I’m going to Baguio on Friday! We have a zone
conference there. There’s a big mall there where they have all the food.
Hopefully, we’ll have time to go there.
Since I’ve been in Agoo, I feel like I have been
having culture shock all over again…especially since my companion isn't a
foreigner. It’s very strange. This morning she asked me if I’ve ever been to Disneyland.
Then she told me she really wants go there, but then she said it's possible
only in her dreams. I just about cried. So sad! I also found out that only a
couple years ago they got a concrete house. Before that it was bamboo.
Our investigators are doing ok. Right now our little
golden stars are the H family. Brother R is less active, but he is coming back
to church. His wife and 11 year-old son are going to be baptized on October 4.
They are just such a cute happy family and I love them. The gospel is starting
to make a good difference in their lives. I’m excited for their baptisms. We
have 3 other investigators with a baptismal date. They have all sorts of
problems that we are trying to work out. We just really don't know what to do
with them. Our 20 year-old investigator has come to church 3 or 4 times now. He
wants to be baptized. His baptism date is on October 25. We are still having
some major problems though because he doesn't understand
authority/priesthood/apostasy and stuff like that. So he wants to keep going to
the Catholic Church even after he is baptized. So... we're working on that
haha. He just makes everything very difficult for himself. He is very smart,
but he just keeps confusing himself.
Our other investigator is always drunk and she has
a lot of family problems and whatnot. She is drunk all the time. One time she
came to church drunk and caused a whole big scene before I got here. But, we have
now taught her twice when she isn't drunk. She hasn't been drinking that much
lately. She is very smart and attentive in lessons. She has been really reading the Book of Mormon
and she wants to be baptized. We had a great lesson with her the first time we
taught her. The spirit was really strong and we just helped her understand that
Heavenly Father loves her and understands her problems and talked about the
difference the gospel can make in her life. It was great. We had been planning
on teaching our other investigator that lives in her house that night. We were
really praying that we would have the spirit and that we would be able to help
our investigator, but he wasn't home and she was there, so we taught her
instead. It turns out that she probably needed a lesson right then more than
the investigator we were planning to teach that night.
I have noticed some really good things about this
branch. It is much smaller than Pacdal ward, but I think it is great here. The
branch president is very involved in things and so is the ward mission leader. The
members love us and the members and missionaries are much more united. We have
had a few service projects which is great. On Saturday we dug a canal for some
less-active members and cleaned out their current canal. It was kind of gross,
but it felt good to do some actual work. This week they have also been having
free vaccinations for kids under age 6 in all the barangays. We helped with
that. Our job was to hold the kid down while they put the shot in. That was
pretty fun, except there were way too many helpers so it also involved a lot of
sitting around. Elder R and I were laughing because we hardly got to do any
work because there was so many people, but in three hours we also received 3
soft drinks, several cookies/crackers/treats, and a full on meal of grilled
fish and these weird shrimp-like things that people eat. (The shrimp things are
still alive and they are still wiggling. They just put vinegar on them and eat
them. I didn’t try them.) Filipinos really are so hospitable.
Here's another funny little thing. The other day I
was riding on the outside of a trike. My umbrella is the long stick kind. My
umbrella was sticking out a little. All of a sudden I heard a thud. I looked
back and realized that my umbrella had hit a goat…and it was pretty hard. Anyway,
this goat was right by this irrigation canal thing that is mostly just stagnant
water because it gets stuck in this one place and everyone throws their trash
there. So it's like this black goop stuff full of trash. A couple hours later,
we drove by again. I saw that the goat had somehow fallen into the canal thing
and was trying to get out. It was just looking back and forth all confused and
trying helplessly to get out. (My description makes this sound really sad, but
it was actually really comical). It was just going baaah baahhh and looking
around haha. Also, there was a man there just watching it and kind of laughing.
Weird!
Don't worry though. When we drove by that spot
again it was gone. I think it's too shallow, so I don't think it drowned. But I
hope my thud from the umbrella didn't weaken the goat and cause it to fall into
the canal!
Here’s a quick summary of my umbrellas on my
mission. I used the missionary mall umbrella for about 3 transfers. Then I
hated carrying it because it was too heavy and too big and couldn't fit through
small spaces. So I bought a small one. I left it at an investigators house. I bought
another one and after a while, I left it on a taxi. Then this all happened in
one week-- bought one and it broke from the wind, bought another one in the same
day and it got bent because I accidently stepped on it. So, I went back to the
missionary mall one and then it finally just wore out and broke. It couldn't
close anymore. Then, I used Sister T’s and then it got a leak in it. Then, I
bought this purple one that is like a cane. It has now held up for about 5
weeks! Hooray!
Also, this was awful. This morning I was cleaning
the kitchen and then a container of something fell over and knocked a glass
container of ketchup and a glass container of fish sauce onto the ground. Fish
sauce smells awful. Glass broke everywhere and the kitchen and I were covered
in fish sauce and ketchup. We cleaned it up the best we could, but now our
apartment smells a bit fishy haha. Also, yesterday morning I woke up and found
a frog by my bed. What on earth? How did a frog get into my apartment? Also, we
found two giant spiders in our apartment. The kind that are as big as my hand (I’m
not exaggerating. I took a picture so you can see.) Sister S has a big fear of
spiders. So, I captured one in a Tupperware container and gave it to her and
told her I made some mashed potatoes for her. She opened it and freaked out and
screamed and ran upstairs. It was hilarious. My companion got it on video.
So far, it hardly rains in
Agoo…maybe only every 3 days or something and even then it's not that hard. In Baguio
we were soaking wet every single day during rainy season.
Sister Mortell and Sister Tune
Showing off my $1 Ray Bans
Sister Mortell and Sister Dial
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