26 June 2016

Between Thursday last week and Monday today, not too much happened. We had some thrilling weekly planning on Friday, though. On Sunday, one of the less-actives that we've been working with forever finally came to church! His wife comes to church every week, but he didn't...until now. That was more or less the exciting news of the week, so I'll send a bunch of pictures instead.

These are the mice we caught in the flypaper.

Elder Dadis

22 June 2016

A LOT happened this week. I had my 17 month mark, we had a temple trip, and even more baptisms. That's exciting. Here's how it broke down:

Tuesday last week, we had a huge zone conference. It was President Revillio's last one. so he made it big. We had a free lunch, fun and games, study, and even t-shirts. That was actually a lot of fun, but it took all day long. 

Wednesday, we tried to visit a bunch of referrals, but it didn't really work. We found all of their houses, but none of them were home. We'll be continuing to try them. 

Thursday, we paid the water bill. Thrilling, right? We tried to contact yet more referrals..with roughly the same results as the day before. We did get one more return appointment, though. Finally, we visited a couple of investigators. One of them, however, had disappeared for a couple of weeks, and we found them again!

Friday, we had a shockingly exciting weekly planning. That was the best part of the day. We waited for over an hour for a jeepney to Philcoa, before just walking. That also took over an hour, with a few interesting breaks. We met a very interesting person. He was wearing a "No meat Fridays" t-shirt, and was carrying a huge poster labeled "Genealogical tables of dogs." He lectured us for about ten minutes about everything from Adam and Eve, to Abraham, to everything else. My favorite part? "God called Abraham his best friend? Dogs are men's best friends. God is dog spelled backwards."  When we finally arrived at Bro. Ray's house, a drunk old guy walked in, and started trying to talk to me in Tagalog. A lot. For over half an hour. He also started grabbing my hands, rubbing my head, everything. It was creepy, and pretty hard to understand. Eventually, we managed to get him to go away, by promising to visit him later. 

Saturday, we started working on a better area map. That took forever, because google maps is easily the worst way to build a detailed map of a large area. Unfortunately, it's also the only way, so we went with it. Then, we tried to fill the baptismal font for the baptism we had that night. That too had issues. The church's font has a very interesting setup, with the valves kept outside. We had to keep running back and forth to see what was going on between the two places. After half an hour, we realized that the drain was still open, and the water pressure was going down. We closed the drain, but it was too late- the water pressure kept dropping. By the time the font was half full, the pressure was just about gone. We left the other set of elders to watch the font, and went out visiting. By the time we came back that night, the pressure was back, thank goodness. Then, we had the baptism, which went super well. We baptized Rhea and Lory Batislaon, which just about completed their family. We just have to baptize their dad...

Sunday we had a bunch of plans fall through. All morning, we went out visiting, but found one new investigator. At church, Rhea and Lory got confirmed, too. After church, we had correlation meeting, then went out again...only to have all of our plans bunk again. We did manage to meet with a less active member again, though. 

Monday was not P-day. because of the temple trip today. Instead, I had an exchange with our district leader, Elder Acosta. That morning, he had a meeting with the zone leaders, so I went out with yet another set of elders into another area. There, I met a certain family, whose father works in the temple. After the meeting, we went out to our area again. That didn't work very well. No one was home. We did end up teaching 2 lessons, though.

Tuesday, we had district meeting, then tried to contact a referral. That almost worked- we found the guy's brother. We visited Bro. Ray again, then finished up the map...which took a long while. Oh, and the night before, I forgot to mention something about that. I woke up in the middle of the night repeatedly because I heard a bunch of squeaking. I figured the mice were staging a raid, but I was wrong. Instead, in the morning, I learned that Elder Acosta had set traps for the mice. Not your normal traps, but flypaper. And yes, those worked really well. He caught 5 of them with just 2 pieces of flypaper. Then, he threw them in the garbage...still squeaking and struggling. 

And yes, we went to the temple this morning. The last time I went was April last year!

Well, that's the news for the week. See Ya!

13 June 2016

So, first some questions about your email:

Why do you need foot surgery?

And why on earth did Sam drive next door to go through the drive through when it would literally have been easier and quicker to walk? 

Well, this week was long. We did a lot of finding, and, unsurprisingly, found a lot of investigators, including a family of five! We even found a bunch of less-active families. The biggest problem we've faced is remembering where they live! We've done a whole lot of walking and running around trying to find new people, which did work. There's a lot of new people to work with, which is completely different from India. There, we had a million less-actives, but not many investigators. Here, it's flipped. 

Anyway, our Saturday night and Sunday were extra weird. Our bishop texted us late Saturday night, around 8, asking us to speak at sacrament meeting. All 3 speakers. Yep. As he put it, "In the last 2 weeks, there have been 2 deaths in the family, and my mind has been occupied with other things. Can you give all the talks in sacrament meeting tomorrow?" That was...interesting. Four missionaries: 3 talks: one hour. I spoke on the Restoration. The real exciting part was when one of our less actives appeared at church for the first time in forever! 

Not too much else happened during the week, unfortunately. We have been figuring out the area, and I have been learning Tagalog. That's still going slowly, but I'm learning. Mostly, I'm memorizing phrases from the lessons. 

That's about the news of the week. See ya!

5 June 2016

Well, this week was pretty slow, actually. Elder Dadis and I are trying to locate a lot of houses. Elder Nawaia had been in the area for 6 months; he knew where everything was. But, we've been working a lot with the members and our on-date investigators. 

Saturday, we had the baptismal interview for our 2 on-date investigators, but they ended up failing, due to Word of Wisdom issues. Their date has been pushed back 2 weeks. Pray for them!

We spent a lot of time this week with our not-as-progressing investigators, too. One of them, Venerando, is stuck in a rut with his former beliefs, and really doesn't want to move past them, for example. 

The work in this area is going well, but we're having little trouble finding new investigators, for once. When we show up to member's homes, often there'll be people there who we can teach, and who invite us back. That's a relief!

My Tagalog is really starting to progress. I still can't speak it...almost at all...but I can start to understand, and I know a couple of phrases. The biggest improvement was in my grammar.

That's more or less the news for the week. See Ya!

30 May 2016

So, the most prominent part of the whole week has definitely been the food-lots of it, and most of it really weird. I've been fed chicken liver, chicken feet, pig kidneys, whole fried fish, and a ton of other stuff. Most of it is pretty good (not the liver), but you have to convince yourself to eat it. The weirdest thing I've had is balut. That is where they take a duck egg, let it grow and develop for a while, then boil it and eat it. That was one of the worst things I've ever eaten. It has the texture of styrofoam, and looks like...trash. 

We waited the whole week in suspense for transfer calls. That's right, transfer calls 3 weeks after the last ones. This mission and my last one have opposite transfer schedules. So here, we were unsure what was going to happen. Elder Brown was going home for sure, and Elder Nawaia was probably leaving (he's been here for 6 months). That meant I could go to either side of the area, or just plain anywhere in the mission. But, I ended up staying where I was at. 

Apart from that, not much happened. We dropped off Elder Brown for his trunky run- going home. We also spent a lot of time running around the squatters. Funny thing- in India, a squatter is a type of toilet. Here, it's a slum neighborhood. Either way, we spent a lot of time proselyting there. 

That was about it for the week. See ya!

22 May 2016

Well, this week has been pretty long. A lot of stuff happened! The problem is, I can't remember most of it. Here it goes anyway:

Last p-day, after I emailed, we went out to a mall to do some shopping. They had a certain restaurant, Zarqs burger. Sounds interesting, right? All the crew members were wearing t-shirts that read "The Greasier, the Better". Yeah, that's my kind of place. We ate a ton there. They had a challenge: eat a massive burger and a pound of fries in five minutes, and it's free. 3 of the elders took it on, and one of them even made it! That was pretty impressive; the burger was huge. I had one without the challenge, and nearly couldn't finish it. 

As a sidenote, the food here is pretty strange sometimes. I've had barbecued pig kidneys, boiled chicken feet, chicken liver adobo, and quite a few other "delicacies." You can find a lot of American food here...thank goodness! I've already had a Big Mac, and a couple other good things from back home. 

Anyway, we had district meeting early on Tuesday. Apparently, it's held at 9 am in this mission. Not too much else happened, though. On Wednesday, I got picked up by the APs to sign some paperwork for Immigration. That's another quirk of this mission: the APs have their own car. Lucky! 

We had 2 Family Home Evenings this week: one on Saturday, and one on Sunday. I'm not sure why, but they were great. The first one was with the family that we baptized last week, and the second was with a group of members. I had the lesson for the second one, but only learned about it two minutes in advance. I needed to come up with an object lesson, but couldn't think of what...so I used a card trick. I did relate it to the gospel, and it went really well.

At church on Sunday, our converts were confirmed, and one of them got the priesthood! That's always exciting. Unfortunately, that's all the news for the week. Here's some pictures. These are all just random pictures of parts of Quezon City. 

May 16 2016

Well, this email is probably the most eventful I've sent in a while. Everything was crazy. Monday was the only day I was in India. I spent the whole day packing and preparing to go, and even learned a new magic trick from our ward secretary. Monday night at 8:30, I got on a cab to the airport. I arrived around 9:45, and made it through security and everything without problems. I made it on to the flight with no issues, and took the 6 hour flight all the way to Hong Kong. There, I had a 5 hour layover, where I had to go all over the airport. The airline people kept changing the departure gate, so I went on a couple trips o\around the airport waiting for them to make up their minds. Eventually, the plane arrived, and I made it to the Philippines. At the airport when I arrived, it was already 6 PM on  Tuesday. I got in the cab, and had a 2 hour ride to a hotel, of all places. The mission had arranged for me to stay in a hotel overnight for some reason...not that I was complaining. That was super nice! It had its own AC, and two beds.

Wednesday morning, I was picked up by the same cab, which dropped me off at the mission office. There, I had a little bit of drama. I was supposed to use my second passport to go check in at the airport, but I couldn't, because I couldn't find it. That was a big problem. Using my original passport instead of the second is (hopefully) not going to be too big of a problem, but not having a passport definitely is. The mission office asked for my second passport as soon as I got there, I ended up tearing apart all my luggage twice before I found it, which was king\d of funny because I remembered where I'd put it as soon as I found it. After all that, I attended the zone conference that was going on upstairs. That lasted 6 hours after I showed up, and covered all the new mission rules. There's a lot of new rules: this mission is really strict. We can only wear our bags over one shoulder, not across our chest. We can only listen to music that the mission provides. We have our schedules mostly planned out for us. There's more, but I only remember that off the top of my head. After that, I got assigned to my new companions: Elders Navaiaz, from Kiribas, and Elder Dadis, from the Philippines. Our mission president is President Revillio, who is being switched out in June. That means I'll have at least four mission presidents, and possible five (if I go back to India). Then, we went out to Shakey's, and got pizza, which was amazing.

Thursday we spent doing lots of proselyting. Our weekly planning is on Friday here, so Thursdays are a lot freer. We went and visited a lot of people who's names I've forgotten. The trickiest part about switching to a new country is learning everyone's names: for some reason, every time you change cultures, it takes forever to learn names again. I started studying Tagalog, the language here, That's used a LOT here; most people understand English, but have a hard time speaking it. I haven't learned much yet, but I'm getting there. Friday went more or less the same way, but Saturday was eventful.

The first thing we did was wake up early to go to a service project at an elementary school. There, we cleaned up this area behind it that had clearly been their dump for at least a year. There were hundreds of broken wood desks, innumerable scraps of wood and junk all over, and it looked like a disaster. This was the Philippines LDS Day of Service though, so we had well over 50 volunteers there. The mess didn't stand a chance. Unfortunately, it got revenge. All of the missionaries that were there have all got some sort of rash that vaguely resembles chicken pox. I think it's just some sort of reaction, because taking an Allegra helped a bit. Later, we went to the church, and prepped for the baptism we were having tomorrow. Oh yes, did I mention that? Of all the areas where I left dozens of people on date to be baptized without having a single one ready when I came in, this area has them all beat. There were 4 baptisms scheduled for that Sunday!

On Sunday, we had an interesting experience trying to get out of our area. As soon as we'd arrived in our area, the other elders called. They were trying to visit a hospital to give a blessing to a member there, but one of them, Elder Brown, couldn't go in. Why? Because he was a foreigner, of all reasons. We went right back to help them out, and Elder Dadis went into the hospital with Elder Acosta (both are native Filipinos). After that, it was time for church. That was also interesting. Nine-tenths of it was in Tagalog, which I still can't understand. Afterwards, we had our set of baptisms. One was the bishop's daughter; the other three were converts, all from the same family. I got to baptize one of them! 

That's all the news of what I did, here's a little about the Philippines:

The Philippines also doesn't have safe tap water; all the missionary apartments have water filters. However, the water and power both seem to be much more stable than India! Unfortunately, that's the last of the good news about the apartments. The one I'm in at least, doesn't have AC or ceiling fans, which makes nights a lot of fun. It's just as hot and twice as humid as India here. We have a bunch of floor fans, which we use all the time. The people here are all very nice, and the food is great. The main method of transportation we use is jeepneys, which are like tiny 20 passenger buses. 

Why were you going to go to New York? How did you hurt your back? Didn't Sam go with Mattie to Prom last year? 

I think that's it for the week. See ya!