"Like Fools Do"
Dear Family and Friends:
O I am trying really hard to get photos to attach here, but the computers here are sobrang masama as they would say sa Tagalog. So I'm gonna try later...
Happy late Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a great day celebrating your grateful-ness. Over here we had a special treat. Elder Bednar came and talked to us! It was a very different experience from anything I have ever seen before. Instead of just preparing a talk, he made it a Q&A. But there are so many of us that we had to get creative. So he brought with him 100 cell phones and they were dispersed among the crowd. We then all texted questions to his ipad that he had with him on the stand. It was the strangest and coolest thing I've ever seen in a devotional. And Elder Bednar is a genius. His responses were just so intelligent and insightful. It was awesome!
Later that day we did service projects and had more devotionals and such. Then at the end of the night we all went out to the main plaza and they lit up all the trees there. It was really cool, especially because I was really sad about missing all the lights around the River Woods and Temple Square for this Christmas. It was a magical day:)
So we had a devotional on Tuesday too and we got to listen to Elder Oaks speak (it was a week of apostles). Something he said really hit me. See, it's been harder to learn the language and I feel as if I'm plateauing and progress is stilted. But he said, "Those who are making a fool of themselves in the name of Christ are the ones who will be blessed with the language." I realized that I wasn't trying my hardest to speak what I know all the time. I wasn't making a big enough fool of myself to progress. The more mistakes I make as I try to speak this language, the more I will learn.
Last night our district made a goal to speak only Tagalog as much as possible. We basically don't speak English to each other anymore. If we don't know the word sa Tagalog, we usually just end up grunting or acting out what we are trying to say. It's somewhat prehistoric, but I know it will help up in the end. And I'm actually quite surprised at how much we actually know.
Sorry it's shorter this week, but those were the important parts. Please pray for my district and I as we try our hardest to learn how to communicate better. Also we need to learn to rely more heavily on the Spirit rather than what we ourselves know.
Love you all Salamat po!
~Sister Allyson Lefebvre
O I am trying really hard to get photos to attach here, but the computers here are sobrang masama as they would say sa Tagalog. So I'm gonna try later...
Happy late Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a great day celebrating your grateful-ness. Over here we had a special treat. Elder Bednar came and talked to us! It was a very different experience from anything I have ever seen before. Instead of just preparing a talk, he made it a Q&A. But there are so many of us that we had to get creative. So he brought with him 100 cell phones and they were dispersed among the crowd. We then all texted questions to his ipad that he had with him on the stand. It was the strangest and coolest thing I've ever seen in a devotional. And Elder Bednar is a genius. His responses were just so intelligent and insightful. It was awesome!
Later that day we did service projects and had more devotionals and such. Then at the end of the night we all went out to the main plaza and they lit up all the trees there. It was really cool, especially because I was really sad about missing all the lights around the River Woods and Temple Square for this Christmas. It was a magical day:)
So we had a devotional on Tuesday too and we got to listen to Elder Oaks speak (it was a week of apostles). Something he said really hit me. See, it's been harder to learn the language and I feel as if I'm plateauing and progress is stilted. But he said, "Those who are making a fool of themselves in the name of Christ are the ones who will be blessed with the language." I realized that I wasn't trying my hardest to speak what I know all the time. I wasn't making a big enough fool of myself to progress. The more mistakes I make as I try to speak this language, the more I will learn.
Last night our district made a goal to speak only Tagalog as much as possible. We basically don't speak English to each other anymore. If we don't know the word sa Tagalog, we usually just end up grunting or acting out what we are trying to say. It's somewhat prehistoric, but I know it will help up in the end. And I'm actually quite surprised at how much we actually know.
Sorry it's shorter this week, but those were the important parts. Please pray for my district and I as we try our hardest to learn how to communicate better. Also we need to learn to rely more heavily on the Spirit rather than what we ourselves know.
Love you all Salamat po!
~Sister Allyson Lefebvre