Monday, November 18, 2013~Week 14 Quezon City; 12:48 PM Mon (PH); 9:48 PM Sun (US) MOM note: Hannah sent this picture and note first and then left me hanging for a good hour while she read letters and wrote hers: "Heyyyyy mom! I'm here!!! I'm sending the TODAY photo first to keep you anticipating the story of my leg!! It's an exciting one! You know what they say! It's more fun in the Philippines!" (tease)
Hey there family! Sooo it's been quite the week here in the Philippines! First of all, I gotta say that I had NO idea how bad the storm was until I emailed you all last week and then found out it was even worse than I thought the next day from ward members and such! We really are in such a bubble still even though we're out and about in the world. We have no T.V., no radio, no internet, nothing! We had no idea what the heck was going on out there! It's so so so devastating! And now we have a ton of new missionaries that were transferred into our mission from Tacloban! It'll be fun and this is the perfect opportunity for the gospel to help people rise out of the rubble and rely on the Lord!
So apparently everybody knows that on Tuesday I did service at the church because I'm in videos and pictures all over the internet! #famous. So that's exciting.
That's my second time being famous on YouTube! The first time stemming from our Senior Ball Rap which is still the most amazing video in the world I think. Shout out to mah gurls Alena, Jannie, Melissa, And Rickstuhh for making that possible! #seniorballrap2013 #youtubefamous #jbiebsandthegirls #loveyouall #kisses. How many hits does that have now by the way? (781@ this post)
Okay but seriously. The church's relief program is SO amazing! There were a thousand people WAITING in the chapel for their turn to help out that day and there were already hundreds working! It was so crazy! And everyone was just so happy and smiling and I love this church so much! We put together SOOOO many relief kits for the missionaries and for members and nonmembers! And SOOOOO many bags of rice! It was truly amazing to see everyone working so hard and to see everything being put together to send to those people! The church hallways and rooms and sitting areas were all FULL of kits that were going to be sent and there are still bags waiting to be sent to more people! It was truly a miracle! So that was really fun to be apart of that! My back was definitely sore from scooping who knows how many pounds of rice into bags but hey it was worth it!
The relief kits! The pile is taller than me!
On Saturday, the youth in our stake did a roadshow and the theme was Disney and it was SOOO cute!! Before it started, we got to go help all the youth in our ward get ready! Every ward had a different movie! There was Hercules, Alladin, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Pocahontas, and our ward did Mulan! I got to do all the girls hair for it! Obviously that was a party. I love doing hair! They looked great! Then we went and picked up Robin and Gio and their friend John Mark and took them with us to watch the roadshow! (By the way, Ruben is actually Robin....we just found that out this week. And Damdam is Gio.) And they LOVED it!! It was so adorable and they had such a great time! Our ward has been SO great with these boys! All the young men have fellow-shipped them and made them feel so welcome! It's been wonderful!! And then after it finished, all the youth were fed and they gave some food to Robin, Gio, and John Mark and ice cream too! They had the best time just hanging out with the youth and making real friends!
Whenever they're at church or with the young men, they have the biggest smiles on their faces and it makes me so happy to see them so happy! The light of Christ is truly illuminating their lives!! I love them with all my heart! They had a new baptismal date for December 14 because they have to come to church four times in a row but their grandma is really really strict and moody and sometimes won't let them come to church and so we have to give them ANOTHER baptismal date because Robin has missed two weeks in a row now! We're hoping for December 17! Everyone pray that their grandma's heart will be softened! We need them to come to church! We need them to be baptized! They need to be missionaries one day!! PRAY PRAY PRAY!
My cute companion!
Okay so here's the adventure story for the week! Yesterday, we went on splits. Sister Tibungcog went with Sister Hepworth up to Kaingin for the sacrament meeting up there and I went with Sister Strebel to pick up the boys for church. So the ward we were taking them to started at 8:30 am and so we get there at about 8:00 am to pick them up and grandma is all moody and stuff and says that they can't go and that they can go to the 1:00 pm ward (which she told us on Saturday that they could NOT go to and they had to go to the 8:30 am ward because they were less busy at that time). So we said okay then we'll see them at 12:30! And we're leaving and as we're walking away, I step on a grate thing that's over the opening to a sewer and because the metal was all rusted, IT BROKE RIGHT WHEN I STEPPED ON IT! So there I go. My leg just goes straight through the grate and on the way down, two sharp edges of the rusted metal digs into my skin and my knee slams against the cement and I was a little bit in shock because it all happened so fast! And with some help from Sister Strebel and a few Filipino men whose faces I never even bothered to look at, I pull my leg up and then I just felt sick to my stomach because I look down and there's just blood.
The damage!
And then I can see where the metal had cut into and I have two nice deep gashes in my leg. One was more of a slash and then other was just like a chunk of skin that had been scooped out. It was gross! And miraculously, a taxi randomly decided to pull off to the side of the road and Sister Strebel and I call it over and we get inside and it takes us home. Then we called Sister Revillo but she didn't answer so we called the APs and they said they would come and get us and get it taken care of. But while we're waiting for them to come and get me, Sister Revillo calls back and I tell her what happened and the little Filipino woman just says, "Okay that's alright. The APs are come to get you now. So just calm down and try to close the skin together with your two fingers. Okay let me know what happens. Ingat kayo!" Umm.... okay I will give that a shot! Hahaha it was kind of funny!
Still had time to take a picture! It's all about the pictures! These kinds of things only happen once! Oh wait....nope this is the 5th time it's happened to me...ha.
Anyway, so the APs pick us up and take us to the nearest hospital and oh my gosh I LOVE AMERICA! It was the sketchiest hospital I have ever seen in my entire life! Completely sketchy. Like it was bad. I was sitting down at a little desk where one of the nurses was checking out my wound and right behind me there was an unconscious man whose face was completely bloated and bloody and there was nothing covering him up. It was so sad. And it was like that everywhere. I just really love America and American hospitals. And America. GOD BLESS THE USA. Anyway, so after he checks it out, he tells me I need stitches, I freak out inside because this is the last place I want to get stitches, I would rather do it myself because I definitely trust myself more than the hospital. So we go into another room and I sit on the little bed thingy that has a sheet on it and that sheet definitely had blood on it that did not belong to me! And he starts getting all the stuff ready to sew me up and I stop him and tell him that he's not allowed to give me stitches until he cleans the dirt out from the wound! Because they hadn't cleaned it out yet! And so he kind of cleans it out and then he starts getting the needle out to numb everything around where he was going to give me the stitches and I look at it and it's definitely still dirty all up in there. So I let him numb me and then after it was all numb and I couldn't feel it, I told him to please clean it out a lot. I said, "Just go at it because I literally can't feel anything right there. So please just clean it out!" Haha so he did! He was kind of digging at it and getting all the stuff out and I felt MUCH better and I allowed him to stitch me up!
Sorry...might be a little graphic! The last stitch!
I got 8 stitches! One for every week I've been in the Philippines! I took pictures of the whole process and obviously I'll send them to you! After that, they put a bunch of gauze and stuff all over my wounds, gave me two shots of who knows what, and sent me on my merry way with some pills they told me I needed to take every 6 hours for a week!
This is how they bandaged it up!
And ya know what time it was when I got out? It was only like 9:45 am! So we went home and were told by the other Sisters that I need to just sit there and rest my leg and not go to church but I went to church anyway because hello! I'd rather go sit in church for three hours and take the sacrament and be in air conditioning than sit at home doing nothing! So I went to church and then came home and my leg is still in pain and it actually really kind of hurts to walk on it and it's a little bit swollen but at least it's still there! And that was my adventure! It's more fun in the Philippines!
Luckily, I had a HERSHEY bar that I'd bought to celebrate my 3 month mark! I hadn't eaten it yet! SO I ate it yesterday to soothe the pain!
So yeah! That was my week! It's been a good one! I had a little bit of a light bulb come on this week during one of my personal studies. The reason that every day on your mission gets easier isn't because the actual mission gets easier! It's because every single day, you are praying and pleading with your Heavenly Father for the strength to go through the day. You're pleading for the gift of tongues. Your pleading for comfort and peace. You're pleading for your investigators. Every single day you are on your knees talking to your Heavenly Father and gradually, when you talk to Him, you stop talking about yourself. You start talking to Him about your family, the ward members, your investigators, the less actives, other missionaries. Every day gets easier because you begin to realize more and more your purpose as a missionary and your will begins to realign itself with His will. Your will becomes His. And that's the whole point! Missions are so great! I love being a missionary! I love sharing my testimony! I love telling people that they have a Father in Heaven that loves them very very much! I love the Book of Mormon! I love Joseph Smith! I love this gospel! And I love all of you!!! I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Me today with my Christmas tree!
Thanks for all the letters and prayers and love!! I pray for you all every single day multiple times a day!! You are all so amazing!! Thanks for everything!! Love you and miss you more than words can say!! Mahal kita!! I LOVE YOU!!!!
"Lift up your heart and rejoice, for the hour of your mission is come; and your tongue shall be loosed, and you shall declare glad tidings of great joy unto this generation." - D&C 31:3
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