Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween!!! 

Just kidding. They don't have Halloween here. Except some people did trunk or treat at the church and that made me really happy. I am surprised at how much i miss Halloween. and kit kats. Guess you don't miss it till it is gone haha Hope you all had a great time with fun fall festivities though!

 Since most of the people here in the Philippines are Catholic their big holiday is All saints day when everyone goes to the graveyard to visit their dead. It's a really big deal here. The florists and the liquor shops sell out and the sister missionaries have a 6pm curfew. haha Halloween day was still interesting for me though. My companion broke a mirror, a black cat showed up at our apartment and we met a guy who's wife died the day before and insisted on showing me pictures of his dead wife in her glass coffin. (I'm completely serious. That happened ) Soooo yeah. It was a hoot.

One funny thing that happened was we literally ran like 3 miles in 15 minutes from a way out rice field to the church to teach one of our investigators and we get there and i am so gross and dying and can't breathe and we all sit down and are about to start teaching and he goes(in broken English) :" Sister Turner. Why are you perspiring so much??" hahaha and I'm just like "sorry!" but in my head I'm like "Because I care about you and your salvation enough to run 3 miles from a rice field! geesh!"  hahah It was a great lesson though and he now has a baptism day and is progressing so much! 

This week I was studying the scriptures where it tells us to "take p our cross" and follow the savior. (Matthew 16:24-5) This life is really hard sometimes. It really is. But I find great comfort in knowing that we are never alone in what we go through. I read in D&C 122 where Joseph Smith had been praying tot he Lord for help and the Lord tells him that even if he experiences the worst trials possible, everything will be for his own good because it will give him experience. D&C 122:8 really hit me hard. It says: "The son of man(Jesus Christ) hath descended below them all(trials). Art thou greater than he?". This isn't supposed to be easy. And when we have hard times we should only hold our heads up higher because we are walking the road that Jesus Christ walked, we are in good company with the savior and we are never alone. 

Last night we watched an area broadcast to the Philippines with Elder Oaks and one of the things a speaker said really stuck out to me. He talked about how the quality of life we have has nothing to do with our lives or the world around us. It all has to do with the way we choose to look at it. We make our own happiness. He talked about how Lamen and Lemuel and Nephi both had the same glass of experiences and trials but Nephi tried to look at it half full and found joy and happiness. Laman and Lemuel saw it as half empty and were miserable. I know that is is so true! I have found that even in the worst experiences if you can still laugh and smile and keep going then you can be happy no matter what is happening. Sometimes my companion and I will go through a day and just look at each other and literally say "Why are we so happy right now? Today has been awful!" But I know that that happiness is a gift from the spirit and that if we try our best, heavenly Father really will help us in every single aspect of our lives. Even being happy when it doesn't logically make sense to be. 

So i'm just going to keep smiling and when the rain falls down, remember where the rains falls from. 

It's a good day to have a good day so I hope you all have a wonderful one!

Mahal na mahal ko kayo lahat. 

Ingat!

Sister Turner