Week 42

Dear Family!
This has been a fun week!  The first part of the week, I was with
Sister Harvey and I wasn't able to teach as many lessons because we
were working in both our areas.  It was fun though and I was able to
see a little bit more of Antique.  On Thursday afternoon, we went to
Iloilo with Elder Bianin who is training as well (we were his
companions for the day) and after dropping him off at the church, we
slept in the sister's apartment that night in City.  The next morning,
we went to the Trainer's meeting, which was really good. And then we
met our batas. These meetings made history... it was the biggest group
of trainers and batas that this mission has ever had.  There were 30
new missionaries, including two senior couple missionaries.  6 of them
were sisters.  Only one of those sisters though was from the Provo
MTC.  And the one from the Provo MTC is Samoan, haha.  So, my
companion is Filipina... and she is probably the only one of them who
understand this dialect... so lucky me!! haha.  Her name is Sister
Aurelio, and she is wonderful!  She is one of the sweetest people I've
met.  She's 25 years old and is from Manila, but lived here until she
was 5 and her parents still spoke the language for a while in Manila,
so she understands the language here perfectly, unlike some other new
Filipina missionaries.  She can't speak it yet, but of course the
people here understand her Tagalog, so it's no problem.  I am getting
a lot more practice at my Tagalog though, because that's the language
she speaks to me in most often.  I love it :D  I have been learning a
lot of new things from training... a lot more than when I was
trained... because every day we have an extra hour of studies and we
do a lot of practicing and I have to explain a lot of things, so I am
loving this new assignment :D  We have been working hard and are
excited to continue to fulfill our purpose. :D  Next transfer the very
first 19 year old sister will be coming... I won't be the lucky one to
train her because I will still be training Sister Aurelio, but I'm
excited for her to come.  The very first 18 year old elder in our
mission has yet to enter the MTC.  But we are also excited to see when
that happens.  Our mission is definitely growing, because next
transfer 21 new missionaries will be coming, and only 7 are going
home.  New areas are being opened and big areas are being split. The
work is progressing! :D  Missionary Work is so exciting :D  You should
all try it! hehe
Love you all,
Halong!
Sister McClellan