I may be seen looking homeless...

...but that is not true.  Today we decided to take our laundry to a laundromat in Aparri, but we could not figure out how to get our clothes there because we did not have any baskets.  So we put our laundry in sheets, threw it over our backs, and walked through the city looking like nomads.

 

Also, there was a new announcement made in our mission last week that our mission president himself will be doing cleaning checks of our apartments...unannounced apartment checks.  So one night I had what I thought was a "revelation": the mission president will surprise us tomorrow with a visit because we will be home in the apartment all morning.  Most days we go out in the morning, but our schedule was altered on this day.  I told the other sisters my theory and they got up early the next day to deep clean.  I convinced them that our president would come.  Did he come?  Obviously not, but the other sisters did a great job of cleaning!

 

In more inspiring news, Sister Liza Pinon came home this week.  After being falsely accused and put into jail in the Middle East, she is home.  Her family has been waiting to be reunited with her for two years and we have been teaching her family for the last two months.  Her husband and children have wanted to be baptized since the first day that we met them, but they also wanted to wait for their mother so that they could be baptized together.  We have been waiting and praying for Liza for months and the Lord answered our prayers.  When we first met Liza, we talked about her experiences in prison and got to know her.  She soon broke down into tears, thanking us for teaching her children to pray.  Before she left, her family was messy and her kids were undisciplined.  Now they pray individually and as a family many times a day, they read from the scriptures, and they attend church.  Liza told us that we were an answer to her prayers; too bad that she doesn't realize that she is an answer to our prayers.

  

 I am grateful this week to be in the Philippines, but I am also grateful to be an American.  We made some Filipino style BBQ chicken this week.  It was nothing like home, but it was fun to take time to remember home great the States are.  Sometimes you have to live in the third world for a year, to realize the blessings of being an American.

Check out whose steps I am following:

https://history.lds.org/article/sister-missionaries-video?lang=eng&cid=HPWE070214297