There was a beautiful hike to get to it including a
super long swinging bridge. It was awesome! Then you climb over all these rocks
and whatnot and it is this waterfall thing partly enclosed in a cave with
perfectly clear blue water. It was so beautiful. Don’t worry, I took lots of
pictures.
The weather is very normal here. We haven't had any
effect of the typhoon. I had a pretty eventful week. On Tuesday, I found out
that I would have to go to Manila on Friday because they need your fingerprints
before you go home. So I had to hurry and get the x-ray of my chest. Good news!
Everything checked out. It freaked me
out though that I am going home so soon. The night I found out I had to go to Manila
I couldn't sleep. I was very restless. Then the next day I just didn't even
want to study. I just wanted to go teach everyone. The next day I dragged my
companion everywhere and we taught 9 lessons and found 5 new investigators.
On Thursday night I went to San Fernando. Who was
my companion? An elder! Awkward! I went to San Fernando with just one elder. It
felt like a date. Then we met up with everyone else going home. There were 6 of
us. Then we all got on a bus and drove to Manila.
So then we drove to Manila overnight. At night it
took 6 hours to get there, but in the day it takes about 8 hours. We got there
at 4:00 in the morning. When we got there we were so hungry and the guy wasn't
there to pick us up yet so we walked to a fast food restaurant.... Manila was
slightly creepy at 4 in the morning. There were lots of homeless children
sleeping on cardboard. Then the guy picked us up and took us to the immigration
place. Unfortunately it didn't open till 8. I don't know who planned that. So
what did we do? We curled up like hobos outside of the building and slept on
the cement until 8. We were at the immigration place for a few hours then we
got back on our bus and came home. We got home at 7:30 at night. It was pretty
tiring. It was really good to spend some time with Sister A though!
Manila seemed very different from the last time I
had been there (first day of being in the Philippines). I think Manila looks
awesome now. I wish we could have spent some more time there. They have a ton
of giant nice malls and everything we could ever want. We tried so hard to convince
our driver to take us to Taco Bell and Krispey Kreme, but he said no because it
was out of the way. We were pretty annoyed with him haha.
Then, I have more good news. On Sunday we had 8
investigators at church! Hooray. Brother MA brought his two sisters, a friend,
his less-active grandma, and Brother M and Sister R were at church. And even
more good news.... Brother M had an interview with President and he cleared him
for baptism! So their baptism should be on December 27. They just have to get
married first. Weddings here are pretty expensive for people so I hope they can
save enough money. Also, Brother MA's sister is really progressing. She is
awesome. She accepted a baptism date of January 24 and we moved Brother MA to January
24 too because he isn't ready yet.
Brother MA told us that he is
finally ready to give up the Catholic Church. He still really wants to attend
simbang gabi though (I don't know what it's called in America--that thing where
they go to church at night time before Christmas). But he says that will be his
last time...
We teach his grandmother. She lives in the creepy
place. It’s really difficult because she only knows Ilocano. We pretty much
muddle our way through lessons and usually just make our fellowshipper teach
most of the lesson.
We also teach Brother MA's sister and she is doing
really well. Sometimes she says things and I’m like "Wow, that's exactly
what was in my head," such as: "I think that I will know the truth
not from you, you are just like guides. But I think I will know the truth from
God through diligent scripture study and prayer." She told us that she is
really searching for the truth--searching for a way to be saved. I hope she had
a good experience at church yesterday. Our branch is a little crazy
sometimes... but good news! We had an attendance of 90 yesterday! It went up by
a lot. Hooray!
We have Christmas conference this Friday in Baguio.
It should be fun. I’m pretty excited. For our Christmas conference, each
missionary makes a photo of 3 words that have meaning to them. When I was
trying to think of what to do the only things coming into my mind were things like.
"See ya later" "Sister Mortell out" "one month
more" but I decided to do "All My Heart." I took a picture of me
holding an x-ray up to my chest with a heart.
Other things that happened this week... I saw this
giant group of men looking at this giant iguana thing. One of them had just
bought it…new pet apparently. So I took a picture of me holding it. It was huge.
The scariest thing this week
was worrying while Brother M was being interviewed that he wouldn't be able to
be baptized. Also, that swinging bridge earlier today was pretty scary. The funniest
thing this week was probably in Manila when I saw a guy with his pants fully
down tinkling off a bridge. (That might also count for the yuckiest). The most
spiritual thing was probably just in our teaching. It is just great to be a
missionary and feel the spirit helping us know what to say and seeing the
spirit change our investigators.
I am almost for sure not going to be in this area
for their baptisms. I pretty sure I will get transferred next week. I really
wish I could just stay here though. Oh well. People almost always get transferred
for their last transfer and after training; the trainer almost always gets
transferred. But don't worry, I let President know that I would really love to
not be transferred, but if I absolutely have to be transferred I would love to
open an area with Sister S. We'll see if he takes my suggestion into consideration.
haha
Oh yeah, I got one of my packages when I went to
San Fernando. There are 4 packages for me there. They are holding all packages
until the Christmas conference. It took some convincing, but I finally
persuaded the APs to let me take one. It is the one with the giant bag of bacon.
haha we love it. We have been having a hay day with our bacon bits. You’re the
best. I hauled that package to Manila (good thing because we were hungry on the
bus). Too bad I didn't look in the bottom of it until I got home though,
because I had forgotten toilet paper on the trip to Manila. So we just had to
make do without. [There was a nice, soft roll of toilet paper in the bottom of the package.]
Sister T says that the transition out of
missionary life is hard, but she's doing pretty well. She’s working part time
at a hotel. I’m not sure there's much hope I’ll ever see her again.
Love you! Have a wonderful week.
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