Freezing...Really!?!

Hello from the freezing one in the Philippines!! What, I know?!

Guys, it has rained non-stop all week and I am FREEZING! I haven't used an electric fan in days, broke out the good ol' SSHS sweatshirt for the first time (forgot how much I missed my hoodies), heated water to shower, and trying to snuggle up in bed with my little tiny sheet. Brrr. My guess is it's probably still 70 degrees. Bahahaha. Pathetic. But it's kind of a nice change. Feels like I'm actually experiencing seasons again. I'm gonna die when I get home. Ha. P.S. no flooding, a little in our area, but nothing out of the ordinary. 

Transfers.....same-o-same-o. Still with my comp in our area. I'm good with it though. One more and then I'll be out. Segovs got a new companion. Sister Curtis from Alpine Utah. Got to see Sis Losefa and Lorente. Love those girls. And a ton of other people. Lynn thought he was getting out of Morong. Nope. He's back in as ZL. He's been in the same zone for his entire mission, just different areas. Bahahaha, poor kid. Our whole zone just busted up laughing when that was announced. Al headed to Mindoro. Hilarious. 

So I have been writing Ryan a little bit each week when I forward my email to him. Loved his pictures though! His apartment is pretty crazy, but his companion is also pretty guapo. It sounds like he's doing ok though, which makes me happy. Can't believe Jess and Kalli are getting so close to having their babies! Holy hannah, it still feels like January to me, kid you not. And Not funny mom; Not Funny. I think the order is more like, mission, work, travel the world, work some more, get a masters degree, and THEN get married. Honestly, the idea nearly puts me into hyperventilation. Shoot. Can I just be a missionary forever please???

Updates for the week! I practically just emailed you yesterday I feel. So let me just brain storm here for a bit. Some random thoughts I guess from this week; So I've decided that the bible is like reading a general conference Ensign and expecting to understand everything they're talking about and everything about the gospel without any background or knowledge of basic doctrinal principles. I was reading one by elder Eyring and he mentioned "balm in Gilead". How would you even know what that meant with no background? It's like the bible; a lot of it was written to people who were already members of the church and had a knowledge of the gospel. No wonder the world is so incredibly confused. It's like trying to understand a college course when you never passed kindergarten. 

 

Hey, I just got an email!! Elder Bednar's coming to our mission and we're having a special fireside!! Next month. That's pretty sweet!!! I love my mission. We're at the center of the Philippines so we get all the cool things here. Anywho, I have a request. Could you send me a picture of beautiful Logan Huntzberger so I can show it to my comp?? Haha, weird I know. We were having a discussion about this the other day and we decided we're both visual people. We need a pic. 

So I've decided on the mission your biggest enemy is yourself. Let me explain. We had this discussion at lunch a couple weeks ago and it's just proving itself to be more and more true. In real life, you have problems with family, jobs, money, school, choices, roommates, etc. When your on the mission, you don't deal with 90% of that stuff and the 10% that you do deal with, you're constantly struggling to apply everything you've learned. You're so engrossed in the gospel, it's everything you do; so when it comes along that you have to be patient, you usually just end up beating yourself up wondering why you can't be more patient. Haha, you following me?? You know about charity, and faith, and hope, and patience, and all those other Christlike attributes you're supposed to have, but just as a person, of course you have weaknesses, so when you have to use it, it's just annoying because you struggle applying it. I don't know if that made any sense to any of you, but maybe Ryan will know what I'm talking about. I've experienced it my whole mission, but just now I'm finally figuring out why. Ha, slow learner? Gotta love the mish. You just learn things you simply cannot learn any other way. 

So that's all for this week my fam. No good stories. I'll keep better track next week. Love you all and I'll talk to you all soon!

PICTURES

Planting a new crop of rice is just beginning.

More rice fields.

A house is the Morong area.

Wow! Imagine planting the fields using this equipment. Amazing!!

Candace with her 2 companions.

What a beautiful place. Lucky Candace :)

7 months in Morong

HELLO!!!!

 First of all....transfer announcements! Just like we thought, I’m staying. Go figure. 7 months. Wowsa, more than 1/3 of my mission. At first when they announced it, they made it sound like we were switching areas. Thank heaven's that's not the case. I'm still good in my area, and glad I’m not leaving yet. One more, then I'll switch. Pretty sure that's what'll happen.

Ryan sounds like he's doing a little better this week. I so just know what he's talking about, and it reminds me of all the elders here that I know just craving for something American so they can feel just a little bit at home. Haha. Makes me laugh. Although I think he takes the cake on culture shock. It took me about 2-3 months to really feel ok and about 5 to just hit my groove. There are still some things that just drive me crazy but now it's just normal. He'll adjust though and all of those things will just start to feel normal for him, even the lady drowning the baby. Shoot. Makes me grateful for the Philippines. Love this country.

Just a quick story for you this week. So one thing that's really awesome about being a missionary is that you end up learning so much, even though you're the one supposed to be doing the teaching. There have been so many times when I'm sharing a scripture, and it's like all the sudden, I myself just understand it better and on a whole new level. It's hard to explain, but it's the kind of understanding you get from the Holy Ghost. If I could say one theme for my mission, it's better understanding the holy ghost and what it feels like and how he works. It's funny because the people we're teaching are probably going, "Wow, they know so much", and me as the missionary is going, "Wow, this is coming out of my mouth but I just barely understood this about 1 second ago". One from this week is from 2 Nephi 32:3....scripture mastery of course. I opened it to share it with a LA and all the sudden the thought popped into my head, why does it say "feast upon the words of Christ" in order to endure to the end. It doesn't say, pray always, or go to church, or serve your neighbor. Then it was like a rush of clarity (ps, that's the holy ghost). If you feast upon the words of Christ, all those other good things you'll do too; those will just come naturally. But it starts with feasting on the word of Christ. So my dear family, feast :) 

One last thing. Seriously, my language abilities are all sorts of jumbled. Haha, So they have this thing here were they'll put the name of their family or their wife or kids on the back of their tricycles. So the other day, we were in a tricyle and the tricycle in front of us has "patrick" written on the back and my philippino mind reads it "pa-trick". "pa" in Tagalog means to cause to do something. Ex: pa-alis, cause to leave, pa-lakasin, cause to strenghth. So i read it in my head, cause to trick, a horrible taglish mix. I was befuddled for about 10 seconds as I'm going, why in heaven's name did they stick that on their tricycle. Bahahaha. Struggle moments. Story of my life for this past week. Struggle moments. 

 We're back to normal schedule on Monday so I'll fill you in on all the news from transfer. Haha, seriously the most exciting thing that happens on the mission. Hopefully Sister Lorente is there. Haven't seen that girl in a while. Love you all and pray for you always! I'll talk to you soon!! Muwa!

Can't turn the rain off here

Hello dear family! Greetings from the other side of the world!

Shoot, I need a personal assistant to update the area book while I sleep. That'd be the life. Mush, can I borrow you a few times a week, that'd be great. I had no idea that Pres. DelaMare even wrote to our families. Kind of surprised me. But that's cool. I don't think I'll be training the rest of my mission because there are just so few new missionaries coming in. So my guess is this will be my one and only, which I'm totally ok with that. I'm so happy is rained! As I'm slushing through a down pour and 3 inches of mud the entire week, I just kept thinking....how is this possible? Can't turn the water works off here and over there they've got nothing? The earth is a strange place. 

With the garments thing. Garments are SUPER cheap here. As in, anyone can afford them. They're 15 pesos, which is about 35 cents. They make them really cheap so that people can actually save and buy their own. If I get to go with her though, I’ll probably just buy them for her, but I'll let her save first so she can feel the importance of it.

Ok, so updates for this week! It's been quite interesting because we now have 1 companionship covering 2 areas. Kawawa ang mga tao dito. There's so many people that we just straight up don't have time to go to. We're doing our best though. We had a branch activity though this weekend which was way fun. We invited all the YM, YW, and SA by giving them a mission call letter and had them assigned to a certain mission. Then when they got to the church, they "checked in" to the MTC, got their name tag, their companion, etc. We had a mini orientation, just like the MTC, then we had different RMs in the ward split up in different classrooms and give a presentation about their mission, their experiences, things they learned, advice, etc. So if they were assigned to the Baguio mission, the person giving their presentation served there, so they'd give them the low down on the mission. So much fun. We had about 20 come, which was pretty good considering this is a branch. It was a good experience for them though H think and hopefully helped them gain a desire to serve a mission. It's one of the area goals we're focusing on right now. 

So on the mission you get to hear all sorts of weird stories about God and miracles and just crazy stuff that make you go, 'huh?'. Here are a few from this week: There's a guy in Marikina that pulls bread out of trees and wine out of thin air to perform the sacrament. And then, when Christ came to earth, he just broke off a piece of himself to become a man so that he would know how to communicate with man. Just like if you were the creator and wanted to talk with some ants; you would send part of yourself as an ant so that you could communicate with them (that's actually the example they used. ha, go figure. pretty sure as the creator, you could communicate with who or whatever you want, but whatevs). Also, did you know that, since Christ is the eldest son, that means God has another son just like Christ.  I get confused just listening to them. No wonder the world is in spiritual chaos. 

Oh yeah, one other funny tidbit. I taught my two companions what it means to flirt. Haha. Not kidding. One of them seems to get every elder crushing on her and she says to me, "I don't understand why". Well, it's because you flirt with them. What do you expect? Haha, let me explain. In the Philippines, they don't date. Very few people actually date someone. 95% of the Philippino sisters have this idea that the first person they date will be their spouse, so none of them have had a boyfriend, held hands, kissed, nothing. No dating experience at all.  So as a result, flirting is just a part of regular interaction and they don't know how to turn it off. So of course, it causes some problems. So I had to explain to them what flirting was. Funniest thing of my life. I think I convinced them though that you gotta date. Otherwise, you don't even know the person and you're gonna marry them? In my opinion, huge problem in the Philippines and part of why families are so easily broken here. They flirt, have sex, decide to stay together because the girl's now pregnant, are miserable for the first 7 years of their marriage until one of them either leaves or they strike a deal of endurance and complacency towards each other. I've seen it's SO many times; it's sad. So moral of the story, date. Haha, never though I'd have a "how to flirt" convo on the mission. 

Ok, that's all for now. I'll try to send pictures before next week. I've been slacking in that department. Sorry. Transfers are next week though, so I won't be emailing til Wednesday, just as a heads up. Love you all much!! Til next week!

Happy July 4th

Hello hello my dearest family and HAPPY JULY 4TH!!! 

So we had our zone activity today. Just played a ton of games, little Philippino kid games. Haha, hilarious. Can you just say OUT OF SHAPE!! Shoot guys, when I finally get to work out, I’m not gonna be able to move. One missonary though is a bakla, straight up, and honest to goodness I was dying watching him running around. Funniest thing of my life. So it's been a pretty chill p-day. But that's why I’m so late emailing. 

Honest to goodness, not many updates for you right now. For questions first; Tay is hilarious; not currently married, but on the look out he says. Bahaha. We're trying to find a cute old nanay to hook him up with. You can grab the Biebs from my computer, but make sure you also get some good stuff like Adel and Imogen heap. I don't want mush going all mainstream on me. You need a good balance. I'm glad that Boo loved EFY. So many good times. I'm thinking maybe I'll do that for the summer after I get home?? Shoot, I have no plans…as in none. And I was thinking the other day...all the deadlines for that kind of stuff is like October/November. I love you all and everything, but I don't want to come home. Whenever I think of all of that it makes me absolutely sick. So...we'll just not think about it, eh? :) That's so funny that you included that talk by Utchdorf. I just read that literally 4 hours ago. My favorite line was "Forever is composed of nows". Loved that. Live in the moment and you won't ever regret it. So that's what we're just gonna do. Not think about the future. We live in the middle :)

So we're officially a 3-some now. Sister Segovia's companion went home. Poor girl. She was seriously struggling. She did try though, so that's good. But it makes it really interesting trying to cover 2 ginormous areas with only 1 companionship. Pretty sure we'll just be waiting it out until transfer day, which is soon enough so no worries. Luckily we have some branch missionaries scheduled to help us out. Otherwise, life is just normal. Dina still isn't married so still no baptism. She’s practically a member though. Happy news!! 2 of my LAs that I’ve been working with are now fully active and go through the temple next month for their endowments!!! I'm so happy. Sister Riza is one of them and the other is sister Maricel. Maricel's hubby is a strong member, just works in Saudi so he's only here for a month every 3 years. So he comes home in August and when he does, they're going to be sealed as a family. So excited for them! It's just as exciting as a baptism in my book. Still working out the salvation of souls, di ba?

So that is all my friends. No good stories, I’m sorry. I didn't take good enough notes this week. I'll work on it though. Love you all and I'll pray for some rain for you too. Blows my mind how there's nothing there and we can't get it to stop here. Ha, Ironic. Anywho, much loves!! Until next week!