Allyson's Mission to the Philippines Baguio Mission: Phun Ward Christmas party

I’m late emailing because our zone leader had us practice for our Christmas presentation tomorrow. The 3 American sisters have been cast as the 3 Wise men. We had to practice our 5 seconds on stage in which we walk in and give baby Jesus some gold. We have a Christmas party/conference for 4 zones. It's at Sevilla. It lasts from 9-5! We also have a zone something on Christmas morning here.

I ate blood yesterday at a member’s house. It was pork with thick sauce made from blood…Pretty tasty actually.

Right now we have 3 IBDs. They all have baptismal dates at beginning of January but they all also have word of wisdom problems so we have to move some of their dates. We have a whole ton of other investigators too and less actives and recent converts. There is pretty much always someone for us to teach.

Our Tagalog is definitely improving. Luckily we have a ward missionary with us about half the time so they can help us if we don’t understand. This one girl LOVES us. She is so sweet and helpful and she even drew us little pictures of ourselves.

Anyway, there was a ward Christmas party last week and it was so fun! Sister Ackerman and I helped decorate. We made some awesome decorations, considering our only tools were things we rummaged up at the church. Ward parties here are so different. There were a whole ton of games, in which the adults get right in there and are totally involved. The adults are running around and screaming and joking around with each other. It’s hilarious. Then the missionaries had to perform a song. We did a lively adaption of "Carol of the Bells." we pretended to have bells and just used our mouths. I was the conductor. It was pretty funny and we think we won over a big chunk of the ward with it.

We had a mini disaster when the ward found out all of our first names and wouldn't stop calling us by them haha.

I have to tell you about the proudest moment of my mission so far (ok, joke-lang). But, so you know how Samoans and Polynesians are all about family and their own people and whatever? I've been accepted by the Samoans. Direct quote "We love you like our own blood, Sister Mortell" Haha.

"Lang" means "only" kind of. So joke-lang is like just joking, but it's way more catchy, so I think I’m going to continue saying it even after my mission.

What else has been going on? We're just super busy all the time teaching lessons and whatnot. Good news, we have a dinner appointment tonight with Sister Salvatera. We found a very nice lady yesterday to teach. She seems really interested. She accepted a soft baptismal invitation. Did you know we're supposed to extend baptismal invitations on the first lesson? It actually works pretty well! Oh, Brother G was wearing a tie yesterday and white shirt and he has his hair cut nice and he just listens intently with his little family. So sweet! The first time we met him he had crazy hair and an earring and was wearing a bandana over his face. We are very proud of him!

Bye love you lots and Maligayang Pasko! (Merry Christmas)