Love and Expectations

Family ko,

It was great to talk to you all for Christmas! I'm sorry if I wasn't super talkative. It's interesting sometimes that I can't speak in English. But sometimes I can! Weird. I can actually write better in English. I usually write in my journal in English.

We got a call on Sunday afternoon that Sister Dumapias was going to be transferred. Then the AP asked if he could talk to me. He told me I was going to be a trainer!!! We found out earlier that Sister Dumapias is transferring to my old area in Alijis! She is going to be the companion of Sister Rosario's trainee. :) And I am here in Talisay (an area in the same district as my current area in Silay) with Sister Guanzon until Wednesday when our trainees will arrive. We still don't know the names of the sisters we will train. But Sister Guanzon is super great and is actually in my batch that arrived here in the field.

The members keep asking how our Christmas call home was. Then they ask if we cried. We answer that we only laughed. :D

I will miss Sister Dumapias. She is probably my favorite companion so far, although I'm not sure than I'm hers. ;)

I love how President Barredo keeps telling us about how much he and Sister Barredo love us. When we had zone conference, he showed us a graph that Elder Anderson shared with the y axis as the level of love and the x axis as the level of expectation. We listed off the qualities of people in all of the quadrants: low love, low expectations cultivates complacency, laziness, lack of vision, etc. He showed us that the best area is where there is high love and high expectation. Sometimes I think I tend to slip into the high expectation but low love quadrant which cultivates stress, etc. But I love that here in Bacolod Mission the expectations are very high, but President is always always always expressing love for us. I was thinking how I need to do the same for my investigators, recent converts, etc. It is great that my expectations are high. But I also need to love them unconditionally. Because when they feel my love and my expectations, they will also feel the love and expectations of Heavenly Father through the power of the Spirit. And through that power they will know what they need to do and have a desire to do it. And then they will.

Thank you so much, all of you for your love and prayers. I love you all!

Sister Marriott