Malipayong Pasko

Hello Everyone! MERRY CHRISTMAS! Or Malipayong Pasko in Visaya, my favorite language!

I'm so excited for Christmas! I'm excited about working hard and learning more about Christ and especially about His atonement and sacrifice. I was reading the other day about the condescension of Christ, and that "condescension" means to voluntarily step down from Diety. If you look in 1 Ne 11 it says it over and over again. I always thought about Jesus's sacrifice by the means of what He did for us, but it added a new dimension; it's also about what He gave up. He voluntarily gave up all the power and glory that he had to come to earth in the humblest of circumstances. He came as an infant who had to rely completely upon His mother and father. And after that, He received of the fullness grace by grace, so that we could follow His example and do the same, like it says in D&C 93. My Mission President is being really strict about Christmas. He wants us to work the whole time and only take half an hour to forty minutes to skype my family, but I'm glad because this is my last cycle, and I was worried that it would be wasted by too many Christmas celebrations. I'm excited to experience a Christmas without all the bright lights and shiny things so that I can get down to the heart of it all. 

We have three baptismal interviews that will take place tomorrow. (That's going to be hard because we'll be on exchanges, but it has to be done.) They are the Peregrino kids. There is one who is 15, one who's 13, and one who's 9. They are so cute and so excited for their baptism. Their parents were inactive as in, but the sisters before us reactivated them. We finished the lessons with them yesterday, and they seem like they're doing great!! The youngest one, Leann, is SO cute. She just goes to the back of their beauty parlor and reads and memorizes the steps of repentance and our baptismal covenant. We've talked to the dad about baptizing his kids, and the mom about giving a talk at their baptism! We're so excited! There's also one more sister who is getting interviewed tomorrow. Her name is Rae, and she's AWESOME! She's actually been going to church for around 4 years, (she's 22) but she never took the lessons because she was afraid of the missionaries. She is SO smart and she knows everything. She's getting interviewed tomorrow but wants to get baptized on the 3rd of January because it's a special date for her. 

Sorry sorry family, that's all I can write about right now, I LOVE YOU ALL! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

Love, Sister Sprouse

I love Ormoc !!!!

Date	Sun 20:22

 

First of all, my ate' is engaged!! I'm so excited I can barely type!! 

So forgive me if I don't answer all the questions as usual. I will try to be more thorough but I am so excited that my brain is anything but clear. 

This week has been great!! I forgot to tell you all why Ormoc is a dream come true. There are very many reasons. 1. I was assigned here! Albuerra and Baybay are both part of Ormoc Zone. 2. (the main reason) They speak CEBUANO here! No more Waray Waray. I am so so so happy about that. I switched back to Cebuano with no difficulty at all because of my love of it and my loathing of Waray x2 (: 3. It's just magical (:

I know that some Elders got reassigned in my old area, but I don't know who. I think that they won't have power there until after Christmas, so I feel kind of bad for them. But at least the damage isn't bad enough that no missionaries could be assigned there. My anak is in Sogud which is sooo good (; and also Cebuano.  As for the area and the work, I will just give you what I gave President. Haha. 

Hello President! 

How are you this week? Things are great in Ormoc! 

So far, I have loved being here in Ormoc.  We are planning on doing a Sister's Devotional tonight for the sisters that we're over. We called them all last night, and they all seem to be doing great!! But we will keep following up and trying to help with any problems  that might appear. We scheduled exchanges with the Polompon Sisters and also Ormoc 1, so we will be writing you about that next week. 

So last night was the showing of the Christmas Devotional. We had planned to have an investigator there so that we could stay and watch the devotional ourselves, but she was having a health concern and couldn't come. We were already there, and I won't lie, I wanted to stay reaaally badly. But I thought about being an example, and also just about the importance of being obedient, so Sister Flores and I left and taught two lessons. I was so glad that we had done it. The feeling I got while walking home was better than I would have gotten from staying at the devotional. It was a feeling from the Holy Ghost telling me that Heavenly Father was proud of me for being obedient. There will be plenty of opportunities to go to more Christmas Devotionals in my life, but no other opportunity to be an obedient missionary and endure to the end. 

The area seems to be really good! There are a lot of part member families. There is one in particular that is really cool. They're called the Peregrino family. The husband and wife were both inactive a couple months ago, but they're officially returned now and there three kids have a baptismal date for the 27th. We just finished L3 with them, so we still have to cover L4 and L5 with them before they can get baptised, which means that we're going to have to visit really often. But it should be good. As of now, we're trying to get their Dad to baptize them. He says he doesn't feel worthy since he was inactive, but we told him to pray about it. 

That's what I've got this week. Thank you for everything President! I am so happy to be here. 

Love, Sister Sprouse

I love you all! Have a good week! Love Sister Sprouse

Message 11 of 230

Hello Everyone !

Date	Today 03:44

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Hello Everyone! It's been kind of a crazy week, so I'm sorry that I can't write everyone back who sent me an email. We got permission to write our families on a day that's not pday because we couldn't email on Pday. 

What happened started last week on Friday. We got a call in the morning that Sister Asug and I were transferring. The Zone Leaders said we should leave at a time that was best for us, and so I decided we should leave as soon as possible. We packed within one hour and left really early. That was really good because about half way through, we received a message that transfers were cancelled because of the storm. There were a lot of Elders and Sisters who couldn't find any rides, so if we hadn't left early we wouldn't have been able to either for a long time. When we got to Tacloban, we just went and bought lots of canned food and rice so that we would have food if the bagyo was really bad again. We waited inside of the sister's apartment for a day and a half before the storm hit. We started the fast on Saturday night. That's really cool that all of you fasted too. I didn't know that. But I do know that it made miracles happen. 

When Ruby was out in the ocean, it had gusts of winds stronger than Yolanda. If it had continued to hit land at that rate, it would have been devastating. Many people were worried that Ruby slowed down, because usually when storms slow down, they have more time to build up more power. But this storm slowed down from a category 5 to just a 4 before it hit land. It was still strong, and my area got the eye of the storm (I still don't know how my area is; there's no cell service there.) but all the missionaries were really far from danger. I thought the roof was going to come off the apartment in Tacloban a few times, and there were floods everywhere, (only about an inch in our apartment though(:) But the storm that they thought was going to devastate the whole mission tilted off into a different direction completely away from the Philippines. I know it's a miracle and I am so blessed that I get to continue my mission for the next month and a half ? (I don't remember how long it exactly is) I was really scared that I was going to have to go home early for awhile there. Thank you to everyone who fasted for our cause. I know that miracles happened because of it. 

In other news, I am back in Ormoc, which is a dream come true. I'm in the same zone as Elder Simmons! He's training a cute little Pinoy elder. Sister Adasme gets to be my companion for 4 days before she goes home! (She stayed a little longer so that she could go home with her sister.) She's going to show Sister Flores and me (Sister Flores is our other cute companion.) around the area so we can figure it out. We're going to be doing a lot of work with the other sisters in the zone, and I'm really excited to give it my all. 

I have to go. I love you all!! Talk to you on Monday. 

Love, Sister Sprouse