Sister Abby Giles: Week 12!! Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello friends and family! Happy Thanksgiving week!! It's going to be hard being away from home but I am SO thankful to be here! It will be a normal day for me but Sister Cornaby and I will try to celebrate a little bit! But really, I am so thankful for all of you, this opportunity I have to serve these Filipinos, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love the Philippines and I am so thankful to share the amazing message that Jesus Christ lives and His church is restored to the earth!

Little kids love when we give them stickers

So we have a new apartment!! We moved in with Sister Guancia and Sister Gupit in the area next door, Paete. This apartment is newer and a lot cleaner, so I am happy! And it's so fun to live with 2 Filpinos. Moving and cleaning the old apartment was a lot of work. We were cleaning and opened this little closet and I'm not even kidding, like 1000 cockroaches ran out. And it smelt soooo bad. But I stayed strong and just started stepping on as many as I could haha it's a funny experience now looking back. Sister Guanica and Gupit said they will teach us how to make Filipino food! Right now they cook and I do the dishes haha. They have already taught me how to hand wash my clothes! Apparently I was doing it all wrong and they thought it was the funniest thing ever. And it's really helping my Tagalog! They try to speak English to me and I try to speak Tagalog. I can basically understand most of the conversations I hear now, it's exciting! Now I just need to get a lot better at speaking. But it's definitely coming with a lot of work and a lot of prayer.

The Pakil Branch is doing great! Our less actives and investigators are all doing good. Unfortunately, none of our investigators came to church even though we committed a lot. But 2 less actives did!! We still have so much work to do here! But WOW Pakil still takes my breath away with how pretty it is!

We are having some amazing, hard, hilarious experiences! Like earlier this week we were walking down the highway and this man came chasing after us yelling, "Mormons! Mormons!" I was a little scared haha but we stopped to talk to him and he was talking super fast and brought us back to his bahay and showed us his Book of Mormon and all these pamphlets that he had from missionaries years and years ago! He has been reading the Book of Mormon and wants us to teach him! I am so excited to go back and teach him. I love these people so much.

I love you all so much. Thank you for your support and prayers! Have a happy, happy Thanksgiving!!! And hug your families and tell them you love them.

Love,

Sister Giles

Super sketchy but fun bridge our district went on after district service

Our first baptism! Not really, just a sweet 15 year old who had to get rebaptized because her records were lost. It was fun to help plan though and the spirit was so strong it made me cry.