Eades, Oakley P

Had some megaaa culture shocks this week. Transfers were this week and I got transferred to Marikina as an STL! (So scared I do not feel qualified). My new companion is Sister To’ia from New Zealand. And my new area in Marikina is closer to the mountains so I finally get some fresh air and get to see some green!  Anywho, I thought my last apartment was small and gross but boy do I take that back now. My new apartment looks a little like this: -No AC -No shower (you use a bucket and a ladle) -Ant infestation. Literally millions of ants everywhere. On the walls, the counters, the floors, etc… If we leave food out for 2 seconds it instantly gets covered in ants. Or when I get out of the shower I have to shake my towel out first and tons of ants fall out. And they are always crawling on me and I can feel them biting me lol  -The garbage truck here hasn’t come in like 4 weeks so we just have piles of trash stacked outside our door  Lol I feel like I’m camping every day but it'...

Hi hi! Been a couple weeks since I've written an email but I LOVE IT HERE. Being a missionary is the greatest thing ever. Training has been so fun and my companion is like my best friend. We have worked so hard this transfer and seen so many miracles!  To start… ELEVEN friends came to church yesterday!! This whole transfer the work has been soooo slow, but we've been working so so hard, and we're finally seeing the miracles!  (see pictures) This is the mom of our bishop, Nanay Marina. All of her kids are members except for her. A few years ago she had a baptismal date, but the day before her baptism, the elders came over to visit her and they started playing with Nanay Marina's pet bird. This bird was Marina's pride and joy. It was like her best friend and it even talked! While the elders were playing with the bird they accidentally let it go and it flew away. Marina was so mad that she canceled her baptism the next day and has held a grudge ever since! So missionar...

Christmas time!!  Here in the Philippines they celebrate Christmas for all the BER months… SeptemBER, OctoBER, NovemBER, and DecemBER. So Christmas time has started!! Besides eating balut… a GOOOOOD week. Google photos link for the video of me eating it:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/ ycyL7nS7RNG8KdVQ9   •We saw sooo many miracles getting one of our friends to church this Sunday. Too long to write everything that happened but the short version is that we fasted and prayed so hard for our friend to make it to church and HE DID. Miracle after miracle happened and he made it. God is so true and I know the power of fasting is so real. •2 Baptisms this week, John Dave and Aljear! Per usual, they showed up 30 mins late to their own baptism, but I'm unphased by it now haha. That's Filipino time for ya. They were both so happy and excited to be baptized. It has been so amazing seeing their growth and progression in the gospel. It was such a good and spiritual day! •Our favorite rich...

Skip to the end of this email if you're only here for the funny stories. I promise it's worth it. But spiritual thought first. One night we were finding and just trying to talk to everyone we passed on the street. There was a woman walking in front of us who me and my companion both had a prompting to talk to. For some reason we both ignored the prompting, and we talked to another person who was passing us instead. She was not interested, and by that point we lost the woman in front of us. About 30 mins later I had a very clear prompting to go knock on the door of one of our old friends. This time I didn’t ignore it and we went to the house. No one answered. But we turned to leave, and boom, right in front of us was the woman from earlier. We went up to her and she told us that she has been searching for the true church. She has been going to all the different churches and none of them felt right to her. We told her we have a very special message about a boy named Joseph Smith ...

I'M TRAINING!!  Thursday was transfer day and so I got to spend the whole morning and afternoon at the mission home with the other trainers and trainees. My new companion is sister Peras from the Phillipines and I LOVE HER! She is so so sweet, loves pink, loves chocolate, and loves rocky road ice cream. So yes, we get along great haha. I also feel like I'm having to relearn the culture of the Philippines. This whole time I thought all Filipinos were awkward and quiet and so I became awkward and quiet because I thought that was the culture here. Lol it's not. My last companion was just awkward, which made everyone else awkward haha. Love her but people skills weren't quite her strongest trait. So it's been so refreshing to have a companion that can actually talk and be friendly with people! I was super scared to be training because I literally just got out of training myself! And it means I have to know how to teach all the lessons! I feel so unprepared and inadequat...

Transfers are this week which means I'm done with training! Time is flying by I can't believe it. I’ll keep this email short, not much happened this week. We started teaching a family of 6 kids and their names are Cristelle, Crystal, Criswell, Cris Laurence, Cris Leon, and the moms name is Kristina. Like bruh. Haha how am I ever supposed to remember who is who? Haha I found rice krispies at the store so I taught my companion what rice krispy treats are and we made them for some of our friends! …until our friends weren't home so we ate them instead. And as always, the gift of tongues is REAL! This week we had just finished a lesson with a husband and wife. After the lesson the guy started talking to me. He said a bunch of stuff I didn’t understand and so I looked over like I usually do to let my companion answer or translate for me. I looked over at her but she was in a conversation with the woman. So I was on my own to talk to this guy. I focused extra hard on what he was s...

I have 2 spiritual stories from this week, and both have to do with someone named John haha!  The first John is John Dave! Yesterday we extended a baptismal invitation to him! John Dave is 20 years old and his cousin just got baptized a couple weeks ago. We have only taught him like 2 times because of the typhoon and such, but he has been coming to church every week for the past month! In our lesson yesterday, he basically taught us. A few weeks before, our Sunday school lesson in church was the same as our lesson yesterday so he was so excited to learn it again and he had so much to say and so many questions. He was literally grinning ear to ear for our entire lesson. Then, we extended a baptismal invitation to him and he said “Yes! Yes, Sister! Yes!” with the biggest grin on his face. Second John is John Paul! This week we had one of the most spiritual lessons I've ever had. We found John Paul about a month ago, he is 58 years old and has been a Catholic all of his life. He alway...