Week 4 Letter from the Philippines!

This has been the craziest week ever!  I love it so much here!  The people are so loving here!  We are absolutely full of appointments everyday.  We have about 5 to 6 lessons everyday.  I have been giving them more and more now as well.  Its pretty fun with such a limited vocabulary!  But the people will listen to me anyway even if they don't really understand me.  I have some more goals to apply this week that should help me with the language.

I guess Ill start with day one!  It being a P-Day (preparation day, the day the missionaries write home, grocery shop, do their laundry, etc.) we only taught two lessons and did our much needed laundry.  One nice thing here is appearance is not critical here. (Mom note:  I asked him what he meant.  Meaning, his appearance wasn't critical or the Filipino's appearances weren't critical.  He assured me that he's keeping clean and well groomed.  His appearance is critical, the Filipino people in general don't put a lot of emphasis on appearance. )

Tuesday we had our normal zone meeting and we went over the goals of the stake and how our areas are doing.  My daily breakfast and lunch did change though!  Usually I have oatmeal and a small sandwich for food but this week..wait for it.....pancit noodles!! (pretty much the Filipino Ramon Noodles..)  But I am going to be trying some new things this week.

Wednesday was a pretty good day!  That is the beginning of the baptisms this week.  We asked about 10 people to be baptized within the next month and they have all agreed!  We hope they continue to strive and padayon (endure)  It will be interesting to see what happens in the next two weeks.

Thursday was a pretty normal day for us.  We found another family and they seem very interested in our message.  I can see the mother being baptized soon as well.

We did have a very awesome experience though!  We had just been punted by a few people and our appointments fell through and were at a loss on where we should go when we heard a 'Hey Elder!'  This is very common here so we turned and saw a tattoo covered man sitting in the doorway of his house. (Yes, some people do indeed have doors.)  He welcomed us into his house and offered us chairs (which is also very common)  He then sat himself down and we were about to begin as we normally do when he looked me in the eye and said he wanted to be baptized.  We were shocked!  He smiled at us and told us he has met with the missionaries twice before in two different places (this was in English) but had to keep moving and was praying that he would find the elders here and so we did!  God loves all his children and truly does answer our prayers!  Brother (name edited for privacy), the man we found, was actually born here but moved to America and served in the Navy and is now back here.  He is planning on going back to America.  He has some more crazy stories but has asked that I not share them at this time.  His faith was so strong and his full desire was to be baptized and then go to the temple. It was such a blessing to find him there. :)

Friday I really don't remember much but Saturday was the big day!

Saturday I went on splits (when companion ships split) with Elder (name edit for privacy).  He has been here for 10 weeks and I for 4.  Our senior companions (companions that are training and teaching the newer missionaries) went together and left us to defend for ourselves.  We went to his area in Lapuz.  My area is Lapaz.  It went alright!  Our lessons were pretty short though because we have so little to say but all in all I am glad we did it!  Tomorrow I am going to lead in my area.  should be fun! 

So yes I love it here!  The growth this ward has had in the past year has been tremendous and we hope to keep it going!  The bishop here is super cool!  Anyway, Ill keep you all in our prayers and thank for everything!