Hello my family from beautiful Morong!!!!
So before we get to that though......Holy hannah, I'm dying over here!!! Ryan is going to Africa!!!! What the?!? That is seriously the coolest thing ever! And Tate in Korea (dude, sorry about the language, but I heard it's only 9 weeks now, even for the hard languages so that's happy). Sheesh, we are literally going to be spread out all over the world. It's just so crazy, I can't believe it. Wish I could be there with you to go through the temple, but alas....I'll just try to be there in spirit. And Happy Birthday Dad. As Chase would say, consider yourself hugged.
Oh my goodness, I have so many updates for you I wish I could just sit and talk for hours. I'm sorry if this email ends up being a little pessimistic, but I don't have anyone to vent to anymore, because well Sister Lorente I left in Tandang Sora, and I don't know anyone here yet. But I'll try to be as optimistic as possible :) So first of all, my companion....oh my goodness. Let's just say, she wastes a TON of time and we all know that I am not a time waster. I enjoy talking to her about her country, but that's about it so far. I'm probably being a little too judgmental, but I can't help it. And today, on the one day that I have to actually clean (our apartment is disgusting. I'm wondering when the last time they cleaned was), wash clothes, catch up with my journal and everything else as well, she wanted to go to Tanay (25 minutes away) to go grocery shopping and meet up with the elders to play games, when, get this, she didn't really feel like playing games but "what if they get offended". I could give a rat. If they get offended, that's their deal, not mine. Needless to say, it is now 5 o'clock with 2 hours left of p-day and I have yet to do any of that. I'm peeved, to say the very very least. It's gonna be a long transfer.
BUT, on a bright side, this place is beautiful!!! I finally made it to the province! When we drove in, we were coming down from the mountain and it was like just spread before me. It's like a little valley against the mountains and then the ocean on the one side. There are jungle areas and rice fields and it's just pretty. It's so small town, reminds me of Kamas where it has the town center and then just fields with a few houses and then the mountains, two lane highway. It's so pretty. So that's making up for it at least a little bit. I haven't had time to really take any pictures, but I'll work on that this week so you can see. One side effect of this small town though is that 90% of the less actives here have been offended. And when I say offended as in, it happened YEARS ago, but it's small town right, so everyone remembers everything and makes it sit hard for people to change or repent or get over their pride or whatever it is. Just last night, we came from one less active and went to another. The 2nd one asked where we'd come from and we told her the name and she gets this look on her face and goes, “She's a liar. I hate her". Not kidding… over something that happened over 10 years ago. And they're all still mad about it and no one goes to church. It's absolutely ridiculous and leaves me sitting there looking at this 70 year old woman and wanting to say, "How old are you?!". That's something that's pretty common here in the Philippines....the people are super nice, but a bad side effect of that is that they're all helicopter parents, which creates kids who don't know how to take responsibility for their own actions, which creates adults who don't know how to either. Drives me crazy. So it's gonna be real interesting here in the next little while. I don't know how to handle that kind of stuff… mostly because I'm from a small town and I always went, you're kidding right. Grow up. Yep, feelings haven't changed much there. Thinking maybe this transfer is gonna be all about patience. Shoot.
So the branch is tiny here. There's about 650 member total and about 80 come to church (note the 90% offended). Yeah. It's so weird coming from a ward in the city where we averaged 230 each Sunday to such a tiny branch. The branch president is branch new too and is really not sure what he's doing (note the request for the Handbook 2) so we've got a lot of work to do. It's frustrating though because I see the work that needs to get done, but I'm having to drag my companion to get anything done. I don't know. Maybe this is just because I'm a bit tired. Haha. Good thing this place is beautiful because that at least makes up for a bit of it. :)
Anyhow, I'm out of time. I'm so excited for those 2 boys and just know they'll be fantastic! Love you all a ton and I'll talk to you again next week!!! Bye!
No comments:
Post a Comment