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
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