Desperate times call for desperate measures

Kumusta!!!!

Okay, I have no time to waste, this week was one for the records....

Monday: So we always have lunch at our ward mission leader's house on pdays and i don't know what I ate, but about 2 hours later it wanted to come out right away!!! haha, and of coarse I was in the most inconvenient place ever...without my handy dandy toilet paper that i usually carry (Thanks Mandi!!). So after lunch we decided to do a little shopping at this second hand clothes store and that's when it hit me, we weren't close to our apartment so i asked if the place had a toilet they directed me to one. I stepped inside and seriously contemplated for about 5 seconds......no toilet paper, no toilet seat, a wet rim of the bowl and a bucket right next to it......there was no way I could hold it though it was an emergency and like the title states, desperate times call for desperate measures. Normally I am okay in that situation when I only have to pee, but this wasn't the case. But i went for it anyway. I even sat on wet toilet bowl (SICK!!) and was there for a good 8 minutes or so, everything i ate was now gone and i was left to clean up the mess with a bucket of water---so i poured it down my backside and then looked at my hand and definitely used it to make sure everything was nice and clean. I was so thankful that they had a sink with soap but when i had the chance i poured alcohol all over my hands!!! That was fun, i felt like a true American in the Philippines!! :)


Then, that night at around 12 AM I get woken up by sis mack "hey sis" (i really need to stop waking up to her saying that to me) she said that a cockroach had just crawled on her and that she threw it off. Haha, so she turned on the kitchen light and then our light in our room and found a huge cockroach!! Haha!! Anyway, she was way freaked out so she slept with me on my twin bed haha cause she just sleeps on a mattress on the floor and of coarse didn't want anything else crawling on her! It's against the rules to sleep in the same bed but it was an emergency haha! The second night we put our 2 twin beds together and all 3 slept together--another night of no sleep and sis mack said i kept putting my arm around her haha!! the 3rd night we put our 2 plastic tables together and her mattress on top of it and that's where she slept ha! Needless to say, she didn't sleep for 3 nights lol.


Tuesday: We had dinner with the stake president and his family. Coolest people ever! So he lived in California for a while and guess what he does, he is a mechanic for Mazda and also races cars!! He had some pictures and it is so dang cool! He has driven some pretty sweet cars! Him and his wife are big into shooting too and he's been to AZ to shoot. So cool!

Wednesday night: Well, we had a visitor and unfortunately it wasn't a bug or rodent, when we woke up on Thurs morning to go running sis Estrada noticed her purse was outside and all her stuff was taken out. then we noticed the little screen on our window was wide open. As we continued to look around we found that my camera was gone and sis mack's ipod was gone along with some speakers. AAAHHH!!!!! Not cool. Someone had climbed up onto our balcony, broke our mop out side and a hanger and tide the hanger onto the mop, opened our window screen which is pretty small and reached into our apt with the handmade tool and picked whatever was of value off our table. So they got all of sis Estrada's money, my camera and sis macks ipod :( So annoying. I usually leave my camera in my desk drawer but because i had to take a picture of our bed situation that night, i ended up leaving it on the table!! And how stinken scary is that. So at 6 in the morning we walked over to the ward mission leader's house and called president. They were traveling from another mission so said they would be there that afternoon and to just stay in our apt.

So we went back home, just in shock, we told the landlord and she called the officials so later on that day before president even came we had about 6 Barangay Officials in our apartment. It was just a crazy mess! I wasn't mad or sad or scared or anything...just annoyed that that had happened. During personal study I remembered a scripture in 3 Nephi that i though fit quite well: 3 Ne 13:19-21 "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal; But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
I was very grateful at that point to be a member of the only true and living church on this earth. The thieves did not take anything of true value. I still had my testimony, my family, my companions, my knowledge of the scriptures and my experiences that have strengthened me. It made me sad to think about what other people put value in that can easily be taken away and is not lasting. So hopefully whoever took our stuff will listen to the music about Christ and will see my pictures of baptisms and feel the spirit in their life :)
Another scripture had popped into my head too, 1 Peter1:7 "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth..." I LOVE that the important things to Heavenly Father are not what is acquired on the outside, but the inside. Our trials, though hard and seemingly impossible, will do more for us than a pot of gold. It really helps me appreciate the hard times I go through, It helps me to be thankful for them. Nothing that the world offers can truly give me what I NEED, it is through overcoming hardships that I will gain all I need to. I love that we have a Heavenly Father who knows exactly what we need, and exactly what to give us in order to obtain it.


So that day of coarse, we had a brown out ALL DAY LONG, the only day that we had to stay in the house for longer than normal and we didn't have water or electricity. So we sat in our sweat all morning cause we coudn't shower and we had no fans and when we did try to get water from a pump downstairs i poured it on myself and it smelt like pee so i aborted that plan. It was not a good day haha! Then finally sis Odgers came to the rescue. They just told us to keep our outer windows closed even though it's extremely hot and she also brought a bed for sis mack!! We were really happy. Haha, she laughed when we told her we've been breaking the rules by sleeping together lol. She even let us go to the misison home to shower because we seriously smelt bad! So everything turned out okay in the end. I'm just without a camera which really really stinks--i will probably buy one some day soon!

Well, the work is hard, really hard actually....this area is barely budging. We made invitations for conference to give out to all the less actives and investigators and not one of them came :( It can get pretty discouraging. We don't know if we are doing something wrong or what is happening but that's just how it has been for the last 3 weeks and it makes us really sad! We talked to President about it and he gave us some ideas of putting together activities that will interest people. He said he would support us in anyway that he could. We felt a little better but still, this is a lot of work and we really hope something good comes to us as we fast and pray for inspiration this week. We've tried a lot of different things to get to people and it doesn't seem to be working. We are having to get pretty creative. Please direct your prayers to the Laoag 3 Ward area, they really need it.

I love you all very very much, you all mean more to me than you know. Thank you for your prayers and support!

Lahat ng pagmamahal ko, (all my love!)
Sis Carroll