Abbey in the Philippines: Sister Abbey Hafen // Week Fifty-Eight // "One year ago, I was freaking out to leave the MTC!‏"

Another week here in beautiful Gamu!

This week was awesome!! We had 2 exchanges and they were both so good. The Maravilla Family (who I told you about last week)is still doing so awesome. Nanay and Princess came to church again, and attended the activities all last week- even without me and Sister Carbaquil there! They are making friends and are falling in love with the doctrine. They now have a baptismal date! September 6. We are so excited. This has been such a tender tender mercy. This is their time! We are continuing to help them and get the branch to really work with them. President already pulled her aside at the activity and interviewed her, just asking her what assistance or help she needs. So good!

We have a new investigator who is awesome. Brother Erenio. He almost died too (haha I think this is a trend we are seeing…) but now has a relationship with God. I know that probably sounds so cliché, but he legit is so awesome. I love him. He is a 45 yr old Dad who has kidney cancer. He legit is so smart and is open minded. We shared about prophets and when I told him we have a living prophet his eyes just opened so wide. We shared amos 3:7 and he was amazed! It just made sense to him that we have prophets. When I said “Thomas S. Monson” he repeated it several times to make sure he didn’t forget. We challenged him to pray and ask if he was a true prophet of God leading Christ’s church, and to also read a talk we gave him by Thomas S. Monson, and he said. “Hindi ko susubukan sis. Gagawin ko sis” which means. “I won’t just try, I will do it sister”. He explained to us as we share to him, he feels something he was never felt before. He gets asked to go to so many different churches, and when he’s there, he just feels something really is missing. But when we come around, he feels more of a completeness. (it kind of sounds like he walked out of “The District” and ended up here in GAmu, Isabelah haha). He is such a tender mercy for us and we are so excited to keep sharing the restored gospel with him, and help him learn and live it, and know for himself this is the truth. It’s so cool to see people eat up the gospel and treasure it.

So to end this, I love my companion so much. She reminds me so much of Heidi and I love it. We are so bagtit, which in Ilocano, means “crazy”, “wild” or “not normal.” It’s so fun and we just have such a motivation for this work. She is so hard working and loves to share the gospel. She loves me even though I am so weird. She loves my jokes and her jokes are even better. Hahahaha. I legit can’t wait until you meet her in the celestial kingdom! We have solid goals and remind and help each other reach them. The work is fun, but 10 times as fun when it’s with your bff J

With so much love,

Sister Abbey Hafen

Philippines Cauayan Mission