A WEEK OF FINISHING

We are finally finishing August!!!  Big hip hip hooray!  I've started to feel like I'm going through these months kind of like I go through bags of dried mangoes from the corner market (my dried mangoes never make it past a day...).  I'm just about to put a big slash on the calendar.  Me and Sister Bautista like to make a big deal of this.

I also spent the week finishing the Book of Mormon again.  Every time I close the pages after Moroni 10, I go through a little flashback of the things I learned, my changed perspective, and my widened understanding.  

That sure is quite the book.  And it makes quite the testimony.

I should be finished buying clothes starting this week.  Should be...  I was trying to organize my suitcases last week, AND, not everything fits.  And I didn't even try to pack in my clothes I wear right now.  Patay! ako!  God has a plan for everyone, which the above could be a very valid reason for why I didn't transfer:)  A blessing in disguise?

Our mission president's wife gave us an exercise/fitness challenge to do every morning our last meeting.  And happy to report, I finished the challenge and got a nice pat on the back from her.:)  I also made the expert observation the other day that it looks like what appears to be muscle may be forming.

In my spare time, I read the church handbook of instruction.  I finished reading that too this week.

The Garcia family is struggling right now:(  We finished teaching all the missionary lessons.  And they still aren't going to be baptized (sometimes family just annoyingly gets in the way).  It just might not be the right time for that golden, golden, family.  But I'm not ready to give up this week.  If needs be, we'll finish teaching the missionary lessons all over again.

Finishing is a good feeling. 

Finishing makes me want to start new things.

There has always been a need for people that could be called finishers, the question throughout our life can come down to, "Shall I falter or shall I finish?"

King David faltered after becoming one of the Lord's greatest leaders.  Judas Iscariot took the one faltering step that took him from a beloved apostle to a betrayer.

But Job took the step of faith from the pit of trials to the right hand of God.  Paul the Apostle wrote the famous words, "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

Visions of effort, faith, virtue, courage and prayer become the marks of a true finisher.  

President Monson could not have organized the feeling of this American missionary any better.  It doesn't mean finishing is easy, I mean, even an apostle couldn't finish.  But we propose that question to ourselves and then we create the way for it to happen.  Heavenly Father needs those finishers now.  And I'm not talking about a paint finisher:)

Funny Story: My pinky finger is as big as Sister Bautista's index finger:)  #filipinosized

LOVE YOU ALL!

SISTER TAYLOR

IT WAS A FLASH BACK RAPUNZEL MOMENT

back to the curl~!

Let's take a minute to go back to the good old days where I spent all my time watching, thinking, and obsessing over Tangled.  Those were the good days:)  And I always laughed so hard at the part where Rapunzel finally leaves here castle to find 'the stars.'  

She spends two seconds running around excited, and then a couple minutes crying.  And then she rolls around in the flowers because she can't control her excitement, and then gets scared and wants to go back to the castle.  

That is a perfect explanation of how I felt on transfer day.

our recent convert
(my first baptism in guagua)
and he just left for abroad

I didn't transfer:)

I still haven't traaaanssferred!!!!! 

I get to still teach the Garcia family:):)

I'm probably going to spend my whole mission in one place:/

Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhy am I still hhhhheeeere??

I looooove Guagua!

And that's a little bit of how my day went on transfers.  Because I'm still here in Guagua, and they closed our area and combined me with the other area and the other sister.  Which means that our area just became the size of the entire Salt Lake city and then some.  

I'm on a boat!

me and Gonzales got matching skirts made...
 one of 8 I had made out of home spun cotton)

It's been a week of running around the entire city, trying to make it to all our appointments, and trying to figure out what in the world me and Sister Bautista were supposed to be doing.  But I have a great companion! and lots of work!  and lots of things that apparently I still need to work out here in good ole' Pampanga (maybe I'll finally learn their crazy language!).

And this transfer I also got a grandkid!  My trainee is training! I now am a proud mom and grandma haha.  Now I just need to find a couple good knitted sweaters and a fuzzy cat...

And on the topic of cats.  We had a mission meeting a little bit ago and I decided to change up the dress code a little bit.  Usually the missionaries come wearing black, in cardigans, and plain professional.  I wore a polka dotted shirts with pink dancing cats on it.  And then I paired it with a blue polka dotted pencil skirt.  It was quite the entrance I was able to make with all the seasoned missionary leaders:)  I felt like true, blue, Sarah Taylor in that moment.

Funny Story: This week, it's just the fact that I have been dubbed "the southern side missionary."

LOVE,

SISTER TAYLOR

I SET A GOAL TO THINK SHALLOW

gotta love my coke)

 After a thorough conversation with Sister Snow one meeting, we came to the conclusion that I think waaaay too deep sometimes.  I was telling her that sometimes I give myself an entire hour to just sit at my desk, prop my legs up, and think.  We realized I had a problem.  And that's where most of my headaches were probably coming from.  So, for my email this week, I present my solution!  

I made up a couple new songs while we worked this week:)

to the tune of "Part of your World"

I wanna be where the Americans are

I wanna see, wanna see them speaking English

Eating burritos and being able to drink....what's it called..... miiiiiiiilk!

Up where they drive,

Up where they ride,

Up where they stay all day in air connnnnnn! (that's air conditioning in Tagalog)

Wanderin' free,

Someday I'll be,

doesn't it look like such an american breakfast!

Part of their worrrrrrrrld (again)

to the tune of "Grandma got run over by a Reindeer"

Sister Taylor almost got run over by a bus

Walking out to their work one hot dayy!

You can say she's got real quick reflexes,

Cause as for her companion, she just stareeeeeeed

to the tune of "You Belong with Me"

I'm on the phone with our zone leader,

he's upset.

He's going on about something I don't get.

But that's okay,

Cause it's our P-day tomorrow.

the only picture i got after the typhoon.
at the chapel a couple days after

We wear long skirts, they wear white shirts

They fight for high stats and I just forget it,

Thinkin' bout the day where I'll go home and find that all my friends I left,

All have jobs, and wives, and kids....

Can't they see that we've been walking in a high flood,

Punted all day

Can't they just let us iinnnnnn,

Your house is biiiiig,

and I have to pee.

That's all I've got.

Just take me and send me to Nashville!

THIS is the Garcia fam)

Also, yesterday the Garcia family was supposed to be baptized...  But their family still hasn't changed their mind, and so just one of them, Edmar, was baptized.  But at the same time, Edmar was finally BAPTIZED!  He stood up to bear his testimony and starting crying so hard nothing came out, so after a couple of minutes, he just sat back down again.  I LOVE SEEING PEOPLE I LOVE BE BAPTIZED!

zone conference last month
(while typhoon glenda was happening)

Funny Story: First. I don't think this story is very funny.  I'm scarred for life.  But everyone else I tell it to seems to find it funny when I tell them.  So.  Sometimes we pull down all the mattresses in our apartment downstairs and sleep on the floor because it's way too hot upstairs at night.  We were all sleeping in a row one night, and the lights might have been off for about 15 minutes and I was just about to fall asleep.  Then my leg was a little itchy.  Lots of mosquitoes are normal at night so I scratched my leg and turned over.  Then I felt something again on my arm.  By this point I'm awake, move my head, and then I hear a little scuttle across my pillow.  I sit straight up on my bed and see all these cockroaches scatter off my bed (and body) into the darkness.  BIG heart attack.  I'm screaming, climbing on top of our kitchen table, everyone is waking up.  And my companion is running around with my flip flop, killing the cockroaches like we usually kill ants.  I don't know if it was because I was so tired, or still half asleep, or just really scared, but I started crying.  Standing on top of the kitchen table, in a muimui dress, crying and laughing at the same time while there are smashed cockroaches all over the floor.  Now I have this overwhelming fear of sleeping on the floor.

LOVE,

SISTER TAYLOR (who was not infected by those cockroaches)