Week 4 in the Philippines

WEEK 4

Merry Christmas!

Kumusta, 

This last week has been pretty weird. It was Christmas week and so we actually didn't get to teach much. I went on splits with Elder Ilagan this Filipino Missionary who actually knows very good English by far the best English out of any Filipino I have met. We went around teaching his investigators, every lesson that we taught was about Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy so I got pretty good at giving that lesson haha. But it was great I enjoyed it. We have been punted by everyone this week just cause its Christmas and everyone is either busy with that. Alot of people weren't home and Tatay Balagbaggan was drunk one night when we went over then next day we went back and he was working in his bukid. We had our ward Christmas party this week and those are soo different then the ones at home. They last all day, they go from like 3-9ish. There are games, spiritual thoughts and food. It lasted all day and so that's all we did that day. And then on Christmas eve and on Christmas day when we went over to peoples houses they would just feed us and we were barely able to get and lessons in and when we did we either shared Luke 2, or Alma 7 10-12 which are both just about Jesus and his Birth. So none of our investigators were really able to progress this week. Something else that was weird is that on Christmas we had more in actives come then actives. Because all of the Active members went to the Stake center in Santiago for some reason, and some of the in actives came since it was Christmas. 

Christmas was great though, anyway. We got feed a lot, pretty much all of the same stuff too. A lot of fruit salad and a lot of Pancid, its like the Cheap party food for the Philippines. I also had my first experience with dog, we ate dog last night. We went over to our recent converts house, named Daniel, and his dad and all of his buds were over and they were all drunk, none are members though. But anyway they kept one telling us to eat dog...so we tried a little bit...it doesn't taste that bad but it is really tough meat. I never want to try it again, just cause of the thought of it. They don't really care to much about dogs here. Dogs are pretty much the rodent of the Philippines, they are gross and they are everywhere. Some are mean, most are just pretty pathetic.  we were walking to this members house and these two dogs came out of nowhere barking at us and one came right at me and looked like it was going to bite me so my first reaction was to just...stomp at it & yelled i didn't want to get bit cause all the dogs here carry rabbis and i def don't want to get bit. So he ran away and the other dog ran away too. 

Skype was great and I really enjoyed it, the computers here stink and we are always having problems with them when we get here. I am just glad that president lets us do it, cause a lot of other different missions aren't allowed to do it. This week is gonna be another interesting week. The work is gonna be back to normal hopefully. But this week is Rizal day and New Years, Rizal is their national hero, he is like our George Washington. He is the main guy that was able to get the Spanish out of the Philippines. The next it New Years and we are supposed to back in our houses at 6pm new years eve. President said it was okay if we go over to the Zone Leaders house and Celebrate the New Year with them so that is what we are going to do I think. The reason why we have to go in so early is just because there are soo many drunks that night and the dont want us to have a problem with them. So the tell us to go in at 6. 

Anyway everything is going great here. Love you all thanks for everything 
Ingat po
Elder James

Week 3

Kumusta pamiliya ko, 

This week was pretty great, we had so much stuff this week that we had to do so we couldn't go out and work as much. But we still put in a decent week of work. Nothing really amazing happened this week, a batch just went home, prez let them go home a month early for Christmas which is pretty nice. I wonder what Christmas is like in America right now, it honestly doesn't feel like Christmas here, cause its hot, and there aren't any lights and no Christmas movies or anything like that. Prez said though that if we let it this Christmas has the potential to be one of the best, because even though we are not with our families and the whole gift exchange is as big, we have the opportunity to pay alot more attention to the true meaning of Christmas. Which is great, and its great for missionary work too, cause when I go up and talk to someone I ask there name and where they are from then sometimes  say "Malapit ang Pasko, massiah ba ka" Which means Christmas is close, are you excited. They almost without fail say "Wala Christmas para sa akin, wala pera." Which means no Christmas for me, no money. That's when we can invite them to focus more on the true purpose of Christmas and testify of Christ. Its hard here though because there are so many poor people, and we aren't allowed to help them. When we eat at Macdo's kids outside will just come up and watch us eat. and that's hard for us cause you know that most of those kids are super hungry. Then when we are done and start to leave they come up to use and ask for money, but we aren't allowed to give any. Also something that is kinda of annoying is that kids will come by house to house in our neighborhood and start to carol, they only difference from doing that in America to here is that in America it is usually a service or doing it to be nice, but here they will sing until you come out and give them money. We either turn our lights off and they go away or we go out and give them pass along cards. 

I am excited for Christmas though this week is gonna be so busy. Tuesday my comp and I are going on splits so I will be up in Ramon a little town 20mins outside of Santiago, then on Wednesday we have our Ward Christmas party, Thursday we have our Zone Christmas party up in Cauayan we have to do a performance for that, so our zone decided that we are going to do the Haka Dance, a famous Polynesian dance, we have a couple of big poly's in our zone and they are teaching us the haka. Anyway on Friday we have our Stake Christmas Devo, that our district is going to sing a Christmas song at. Then its Christmas eve and we will probably go to Cauayan. Then on Sunday it is Christmas obviously, and when we go out and try to work and stuff, we will probably just get feed. Sooo ya idk how much work is going to be happening this next week, however much we can fit around 4 hours of study and then all of the activities. We study alot, cause they put all the new missionaries on this new training program where we do the norm 1hr of personal study 1hr of language, then we do 2hours of comp study, and they gave us all this stuff we study, and it is supposed to get us trained faster, its supposed to get us to where we can train in after 12weeks, or two cycles, now is that we don't train for only 6weeks now we train for 12weeks. 

Our investigators are still progressing pretty good, we gave Sarah a baptismal date, but their fam is going on a Christmas vacation for a couple weeks so we cant teach her so, we have to push back the date. Richard is doing pretty good, he is still super interested, but now we are just trying to get his fam interested and they are but we haven't officially invited all of them to pray to know it is true. Our next lesson with them I am hoping that we can do that. We had a great experience with Tatay Balagbaggan this week, on wednesday we went to visit him and he was heading out to the river to throw away a dirty diper (kinda gross way to throw it away) anyway when we got there he looked around and he has two caribou and one of them was missing, so we looked around for it and couldn't find it. So we went back to his house and we taught him about Joseph Smith again, then we asked them if they would pray to know if Joseph Smith was a true prophet and he didn't respond. He was super quite and so Elder Kelson was like what are you thinking and he was said about his lost carabou, he said he wasnt listening to us that whole time, haha cause he was worried bout his caribou. So we asked him to pray right there for Gods help in finding it, he said he would later, but we insisted now. Elder Kelson said to pray and he know God would help, he said to put God to the test and he would help. So Balagabaggan prayed for help, then we went back out and looked. Ha on our way there kelson was like "We gotta find this Caribou" anyway we went and looked around for a little while and couldnt find it, Tatay kept saying "wala" which means nothing. But we kept looking and finally found him in some random water hole, with some other caribou. Its weird though cause the last time we went looking we checked all over and didn't find it, but after we prayed we found it. So that was great, God does answer prayers haha! Tatay was really happy too, I hope that opened his eyes a little. But our next lesson with him we retaught Joseph Smith and asked him if he believed in him he said no, we asked him if he prayed about him and he said no, because he still doesn't believe God answers prayers cause he prays everyday for his knees to be healed but they are still really weak. We told him that if he prays about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and our Church God will answer and then if he gains faith in that then he could pray again for help with his knees. I really think that if he can gain solid faith in Joseph Smith and our Church, then his legs can be healed, but not until he gains that faith. I told him that in the best tagalog I could...I hope that he could understand. Yesterday we went back to his house and watched the Joseph Smith story dvd I think that really helped him understand who Joseph was and just the basic history of him was. 

Welp life is good here, I think that I am getting more used to the culture and stuff. Anyway

Mahal Kita 

Elder James

Week 2 in the Philippines

Kumusta pamiliya ko!?

This week was pretty awesome, we got some sweet work done and I got to experience the culture a little more....

First our investigators are doing pretty good, we Nanay Balagabaggan told us that she knew that the gospel was true and that it was the right way for her to go in life...but she still didn't come to Church. Because she sells this kinda fruit in the Palanki everyday and thats the way that the Balagbaggans feed there fam, and the best time to sell is early in the morning, but Church is in the morning, so it is hard for her to come because she needs to sell. I think that if she comes once for just the first hour and then goes and sells that might work. Next lesson with her we are going to try to find a solution to get her to come to Church. Tatay Balagabaggan, I love him but he is super super frustrating once a week and that is also on Sundays. Because he was able to quit smoking cold turkey, but now we have to get him to quit drinking. And every Sunday his "friends" come over and get him to drink. So pretty much every Sunday he gets drunk. And I def don't want to drop him cause even though this is a reoccurring prob, he still has a great testimony, and he doesn't have much in life out of everyone I met his life is the hardest, and I know that it could help his life so much. On to different investigators, gave the baptism invite to Richards brother and he accepted, it was awesome we were gonna teach Richard w.o.w but his brother sat in and he had been sitting in on most, in fact two lessons ago he said that he prayed about it and knows its true...but ya so we asked him and he said he wanted to be baptized. We are gonna baptize Richard we just need to give him a date, he really wants it and he has a testimony...but his autism kinda makes it harder for him to understand everything. Prez Carlos said that he is probably already saved but it he wants to be baptized he can be. So we just need to give him a date, were thinking Jan 7. We also asked this one sister named Sarah she is like 21 and has been coming to Church for like a month and has been praying and reading, we just didn't give her a baptism invite. But this Saturday we invited her to be baptized and she said of course. It was pretty cool, I think we are gonna give her the same date as Jan 7 next time we see her. John Nicole has been being hard though, his is like 16 and we keep on asking him to read and pray and he does sometimes, but whenever we are teaching we ask him some questions at the end of our lesson and he cant answer them like we asked after we taught the restoration for the second time "So what did Joseph Smith do" and he said that he didn't know...it was a little frustrating. We are teaching some other families they just need to come to Church...thats most peoples big concern right now is just Church attendance... heck that's most of the Philippines problem is Church attendance. Inactivity is huge here in the Philippines, like we have 600 members of our ward but probably 100 come a week if we are lucky. If we had 400/600 members attend they would have to split the ward. Apparently the Philippines mission work is gonna get a huge change in January. We are gonna be changed to more reactivating missionaries instead of Baptizing missionaries. Basically from what I here is that we are gonna only go around reactivating people, and the only investigators we will teach are referrals..so idk if I am excited about that or not. Honestly though it is what the Philippines need. If we could reactivate even half of the less actives the Church here would grow way faster. Cause then they would have to make more wards and more stakes and maybe even more temples. So I am pretty stoked for it, but whats nice is that I think that after January I probably wont have to tract for the rest of my mission. 

Now a couple of things I did this week that...were fun?....First one was fun, I jumped on a Caribou or the Philippines form of a water buffalo. They are super chill though, you just jump on and itll walk around a bit, my comp took a pic, hopefully I can send that to you today. Also I got one of the worse things out right away and that was trying Balut. It is this fertilized duck egg that they stick in the ground for a few weeks and the duck inside is a little developed, anyway they then pull it out and eat it....and ya so I tried that Tuesday. It was def the grossest things that I have eaten in my whole life. We didn't have a din appointment that night and neither did the zone leaders so we went to macdo's and then they were like hey you should try balut tonight...and I was like nooooo, but they got me to do it...I fell to peer pressure on my mission..haha. We went over to this street vendor bought one for 13 peso's. You have to make a little whole in the shell then drink the fluid...idk what you would call it, it was nasty. But drank that, then cracked the rest of it open like a hard boiled egg. Then took the first bite and it was super super hard, cause it was the skeleton and the head and the beak, it wasn't completely hard, it was still chewable. Was able to muscle it down, and almost threw up. By this time a decent crowd had formed around us. To see the white American eat balut, it must have been pretty entertaining to them. Anyway i still had the other half left which was super soft and creamy, it tasted gross and the texture was gross but not as bad as the first part. The only bad part about it was the thought of it. Anyway glad I got that out of my way early, and I am not going to eat another again...hopefully I never have a dinner appointment where the feed us balut...that would be super hard. 

Anyway still enjoying it here in the Philippines, its beautiful here. Still cant understand anything anyone says for the most part..sometimes I can pick up on stuff. But for the most part I am clueless. I do have decent missionary tagalog though so I can add some into lessons. Other then that though, still cant speak very well tagalog. It should come though. 

Mahal Kita 
Ingat Kayo 
Elder James

Week 1 in the Philippines

Kamusta po ang pamilya ko!

Wooow!! Finally in the Philippines, after 9 weeks at the MTC finally made it. Its crazy bonkers here!! Its awesome!! Haha Where to begin....well when I got to Manila they took us to the Manila mtc and we crashed there for a few hours, then we got on a bus for Cauayan for 9ish hours, the whole way I needed the bathroom, but the bus never stopped so goooosh I was hurtin haha. But we got to the Carlos's house around 7ish in the morning on Thursday, and we Chilled there for a bit the let us relax and take a good couple hour nap, I was sooo jet lagged. It was no fun. But then we got a quick run down of everything from Prez and Sis Carlos. They are awesome, President Carlos is a funny guy, and he isn't a huge rule stickler, he basically says that if it 1. Takes away from the spirit don't do it, and if Its against the white handbook don't do it. But then we got our comps, at the transfer meeting. My Tatay or trainer is Elder Kelson I am his anak or Child haha  he is a pretty solid missionary though. My zone is Santiago and my area is Baluarte. After transfer meeting was over we headed to Baluarte, another hour drive! We got to the apartment and man it is basically a shack, the other missionaries said that it is the smallest apartment in the Santiago zone, its way small. We got a small study room, a small bedroom. Ha our beds are like 3 inches away from each other. Then we have a decent size front "living room?" Its pretty small. Anyway I am doing good here in the Philippines!! Its a way hard adjustment, harder then I was expecting, it is soooo frustrating when a Filipino is talking to me and I have absolutely no clue what they are saying. Its not even necessarily that I dont know what words their saying I know some of the words its just their accents are way tuff and they talk soooo fast. My comp has to feel more like a translator at times instead of a missionary, I kinda feel bad for him. We get alone pretty good though. He leaves in like 2 months. 

Now on to our REAL investigators, we got some solid investigators, we have Tatay Balagbagan and his wife, we have Richard who we think may have autism. We have Daniel who is 16 and way chill he is a recent convert though or rc. We got the magalano pamilya. We have the Crisologo family, and we have John Nicole. The lessons that we have had with them have been going pretty good. Tatay Balagbagan is this old tatay that I feel way bad for he works in the Bukid (rice patties) but his knees are way weak so its hard for him to farm, so he cant provide that much for his family. And his wife, she is killin us she said that in order for her family to eat she needs to work in the palanki (local strip mall, its more like the local flea market accept way more busy and crowed). So basically its hard for her to come to Church on sunday cause if she doesnt she wont have money to feed her family. John Nicole is pretty solid, he is 15 and he lives with his Grandpa who is the is in the Baluarte bishopric. So he has way good support, he just needs to read the Anklat ni Mormon. The Crisologo family I havent had much contact with them, and the Magalano family they are a part time family that just needs to come to Church. Richard is doing well, the only thing is that he more then likely has autism or something cause he doesn't understand alot. But I think that the big role that he is meant to play in this world is helping his family maybe hopefully accept the Gospel. They listen and the usually join the discussion, but they decline our invites to Church and reading the AnM. We have some investigators progressing but we could do better, I don't understand why we don't go finding more cause we could totally get some more investigators. We will see though. The big thing that needs to happen here is ward support, we have decent ward support, we have about 80 people who come to Church regularly. But honestly they could be better like Tatay Balagbagan needs a ward friend but no matter how we try people wont take some time just to talk to him and befriend him. 

Now a little about the Culture, people here are soo stinking nice, I haven't met a mean Filipino yet, they are all great, whats crazy is that most of them are poor and struggling but still put a smile on the face and are nice. All the ward members come up and talk to me and I can respond a little, then they ask "Kaya po ba mo Magsalita tagalog?" (Can you speak tagalog) Thats when I say Hindi, Hindi Magaling ako sa tagalog, bago ako sa Philippines. (No I'm not good at tagalog, new to the Philippines) Then they tell me that I will become good..haha. Oh also one of the first things that all Filipinos say to me is "your sooo white", and point to my super blond hair. haha its funny....kinda...Something else is everybody stares at us its funny, not because we are missionaries but because we are white. Transportation here is pretty cool too, they have these things called Tricies, that are just a motorcycle hooked up to a side wagon. Hahaha so we just jump on one of those to get where ever. And they are everywhere, thats probably the most used form  of transportation. The streets are sooo stinkin crazy, there are no traffic laws basically you do whatever you got to do to get to where you need to go. There are lanes though...thats a good thing. The food here is Delicious. Rice, and chicken, and sometimes so other weird stuff like, my comp had fish head the other day, I already ate cause I went on splits. But I'm really not kidding the food here is delicious, every meal has rice and you eat it with your hands. What you do is take a piece of meat and clump up a little rice and then scoop it into your mouth. Its great I love eating everything with my hands. Oh and there rice is soo good here, its nice and sticky and soft, not mushy but sticky...it sticks to the hands pretty bad. Oh and there fruit is way good. They have a ton of diff fruits here that we dont. And they have mangoo trees and coconut and banana trees everywhere. Oh and its kinda jungly I guess, in between all of the bukids and neighborhoods are trees. Honestly its pretty beautiful here though, once you get out of Santiago. Lucky for me we are just out of Santiago, so its not too far. Oh they also have a Macdo or Mcdonalds in Santiago, its pretty good, the prices aren't bad and the food is good. Cant complain. All in all, I am pretty happy here. Its been hard at first, the first day was way hard but I'm adjusting, and once I can start getting tagalog down then the mish will just fly. All I need to do is study and speak as much as possible, I cant be afraid to make a mistake, and I am not going to lie I kinda am, oym's are hard (offer your message), mostly cause the tagalog, the people arnt rude in fact they are too nice they cant decline to your face, but when you show up to there house they hid from us..if they dont want to hear us. 

Oh another Philippine culture note is, that any old person no matter whether you know them or not, you call Tatay meaning father, or Nanay meaning Mother. 

Anyway thanks for everything, I am glad to be here and cant stinking wait to learn tagalog haha. 

Ingat po kayo
Elder James