1 August 2016

Well, we had a long week. There was some strange stuff. Unfortunately, I forgot my journal this time, so I'm kinda guessing as to when stuff happened.

On Thursday, we visited a member, Rodante, only to learn that he'd died Tuesday. That wasn't a problem: he was still there. Apparently, in the Philippines, the custom is to send the body off to the funeral people, who preserve it and give it back in a coffin. That stays in your house for a week or so, until you bury the poor guy already. The people will take out the front wall/gate of their place; talk about an "open house." His family were not really mourning, unless you count sitting around talking (and later having a beer party), wearing t-shirts with bad puns (Come to the dork side: we have video games), and eating chicken noodles. It seems like everywhere, the traditions are different. In India, they'd only keep the dead guy for a few hours, while women screamed and wailed. 

I managed to finally replace my shoes, which were rapidly disintegrating. My new shoes are slip-ons, which work much better in India and here, because you have to take them off every time you go anywhere. 

We spent a lot of time travelling this week, mostly because of the incredible traffic. I don't know why, but it's been pretty packed on the roads. That's not too big of an issue, because we spend most of our travel walking anyway, but it makes getting to district meeting and things a pain. 

The positive news is that the Gutierrez family is just about ready for baptism! Three of the four passed their interviews, and will be baptized the Saturday after next. We are hoping to complete the whole family of 8, which hopefully will happen soon. 

Roland, on the other hand, is being strange. We finally, at long last, managed to get him to agree to think about coming to church when we visited him on Tuesday. We were sure that he would....at the time. When we visited Friday, he told us that he was going to a party Saturday. If it let out at a reasonable time, he'd go to church. Apparently it didn't, because he didn't show. Still, him even thinking about it was progress- in the past, he'd just say no right off the bat. He may be getting somewhere. 

That's about all of the news for the week.

Ben and Ari's changed? That place has always been the same (the way I remember it, at least), and now they're switching things up? Not cool!

Will you still get a teaching discount at some university? If not, I might have to change some plans for when I get home...