, we increasingly will seek to understand and live according to His will. We also will pray for the strength to learn from, change, or accept our circumstances rather than praying relentlessly for God to change our circumstances according to our will. We will become agents who act rather than objects that are acted upon (see 2 Nephi 2:14). We will be blessed with spiritual traction.

-Elder Bednar.

I truly love this work. I truly love this people. and I wouldn't trade this experience for anything in the world.  I wish there were words to articulate how full my heart feels. with this gospel, with gratitude, with humility, with amazement, with love.  

this gospel is TRUE and i love all of you 

Love Always,

Sister Welling

ps. Naomie accepted the invitation to be baptized yesterday.. she knows with all of her heart that Joseph Smith was a prophet.. she knows the Book of Mormon is true.. Her spirit is so strong.. she has received answers to each prayer and you should hear some of the dreams she has had.. wow wow.. continue to keep her in your prayers :)

Jenna is training:)

WEEK TWENTY-FIVE

Good Morning Philippines!

War Memorial Cemetary

My beautiful anak:)

A real restaurant!! I wanted to cry:)

Hello Momma and Pappa.

How are you doing half a world away? I love seeing your pictures and hearing about what is going on in your lives, in a strange way I feel that we are even closer than ever.

Well, I arrived at the mission home last Wednesday and I felt like I was right back to my first day.  It was the strangest feeling sitting on the opposite side of the room with all the trainers, not the trainees.  One of the couple missionaries asked if I was a new missionary to which I responded yes.  Oops. (but really, didn’t I just arrive in the Philippines yesterday??)

President brought all of the trainers into the room and expressed to us how much he trusted us.  He told us that he picks the trainers before any other position in the mission and that we had a very important calling and responsibility.  He was so sweet and encouraging and he made me feel absolutely unqualified but absolutely motivated and inspired to fulfill this calling.

Manila Temple

This might sound like a bit of a love story.. but I walked in the room and I immediately knew I would be training Sister Dimacuta.

Sister Dimacuta is pretty much a much better version of Sister Welling in Filipina form.  We find ourselves saying “me too”! to one another a lot. We have so many things in common and we agree on so many things.

She is the most selfless, kind, genuine, loving thing I have ever met.

She kind of reminds me of a Disney princess or something.. she is always singing to herself.. I don’t think she knows how to say a single negative thing.. she cries a lot.. she talks to the cat on our front porch.. she hugs just about everyone, ha she really is just so cute.

She has the biggest heart

And the purest spirit

She is a powerful teacher and turns out

She is definitely the one training me.

I love it because we seem to always be on the same page, we have the same ideas for how we want to teach, what we want to teach, how we want to help the people progress.

Naomie. I love Naomie.  She is 21 and working here in Taytay.  Everyone talks about that “golden investigator” and I feel that she is ours.  It is so apparent that she has been prepared by the Lord.  A member in our ward (Mika), a returned missionary, is her coworker and invited her to church.  Naomie felt the spirit so strongly through her church attendance.  In our first lesson she opened right up to us about trials she has been experiencing.  We told her that our message would help her find peace and happiness amidst the trial.

By the time we returned for our next appointment she had read the pamphlet three times and part of the Book of Mormon. 

She asked such good questions and has such a sincere desire to learn more. 

I just wish you could have felt the spirit that was there.  When we invited her to pray about Joseph Smith she responded, of course.  In these two weeks she has already expressed the changes she has seen and felt in her life from our message. 

I think just about everyday how much I love my job.

I have been so busy trying to get everywhere on time, trying to keep track of everything, making sure I’m doing everything right, making sure I’m teaching Sister Dimacuta everything she needs to know, so on and so forth.

I have kind of felt like a chicken running with its head cut off (is that the expression?)

Well, I read a talk from President Uchtdorf and it really hit home for me--

“I think of our Lord and Exemplar, Jesus Christ, and his short life among the people of Galilee and Jerusalem.  I have tried to imagine Him bustling between meetings or multitasking to get a list of urgent things accomplished, I can’t see it.

Instead I see the compassionate and caring Son of God purposefully living each day.  When He interacted with those around Him, they felt important and loved.  He knew the infinite value of the people He met.  He blessed them, ministered to them.  He lifted them up, healed them.  He gave them the precious gift of His time.”

“Instead I see the compassionate and caring Son of God purposefully living each day” I know that our time truly is precious.  It is a gift from our loving Heavenly Father and while we were sent here to learn and to grow—it is important that we know where our priorities lie.  I think it would do us all some good to pause for a little while; and turn our attention to those around us.  As I applied this principle into my missionary work this week I have felt so much more kapayapaan at kalygayahan. “He knew the infinite value of the people He met—He gave them the precious gift of His time” Its more than just sitting there with them in a lesson, or speaking with another person- but letting them know and feel how much they truly matter to you- how much you care and understand and appreciate their worth.

I am so grateful for the perpektong halimbawa..  perfect example.. of our Savior Jesus Christ.

After a hard days work

Alam ko po na Diyos ang ating Ama sa Langit.  Kilala-kilalang Niya po tayo at mahal na mahal Niya po tayo.  Alam ko po na Si Jesucristo ang ating Tagapaglitas. Alam ko po na buhay Siya.  Sobrang nagpapasalamat po ako para sa ebanghelyo na ito.  Alam ko po na totoo siya.  With all of my heart. 

I love you family- remember to give those you love your time this week- and I’ll be doing the same J

Love Always,

Sister Welling