Bye Bye Baao, Hello Libmanan!

HELLO!

I am now in a place called, Libmanan. It is a lot like Baao, small, not much around, surrounded by farms and rice fields, and far far areas. There is however a 7-11 here. The most random thing in the world hha Nothing else here but there is a 7-11, hellllllooo slurpies :) haha slurpies in the middle of nowhere. Kind of funny.

My lovely new companion is Sister Aple Lua from Bolinao, Pangasinan, Philippines, really close to the soon-to-be Urdaneta Philippines Temple. She is amazing. Can I just tell you the weight that has been lifted from my shoulders this week..it is fantastic! From the very first minutes of my being companions with her, I felt loved, cared for, and welcome. What a relief! Truly an answer to my prayer. We are both so focused on the work and both desire for this area, as well as ourselves individually, to come closer to Christ. It is quite the change for me but boy is it wonderful! At one point she said to me, "Sister, I have learned more from you in our 3 days together than I have my entire mission so far!" Ha now I know that is an exaggeration and not quite true but we are both learning and growing so much everyday. I literally learn loads every single day. I am so happy. What a blessing Sister Lua is to me. Oh yeah and she laughs! We laugh and joke with each other all the time! It is so fun and exactly how I always pictured a missionary companionship being. So happy. Hopefully it only gets better from here. :)

Here in Libmanan Branch there are 6 full-time missionaries. We were told there are over 500 members here and yet only about 100 attend church. I have never been the best at math, but these numbers are easy enough to see that hose calculations dont add up like they should. So you guessed it, our  focus here is in fact less active members. When I got here, I opened up our lovely area book and got nothin. Unfortunately very few records have been kept in the past for this area so Miss Organizer is now here to clean things up and put some order back to this place. You can't just keep baptizing people if you have no foundation or else they will get baptized and go inactive. Simple. Set your foundation first then build up. So, we are working on that. Every spare moment we have/every night before bed we literally just sit at our desks trying to organize, fill in blanks, and figure out this area book. It is slight nonsense. BUT it will be worth it to get a nice, clean, solid foundation for future success.

Anywho, overall, it has been a good week. I can't believe I hit my 10 month mark this week. Craziness.

I finished reading The Book of Mormon again this week. I love The Book of Mormon. I know it is true. My day is not complete if I do not read. I am constantly opening it up and reading, whether it be during meals, studies, or other random times, it is now my book of choice. I gain so much insight and strength from  the scriptures. I was excited to complete my reading of The Book of Mormon again, but funny enough, I was more excited to start over and to learn even more! One of my new favorite scriptures (which happens to be the youth scripture of the year I believe) is Moroni 10:32. Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him. His grace is sufficient for all. I know that is true.

I wish you all the best week and hope to hear from you soon! 

Mahal ko po kayo! Ingat kayo lagi!

-Sister Roderick