15 Minutes to Conversion

Hello again from the Philippines!

It's only been about half a week since my last email, so not too much has happened.  Two of our investigators, Brother and Sister Ramos, had their baptismal interview on Saturday, and we were so excited and happy.  We waited for them to finish, then went to talk with the elders to make sure the baptism record and everything was filled out properly.  Well when we went in, our district leader told us that only the husband could be baptized and that the wife needed some more time.  We literally went from grinning ear to ear to devastated.  Both of us were just standing there like "What??"  It was a very difficult moment.  And then our elder started grinning and told us he was joking and they were both fine.  I told him if he ever did that again I'd kill him.

So we had a neat experience with the Ramos family this week.  The mom and dad are so progressing and are so excited to be baptized, but their 3 boys weren't so progressing.  They weren't reading in the BOM, and making that a priority.  In our mission, we have a designated 15 minutes every night that we can just focus on the Book of Mormon.  It is so powerful and is such a testimony builder, so we challenged the boys to do that.  We promised them that if they focused 15 minutes a day--just 15 minutes out of 24 hours--they would receive that witness that it was true.  We had one more lesson with them between the commitment and Sunday, and the boys had done it, and Sunday was the first time that all 5 of them came to church!!  It was amazing :)  such a witness to me of how powerful the Book of Mormon really is.  So I have the same challenge for all of you :)  I challenge you to focus 15 minutes every day in the Book of Mormon.  I can promise you, based on the change I've felt in myself and that I've seen in others, that just by doing that simple thing, you will be able to gain that testimony of the Book of Mormon, and strengthen your relationship with Heavenly Father :)

Mosiah 18:11  And now when the people had heard these words, they clapped their hands for joy, and exclaimed: This is the desire of our hearts.  When the desire of our hearts is to do the things that will bring us closer to God, He will provide a way, and will give us those spiritual confirmations of the truth.

Rosemary M. Wixom:  Because you are His child, you not only need Him, but He needs you.  Heavenly Father wants us to be able to come back to Him.  And the Book of Mormon is the best way to know what it is that we need to do in order to do that :)

Love from the Philippines!

XOXO

Sister Pectol

Well That was Unexpected--Confessions of Love and Feeling Like an Alien

Hi all!

It has been another fantastic week here in PQCM.  We had our pdays swapped around last minute, so we ended up going to the temple early this morning.  The bishop here works at the church office next door to the temple, so he was kind enough to let us catch a ride lol.  Despite the fact that we left at about 5:45, because of traffic, we didn't get there until it was time to start the 8:30 session.  Yay for city life.  But the temple was, as always, amazing, and I am so so grateful that I am blessed enough to have a temple in my mission.  It is such a blessing to be able to go every other transfer!

And about the mac&cheese...that's something they don't really have here in the Philippines, so I special-requested it from my mom.  And let me tell you, I was so happy to open that package and see some delicious Kraft!  It was pretty fantastic.

And guess who was assigned to speak in church on Sunday...yep, this chicky here!  I was prepared and everything, but one weakness that I have is that public speaking absolutely TERRIFIES me.  I can deal with skydiving and storms and snakes and why not? I'll take a shark too.  But public speaking is a whole different story!  I stood up to the microphone, and felt like my Tagalog and my preparation and all of that stuff just ran out the door.  Welp.  A couple of people said it was good though, so maybe I was the only one who felt confused the entire talk lol.

So, I had yet another electric fan experience this week.  I didn't break it though!  I think it actually tried to break me.  We had a lesson with one of our new investigators who is in a tiny house, and their fan didn't have a cover, but it was hot so of course it was on high.  I got the lucky seat next to the fan, and when I wasn't paying close enough attention, the evil thing attacked me!!  I have a nice little burn on my elbow where it tried to chop my arm off.  Good thing it was plastic and not metal, because if it was metal, kawawa ako!!  It would not have felt good at all!

And I had the unique experience of understanding what it would feel like to be an alien.  We went to pick up one of our investigators for church Sunday morning, and Sunday is usually party day here in the Philippines, which means that a lot of men have already opened the beer.  Which is extremely unpleasant if you're a white girl that has to walk past them.  That is one thing that I have struggled with here--the amount of attention I get because I'm white.  I literally turn heads when I walk down the street, and constantly get called after.  I hate it.  Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely fallen in love with the Philippines and the people here, but sometimes I just hide under my umbrella and pretend I can't see anyone.

Ok, now that I've got that little vent out, let me tell you the big funny thing that happened this week.  My companion has an admirer!  It's hard to have a beautiful companion, because then our investigators just fall in love with her XD one of our investigators texted us Sunday night apologizing that he wasn't able to go to church because of work, and ended his text by telling Sister Udarbe to take care of herself and that he loves her and blah blah blah...we were cracking up!  We brought it up to the zone leader, and he basically shrugged and said "It happens." XD  So, the quote this week once again comes from Sister Udarbe:  We need to work on our flirt-to-convert skills.

John 10:27  My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.  On the more spiritual side, we don't actually do the flirt to convert :)  As I've been here, I've really seen the truthfulness of this verse.  Those that are prepared do recognize that we are here speaking for the savior.  Sometimes it takes us a couple of tries before they realize it, but eventually they do :)  It is such a blessing for me to be here, and I really have seen the effects of the seen and unseen forces preparing people to receive the gospel.

Lots of love!!

XOXO

Sister Pectol

Reflections on The Setting Apart

 
Hello everyone!!

Once again, we have had a fantastic week.  We had the baptism of Jhapz, and that was so fun.  He's so cute and it's been so fun to teach him, and he was so excited!  We did a fun musical number by combining the English and Tagalog  I am a Child of God.  All the hymns here are in English, but one of the other sisters had a Tagalog hymn book so it was fun to do that.

 

 

 

So, I think this week I experienced what it would be like to have a stroke.  A lot of times when we're teaching we end up sitting on the ground, which is totally fine but I always have to move a couple of times or my legs will fall asleep.  Well, we had one appointment where we were all pretty squished, so for the whole lesson I was in the same position, pinching what felt like all the nerves in my leg.  So when we got up to leave, I LITERALLY had no muscle control.  None.  I could barely hobble to the door, and Sister Udarbe had to get my shoes for me.  Her leg was kind of asleep too, so we were both leaning on each other to hobble down the street while the ward missionary who was with us just laughed and made fun of us.  It literally took almost to the end of the block before I didn't feel like I needed to drag my leg.  Welp.  Maybe we made some of the neighbors there laugh.

We had a really cool realization this week.  One of the families we're teaching has three boys, ages 18, 19, and 20.  So right our ages.  As we were leaving one of our teaching appointments with them, we started talking about how different we felt.  The setting apart for missionary work is a real thing.  At home, it would have been kind of awkward to try to teach guys my age (or kind of any age) things like the law of chastity and eternal marriage and all that stuff, but it's not awkward here.  I think that people can feel that missionaries have a special calling, because whether we're teaching somebody our age or somebody the age of our parents or grandparents, they treat us differently.  There's a quote in Preach My Gospel that says it's a setting apart from the world, and that is so true.  As missionaries, Heavenly Father has literally given us power and authority to teach His word.  Isn't that so cool?  He gave me--just the plain, ordinary, 19 year old, sometimes dweeby, can-barely-speak-Tagalog me--the power and authority to teach His children and to bring them to Him.  Wow.  To quote Sister Udarbe: "God is awesome."

Luke 17:10  So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.  Even though I am here and I get to experience all these amazing things, I know that I really am an unprofitable servant.  No matter how hard I go out and work; no matter how diligently I plan, how much I open my mouth to talk to strangers, how much I bear my testimony, how many people I help come to the waters of baptism, I am an unprofitable servant.  Because I am just doing what Heavenly Father has called me to do.  I am just doing my duty.  And He always blesses me more than I ever thought possible.  Missionary work literally blows my mind sometimes :)

Well, I continue to love it here!  And I love you all!

XOXO

Sister Payton Pectol

 

Fasting Works!! 10 Investigators at Church, Burnt Pancakes, and Christmas Songs!

 Photo bombing...and us four sisters.
 

Yay for ward missionaries!

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Hi Everyone!!

 

Yes, it really happened...we had 10 of our investigators at church yesterday!!  WOOOOOOH!!!!  Me and Sister Udarbe opened our fast on Saturday, and especially prayed for our investigators to have a desire to come to church.  One of them we went and picked up, and the other ones were there when we walked in!!  We were so excited!  Heavenly Father really answers prayers :)

 

 

I am loving September in the Philippines, because in the Philippines, now is when Christmas celebrations start!!  I literally saw Christmas trees at Puregold when we did our grocery shopping last week...It's coming!!!    So in most of our lessons and all our companionship studies, our opening hymn has been from the Christmas section of the hymnbook :)  it's pretty much awesome.  But when we were doing our grocery shopping, Lady Antebellum came on the store playlist!  I hear mostly English music here, but not much country, so if I hear country it's definitely very difficult to resist the "babylonian music"!!

Last week was transfer week, and I DIDN'T TRANSFER!!!  I'm so happy because there are investigators here that I love so much and I know I haven't finished helping them yet.  And I get to finish training Sister Udarbe!  Sister Maravillo became an Sister Training Leader, so now it's me and Sister Udarbe, and Sisters Pakalani & Duque in the Taytay 1st ward.  It's so fun!

And my quote actually comes from Sister Pakalani's prayer over lunch the other day:  Please bless the beautiful hands that prepared this food, and bless Sister Udarbe and Pectol and Duque with gwapo (handsome) husbands and lots of beautiful children.  And please bless the burnt pancakes that they won't poison us.  Ok, the pancakes weren't that bad!!  Needless to say, we were all cracking up by the time the prayer was over...well, sometimes it happens.

My scripture actually comes from my personal study this morning.  I was actually feeling kind of discouraged, so I studied about hope in Preach My Gospel, and this scripture amazed me.  Ether 12:4 4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.  Really though.  Hope is so important, and when we ever feel discouraged, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are right there waiting for us.

Love from the Philippines!

XOXO

Sister Pectol

We Don't Just Walk Around

Hi All!

As always, it's been a good week.  We did have an interesting experience that tested both mine and Sister Udarbe's patience though.  We've had an investigator that we haven't been able to contact and that has been hiding from us, and we finally saw her sitting outside a tindahan, so we stopped to talk to her.  She was busy so we couldn't teach, but she told us that we were lucky because all we do is walk around all day.  Luckily, I didn't understand what she said until we were walking away and Sister Udarbe translated for me.  She might have gotten a little bit of un-missionary-like sass from me if I did understand.  Me and Sister Udarbe ended up having an entire vent session to each other about everything we left behind to come and "walk around", and all that we deal with.  I think we definitely didn't feel very Christlike for a minute, but we did repent :)

My funny story this week is from our language test.  All the missionaries take language tests--the non-English speakers take English tests, and the non-Tagalog speakers take Tagalog tests.  We went to the mission office to take the test, and on the way back we got stuck in traffic.  Let me explain the situation: we were in a jeepney that was literally stuffed full of people, stuck at almost a standstill, in the heat of the afternoon.  It was not very pleasant lol.  I ended up falling asleep for part of the traffic part, and was having a really hard time waking up.  I have a little wire circle with cloth fan that I pulled out  of my bag to try to wake my brain up.  Well, the problem is that I wasn't completely alert, so when I pulled out my fan, it popped open and shot out of my hands, smacking some poor lady so hard on her neck I thought her head might fall off....oops.  After apologizing multiple times I think she forgave me, but I still felt bad.  I had been hoping to talk to people on the jeepney, but after that I thought I better not...

When I was doing one of my personal studies this week, I found my mission call in the scriptures!  D&C 79:1  Verily I say unto you, that it is my will that my servant [Payton Pectol] should go...into the eastern countries, from place to place, and from city to city, in the power of the ordination wherewith [she] has been ordained, proclaiming glad tidings of great joy, even the everlasting gospel.  Cool, right?  I had to smile when I read that.

One of the elders in our district said something that I thought was very powerful.  Testimony is knowing it, conversion is living it.  --Elder Natural.  It's so true.  When we understand a principle of the gospel, we have a testimony of it.  But it's not enough to have that testimony.  We have to act on it as well, and take those steps to show our faith and to really strengthen ourselves in the gospel.

Mahal ko kayo!!

XOXO

Sister Pectol

His Mouthpiece

Hello everyone!

Well it has been another fantastic week here in PQCM!!  We have had some really amazing lessons, and I continue to see the proof of God working through me.  We had one lesson in particular that amazed me.  We have this new family that we're teaching--the mom, dad, and three adult sons.  And they're "truth seekers", which means that they really want to know what is true but it also means that all of our lessons are really intense with them.  They have a lot of questions, and sometimes the discussion gets really crazy.  We taught the Plan of Salvation to them this week, and it was amazing.  They were firing questions at us about every principle of the Plan of Salvation--from pre-earth life to the spirit world to the Celestial kingdom.  It was crazy.  But it was such a testament to me that we are literally receiving heavenly help, because using our own words and the scriptures we were able to answer every single question that they had.  It was cool too, because that morning, I'd been prompted to bring my Preach My Gospel.  I never carry it with me, because I don't need to add extra books to my bag when we're trekking around lol.  But I brought it for that lesson, and I am so grateful I listened to that prompting, because one of their big questions we didn't have a scripture prepared for, but by using the scripture references in the PMG, I was given the perfect scripture to use.  It was absolutely amazing.  Whenever we walk away from a lesson with them, Sister Udarbe tells me that she truly believes in the gift of tongues, because apparently my Tagalog is almost perfect in our lessons with them.  The rest of the time my Tagalog is about mediocre, so I guess for whatever reason, that family needs me to speak clearly, so Heavenly Father helps me to do that.  I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY.

In church yesterday, we had our combined Sunday school, and before it got started some of the members got up and talked about upcoming job opportunities.  One of the members of the bishopric asked all of us there "Who works 5 days a week?" There were a handful of members who raised their hands.  "Who works 6 days a week?"  A couple more than the first time raised their hands.  "Who works 7 days a week?"  Us 4 missionaries shot our hands straight up, and everybody started laughing.  There was one member who also works 7 days a week.  But, let's be serious here.  Missionary work is literally all consuming, all day, 7 days a week.  We wake up and pray for our investigators, then exercise so that we can be strong enough to get to them.  We study so that we know what doctrines to teach them, and then we go out and we work.  We overcome weaknesses, find the courage to open our mouths, and focus all our energy and our purpose on them.  We study the language and pray some more for them.  And when we come home in the evening, we pray for them again, then plan what we can teach and do for them in order to help them come unto Christ.  And then before we go to bed, we pray for them again, and sometimes we're kept awake trying to think about what we can teach and what we can do to help them.  I think that's one of the best parts of missionary work--you learn how to love people.  You learn how to love people so much that you'll give everything to them--your whole self.  You love them so much that you'll fight through homesickness, physical sickness, and all of Satan's tests and temptations to try to help them.  You love them so much that you pray and you cry and you labor to bring them the joy of the gospel.  And that is what we learn as missionaries.  We learn what it means to truly love our brothers and sisters--our fellow children of God.

And it is beautiful.

D&C 100:4-6  Therefore, I, the Lord, have suffered you to come unto this place; for thus it was expedient in me for the salvation of souls. Therefore, verily I say unto you, lift up your voices unto this people; speak the thoughts that I shall put into your hearts, and you shall not be confounded before men; For it shall be given you in the very hour, yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say.

Just do your best, and the Lord will do the rest.

Mahal ko kayo lahat!!!

XOXO

Sister Pectol

Preach the Gospel to Every Creature

Hi Everyone!!

Well, as usual, it has been a great week!!  Last week I received literally 4 packages at once, so to those who sent me stuff THANK YOU and there are notes in the mail for you :)  We have had great lessons and funny experiences and lots of learning, so it has been a successful week :)  I think one of the things that Sister Udarbe learned about me this week is that I have a killer smile.  As in, I can still smile even though I might want to kill someone lol.  Let me explain.  As a (very) white girl, I attract a lot of attention here.  I really don't like it, but I've gotten to the point that I can ignore it.  Well, we went to try to contact one of our less actives this week, and there was a group of teenagers (guys) by the house.  One of them came up and started talking to us, and we were just being our typical missionary-friendly selves.  He told us he was from one of the other wards, so we small-talked for a bit, then went to leave.  As usual, we shook hands before we left.  But when he shook our hands, all the other guys standing a little ways off started whooping and cheering.  I think it was a dare, to see if he could shake our hands.  I walked away with a smile on my face, and as soon as we were out of sight I started strangling imaginary teenagers. Sister Udarbe was laughing at the fact that I could still smile at them.  BOYS ARE SO DUMB.

That's one of our funny moments :)  I also had a very cool experience over Friday and Saturday.  Friday morning, I was stressing about something major that I don't really have control over here, and I ended up crying to Sister Udarbe a little bit.  Then I just went up to our room, and knelt down and prayed.  At that point, I couldn't really even talk to Heavenly Father, so I just started my prayer then cried, and just felt all the stress and worry and hurt like a big tangled knot inside of me.  I told Him about my concerns, and why I was worried, and how confused and directionless I felt.  Then I just sat there and listened.  And as I did so, the hurt left.  It was completely gone, and instead I felt like my soul had just been washed clean, and I was just so full of peace.  I didn't have any answers, but I had peace, and I had the strength and courage for that day.  As I pondered Saturday morning, I thought of all the things that are causing stress.  Big decisions, people I'm worried about, what I need to do...and I felt the same peace again.  I realized that Heavenly Father isn't going to give me specific answers and specific direction right now, because I don't need it.  Instead, He gave me what I needed, and that was the peace and the strength for that day.  I was reminded of Elder D Todd Christofferson's Daily Bread Experience, and how he found the strength to go from day to day.  I learned that that's what Heavenly Father gives us.  Even though we don't always see the complete path, He gives us enough light to help us move forward a couple of steps, and that's what we need.

Our theme this week has been Preach the Gospel to Every Creature.  So every time we see a dog or a cat(which is often--there are a zillion of each here) we ask them if they want to be baptized.  We tried a rooster, but he also rejected us.  But, even though we got rejected, we know that we did our part as missionaries, and we worked hard XD

  

Mormon 9:22  For behold, thus said Jesus Christ, the Son of God, unto His disciples who should tarry, yea, and also to all His disciples, in the hearing of the multitude: Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

The real voyage of sicovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.  Marcel Proust.  When we change our perspective a little, and take a step back from everything, the big picture comes together, and we can gain that perspective and that knowledge that helps us be the best that we can be.

Lots of love!  I hope you all have an amazing week!

XOXO

Sister Payton Pectol



FISHBOWL AND FAILED ATTEMPT AT A JEEPNEY PIC.

The fishbowl is basically chunks of dough dropped into oil and fried.  it was actually pretty yummy, but it's basically just a heart attack attached to a bycicle lol.