Allyson's Mission to the Philippines Baguio Mission: Phalling up the hill in the Philippines

This week was pretty good….more successful than last week definitely. Really up and down though. We had either 5 lessons a day or 0.

In other news, one of the highlights last week was when Sister Smith and I found a SUSHI place. Yes, I ate sushi last week and it was delicious. We discovered this pocket of tourist places that we didn't know was in our area.

Anyway, yesterday we taught this man that Sister Smith and her old companion had taught two times, but it was about 2 months ago. We finally taught him again. He has been reading the Book of Mormon ever since them. He's in Omni. And he said this, "Hmm... it seems to me that the way to return to our Lord is through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." Wow! Golden! He is really smart and understands a lot of things. He was asking us all these questions about what tribe Lehi is from and all the stuff like that. Hopefully his family doesn't present a problem. Every single one of them is a different religion. His daughter is a Baptist missionary and she always tries to preach to us. He’s only available on Sundays because of his crazy work schedule and we've gone every Sunday since them. Hopefully we can start teaching him regularly. We need to get him a baptismal date ASAP!

News from Brother R from San Fernando: HE'S GETTING BAPTIZED ON SATURDAY!

Remember when he said, “It takes a lot of work to be holy.” He's also the one where when we were describing the terrestrial kingdom said, "ay! pupunta ako doon!" "I'm going there!" haha. I'm so proud of him!

More good news! We had a returned less active family at church again yesterday. They’ve now come to church 4 times in a row. Hooray!

Last week, we were walking and then we saw this herd of children emerge from the forest with sugar cane in hand. So, we went on a little quest for sugar cane. We trampled down the side of this mountain and started to look for it (turns out neither of us are really sure what it looks like)... we were giving up, and then I spotted something on the ground. Sugar cane! It was delicious.

The sugar cane left some weird wood stuff in my mouth. It just grows naturally. It has all these awful prickles though so it's hard to get. Oh that reminds me, last week I was walking and I accidentally knocked over someone’s planted cactus. So I picked it up without thinking. Yes, that took a while to remove all the prickles.

We recently found out though that they did a study of where all the beggars in downtown Baguio are from... turns out most of them are from Gabriela Silang... that's our area, haha. It’s pretty gross there…just full of these giant trash river/waterfall things.

Last week, we accidently stumbled on a wake. That makes the second dead guy I’ve seen in the Philippines.

Here’s a pretty funny story. Lately, my companion has been waking up in the middle of the night and starting to pray out loud. It’s even in Tagalog. I then get confused and think it's companionship morning prayers so I just join in with an amen. Then we sit there and think... "Why did we just pray...."

I just asked my companion for ideas of funny stories to tell you. Here's her response: "You fall almost every day. That’s pretty funny." yeah, sometimes I think I’m more athletic than I am. I tried to run backwards up a hill the other day, totally biffed it.

[Here’s a non-mission related, funny string of emails]

[Did Mom mention that I'm the new Bishop?]

WHAT???????? I don't believe you. You're joking.

[You're not the first person to be surprised.]

Are you telling the truth?? Mom, please verify this. I can't tell if you're joking or not!

[This is your mother, yes, yes it is true! What do you think?]

Is this an early April’s fools day joke?

When were you sustained? Yesterday?

Wow! Look at you! Tom Mortell. Bishop Mortell. Weird. Wow. I would love to have a bishop like dad!

You will do great. I'm so proud of you!

Hey. You knew last week! Why didn't you tell me? I'm clear over here in the Philippines!

Have a great week!