A Visit from Bishop Solis

Kumusta po!

The highlight of this week was a devotional by President Ballard. He talked about the example of Joseph and Hyrum Smith as companions, and it was so powerful, it had the Elders crying. (Which had not happened up until that point, so it was monumental.) 

My favorite thing that happened since my last letter was that our district was chosen to represent all 70,000 missionaries to the Catholic Archbishop of Utah. His name is Bishop Solis and he is from the Philippines. Our leaders wanted him to visit one of the Tagalog classes, and they chose our district which I am so grateful for. We got to introduce ourselves to him in Tagalog. He told us about his love for the Philippines and the regions where we were called. Apparently, Naga has a lot of really spicy food. The visit was incredible, and he was so funny. There was a photographer from the Catholic church there who said that we are probably going to be on their website and the Bishop's twitter. If you are a frequent visitor to the Catholic Church's website, look for my face. 

I am so grateful for the opportunity I had to meet him. He was very kind. 

We were all very nervous/excited because our leaders made it a pretty big deal. Two members of the 70 (Elder Clark and Elder Richards) and some bodyguards were there for it. The bishop watched a portion of our grammar lesson, and he said he was very impressed with us for how short a time we have been here. That was comforting.

My Kasama and I were tasked with obtaining and ironing a flag for the visit so naturally, I waved it around like an idiot to get a picture. 

Some fun things we are finding out about Tagalog is that if you emphasize the wrong part of the word, it is a completely different word. There are a TON of them, and some of them can be pretty funny if you mess up. For example, hapon is the word for afternoon, or it means someone who is of Japanese descent with a different accent. So you could be trying to say "beautiful afternoon" (a common greeting,) but it comes out as "that is a beautiful Japanese person," if you emphasize the wrong syllable. 

I have been making a list of these words, and they are quite funny:

Hamon: a challenge or it could mean ham

Bulos: a second helping of food or a harpoon

Kalog: a person who jokes a lot or someone who is mentally unbalanced

I love Tagalog so much!

I'll end this week's letter with my favorite scripture of this week: 

Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with sure hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God. Ether 12:4

I could talk about this scripture for hours, but my favorite part is "an anchor to the souls of men." What a wonderful image of what our faith in Jesus Christ does for our souls. As I have been studying hope, I am reminded that God is the winning team. If we have that hope, it increases as our faith and trust in God increases; we can go throughout our lives confident will be taken care of. We can stand uprightly before God with the surety that God is expecting us to get back to him and is preparing the way with refining experiences and all the divine influence he can provide without influencing our agency.

He is waiting earnestly to help us if we only give him the opportunity. 

11 more days 'til the Philippines!!

-Sister Gray