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!