Baliw Talaga

Service project with Sister Garcia

Drinking fresh coconut 

study room in the apartment 

 Living room 

kitchen 

My favorite drink!  Unavailable in the Philippines.  Received via packages from Marmee and Mom! 

Palawan Island

Hello family!!

It was another great week in Santa Monica! It was funny...before we came to the internet shop I was thinking that it was just a normal week and I didn't really know what to email about, but then I read in my journal and remembered lots of totally abnormal things happened! Its funny how I just get used to how crazy life is here. Hahaha, some of the awesome adventures this week were... I got to hold a baby alligator! Last pday we went to Bakers Hill and they had one there for us to hold, hehe (: Also, one morning this week I was exercising in our study room and I heard this cat super loud. I looked out the window (which is open and has no screen...yeah not good) and couldn't see anything. Then when I was standing up at the window I heard it from INSIDE our room! I looked and couldn't find it, until it meowed again and I found it INSIDE my carry on bag!! It had probably slept there the whole night... Don't worry, Sister Parina got it out and we shut the window. Hahaha, oh my. Another crazy part of this week was the rain! It rained SO MUCH. On Thursday when we went out to work, it was raining so hard my umbrella didn't do anything, and my dress was entirely soaked before we even got to our first appointment. Its okay, though, I'm still new and so I still just laugh and laugh and it doesn't really bother me. What was a little yucky though was our bathrooms flooded. All the gunk from the drains came up and it was pretty gross. It smelled really nasty, but luckily it was gone the next morning and we cleaned it all up. Life is crazy!!

As far as our lessons go this week..This week was a little slower as Sister Parina has experienced some health aches and pains, but I still feel that I am growing and learning so much. One thing that we as a zone and as a companionship have been working on is finding new investigators. So this week, I was really trying to do my very best to talk to EVERYONE and pray that we could find people who were prepared for us. All week, though, it seemed like nobody wanted to listen! One day we had set apart 2 hours just for finding, and it POURED during those 2 hours and we weren't able to find anyone. It was then proving to be more difficult to find new investigators as we could not work all of our hours each day because of Sister Parina's aches and pains. Yesteryday, after conference we only had a few hours to work. I wanted so badly for us to reach our goal to find new investigators this week but it did not look like it was going to happen. Then, however, a miracle happened!! Heavenly Father provided 5 women who were SO ready to let us in and hear the gospel. One group even stopped us and invited us in! It truly was such a blessing. I know that Heavenly Father knew the desires of our hearts to find new investigators. Even when I thought it would be impossible to reach our goal, He provided a way. I am so thankful for goals and for learning lessons on the blessings of faith, hard work, and diligence. We also had some great lessons with our recent converts and also with Sister Rose, our newest progressing investigator! She even invited us to stay one day for her son's 1st birthday party which was interesting and lots of fun.

General Conference was so awesome! Seriously for missionaries Conference is like Christmas. I learned so much and was so reenergized to keep working hard and working to be better! My favorite talks were Elder Holland, of course, Elder Christofferson, and Elder Bednar! I actually would love it if you could attach Elder Bednar's talk to my blog. I really am here in the Philippines to share the happiness that the gospel has brought to my life! (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/10/come-and-see?lang=eng)

Sister Garcia got transferred out this week and we got a new kabahay! Her name is sister Delaitabuna from Fiji and I LOVE HER! Oh man, she is the sweetest and we have so much fun. I'm definitely so thankful that Heavenly Father sent me her as a friend here (: Also, Sister Garcia left me some of her clothes.  Score!

I've included the pictures of the apartment you requested! This is our study room, our kitchen and our living area...our room is big and has bunk beds..not really much to see there. All 4 of us girls sleep in one room together.  We have 2 bathrooms but only 1 has a water heater so we all shower there.

I love you so much! I'm going to try to attach pictures, so say a prayer they don't get erased! ALSO I almost forgot.. another MIRACLE.. last week after I left email all my pictures were erased off of my camera. But I was patient and tried really hard to not make my companion feel bad, and guess what?! Later that day I looked at my camera again and all of the pictures were BACK! Seriously, I don't know how it happened. But maybe Heavenly Father wanted to test me and see how I would treat my companion for being the one who lost my pictures. Apparently I did okay because he gave them all back! 

xoxoxo 

Sister Lockwood

ps. baliw talaga means really crazy