It's 2014! (Two thousand Phourteen!)

Sister Ackerman and I have had a pretty busy week... Lots of recent convert and less active lessons. We met the standard of excellence for that last week--15 lessons. And the AP (Assistant to the President) called to congratulate us. So that was good. We seriously need to do some finding though. We need some more solid investigators. We haven't been able to teach Sister R this week. But yesterday we talked to her and set up an appointment and we had a ward member with us that calmed some of her worries. One of our other investigators keeps talking about how he has such a desire to know the truth and have the gospel help his family but he is unwilling to read the Book of Mormon and he only comes to church if we go pick him up. Last lesson, Sister Ackerman and I were just pouring our whole souls into this lesson... our Tagalog was actually going really well, we were asking great questions, we were in tune with the spirit, we were just testifying powerfully about how important it is to read the Book of Mormon. We spent like 30 or 40 min talking about how important it is to act and how God will answer him. Then at the end we tried to commit him to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and he just said "pwede panalangin na lang, walang magbasa?" translation: "Can I just pray, and not read?" Oh man. That was soooo frustrating. But then in his closing prayer he asked Heavenly Father to give him a desire to read. So hopefully he starts reading soon.

So let me just take a moment to tell you some more about this other sweet man that we teach in front of his house. He refuses to get a chair, just does the Filipino squat the whole time and his pregnant goat is always right next to him too. He's less active, but he LOVES the church. He always tells us about the missionary that converted him "Si joy enriques, taga cebu! ay, maraming missionaries pumunta sa akin." translation: "Joy Enriques, from cebu. Many missionaries come to me." Then he starts to name the missionaries. It is sooo sweet and funny. Anyway, on Saturday, I was a little annoyed because all these people kept making fun of me and kept complaining that we didn't know very much Ilocano. I just told sister Ackerman, "Why can't anyone ever just say 'oh thanks Sister Mortell. Thanks for being here and trying your best.’" Then the next day during sacrament meeting, this sweet man got up to bear his testimony. He started by talking about Joy Enriques and the missionaries and then he started to get a little tear and said he is so thankful for the missionaries that always teach him "Si Ackerman, Si Mortell." It made me smile because someone was grateful for us. Touched my heart. Then he randomly told the entire ward that we always come to his house to eat which is a flat-out lie. haha. I have not once eaten at his house. Then the ENTIRE ward started to crack up and look at "Si Ackerman, Si Mortell" and the ward was laughing and joking with us so much that he could hardly regain control of them so he could finish his testimony.

For my personal study this morning, I reread "Of Regrets and Resolutions" by President Uchtdorf. I would recommend that you reread it too. Good things to think about. [http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/of-regrets-and-resolutions?lang=eng]

My Tagalog has improved a lot. I can now basically understand everything that people say most of the time. However, everyone speaks Ilocano. A lot of people don't know Tagalog super well, so it's hard for us to communicate because we're both trying to communicate in our second language. Ilocano sounds so hard. It doesn't even sound like words. Yesterday we were with a member and we were trying to teach this lady and we just heard a man's voice from inside the house say something in Ilocano. The member told us he said "Oh looks like the Americans are here again." haha. Yeah, they just continued to hide from us.

I wish you could see my tan lines. I have a tan line from my shirt, and a tan line across my chest where my bag goes and a watch tan line. It is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. Also, I stopped taking my vitamins for about a week because I didn't think it was necessary then my hair started to fall out. So I got right back on those vitamins very quickly. I can't figure out what nutrients I’m missing! I eat vegetables and fruit every single day. Don’t worry! I always drink filtered water except when people give us unfiltered water.

New Years was good. We had about 5 dinner appointments throughout the day... and then one of our dinner appointments got interrupted because their neighbor came and told us we had to come to their house and eat when we were finished eating there. Haha then people gave us all of the leftovers. We ended up having 4 giant bowls full of spaghetti, endless macaroni salad, endless rice pudding stuff (bico), and a whole ton of pansit. Then after our curfew a recent convert delivered a whole bunch of more food to us. And the fireworks were pretty loud. I woke up right at midnight because all the fireworks went off but then I just went right back to sleep because I was so tired. I was at this less actives house and they have this GIANT gun that they used to shoot fireworks off from on top of their roof. I am not kidding that it was probably at least 15 feet long. They took a picture of me holding it and put it on facebook apparently.

You would just not believe how many people greet us/yell things at us as we walk. Most people are very friendly. Literally, everyone on the street says hi, the kids always just run up to us to shake our hands. There is also this crazy homeless lady that won't stop touching our bottoms. We also got spit on the other day from a car... that was a first. But for the most part people are very, very friendly towards us and they love us. They are so surprised that we know Tagalog. Their favorite joke is when we greet them we say "magandang hapon" (good afternoon) and they say "maganda ka sa hapon" (you are beautiful in the afternoon). They don't think we understand... but we do. haha.

We gave our Christmas decorations to one of the ward members. She loved it and I’m glad she has some cute Christmas decorations now.

Love you very much! Have a wonderful week! Also, I really like getting dear elders... so you should write me some.

[To send dear elders, go to dearelder.com. Ally is in the Philippines Baguio mission. It’s free!]

The "bell choir" rehearsing for their performance at the ward Christmas party. Ally was the conductor. No actual bells were used. They made the sounds with their mouths, but the movements look pretty legit!

 New Year's Day at the Dinkels.