Dancing Is Still Awesome

This past week, I got to go to two ward Family Home Evenings.  That was pretty fun. One was while we were on exchanges... let me tell you, Filipinos LOVE games and they always get really loud about it and excited.  Makes everything a lot more fun when people are loud and excited about stuff.  Anyway, one game we played was where they handed out a list with the alphabet on it.  You had to find stuff from amongst all of your team members that started with each letter of the alphabet.  They were struggling to find something that started with "I" and then one of the other missionaries in the ward pointed at me and said, "IMPORTED!  We have one imported person here!"  We totally used that in the game and people had a pretty good laugh about it.

The picture is of Sister Dumayas and myself.  I think all of my Filipina companions are all of the shortest ones in the mission, hahaha :)  She's super cute and fun and reminds me a little bit of a puppy sometimes, but a very efficient missionary as well. 

Side note; I feel really privileged Sister Grant and I went to Palawan last transfer to do exchanges.  That's been discontinued now because they just barely called new STL's over on Palawan so they won't have to fly STL's over anymore.  I feel pretty happy I had the chance to go back when I did, though.  

The FHE for our ward was suuuuper awesome.  All the youth, guys and girls, put on a dance show for us.  First the Beehives (12-13 year olds) (no deacons, haha) did a Japanese umbrella dance thing.  Then the miamaids(14-15 year olds) and one teacher did a Chinese dance with fans.  Then finally... this was the best part. The Laurels and Priests (16-18 year olds) came out and did a Spanish dance.  The guys dressed up in white shirts, black pants, and had red flag things which they did a pretty cool dance with... I was legitimately impressed haha, especially that they ever managed to convince Priests to do it since they were pretty good in the end.  The girls were way good dancers too with Spanish fans, and when they all danced together it felt pretty legitimately Spanish. I could tell the leaders put a lot of work into that; it was way cute and made the night way fun :)  I was super happily surprised by that; I forget sometimes how well put together this ward is sometimes.  Oh, and the reason it was Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish is because that's all the countries that conquered the Philippines at some point and left behind pieces of their culture.  Pretty cool.

I'm pretty happy, feeling pretty good right now.  It's stressful to be trying to memorize the area in just a coupla weeks so that Sister Dumayas can leave the area when we do exchanges, but I'm not freaking out about it too much... I've gotten better at learning areas and stuff over my mission.  I just want to live this last few transfers I have up to their fullest.  Really loving my mission right now.  I hope all of you have a super great week and feel the Spirit helping you daily to receive personal revelation, according to your faith.

Love you all!

-Sister Larsen