Palompon Week 12 (9-13-2010)

Mom~
I'm feeling a lot better now. Sister Malit tells me what anti-biotics to take whenever I get sick. Haha.
No one is supposed to send chocolate through the mail? o.O

Eva~
I LOVE INDESIGN! I MISS IT! :)

Filipinos offer everyone food! They have a phrase that says: "Bisan saging, basta loving." Literally it means: Even banana, at least loving. The idea is even if you only eat bananas, if everyone eats with you, its all happy.

I would like to spend some time telling you all about tuba. Tuba is basically the cheap alcohol here in the Philippines. They make it from coconuts and they put soda bottles of the coconut milk on the coconut trees and somehow it ferments while its up there. So when its ready they climb up the tree and bring it down. Our teacher in the MTC told us that even little kids drink tuba. When I first got here I saw a sign on the street next to someone's house and it said: Tuba for sale. I thought that the kid in the house must have played a musical instrument. Nope.

We were at a members house and their neighbor was there with his tuba bottle. The people here like to speak English sometimes so he asked us: "You drink tuba?" We said "Dili, dili maayo para sa lawas!" (No, it's not good for your body!) He very blatantly disagreed, "Yes it is!" while holding his bottle in one hand and cup in the other. I was pretty sure that he had already had a few sips.

We were going down the street in a put-put and this one man that we see around a lot was standing on the side of the road. He's taken to saluting us whenever we pass by. We saw him from down the street, so he just put his hand on his head and held it there until we passed, then he finished the salute as we passed by. Standing up straight, one hand up on his head, saluting us, and the other hand holding a bottle of tuba. He kind of cracks us up. It happened again as we were on our way to the market this morning. One time when we passed by he simply gave us a really big thumbs up.

This week we also had one man stop us as we were passing by his house. He spoke to us in English. I had no idea if he was drunk, but the experience was funny enough to share now. "Mam. I would like to help the CIA." We just looked at him. "Huh?" "Mam, I would like to help the US government." Oh that's nice. "Umm.. Sir, we're just missionaries. If you want to help the government, maybe you should go to the embassy. But we'd like to invite you to church this morning at 9 am!"

We had a very strange week where about half of our appointments just simply were not there at the scheduled time! Three days in a row, everyone was just NOT there. So we just ran around trying to see what less-active members we could visit instead to make use of our time. It was a little stressful. The branch also has started re-activation on Saturday nights. Simply going around on Saturday night and inviting people to come to church. Both of those efforts had a good result I think, because attendance went up. We had several less-actives come to church. :)

Because ALL of our appointments were falling through, Sis Farnworth and I were thinking where to go and I said: Let's go to Eric's house. Eric is an investigator that I had NEVER met before (even though I've been here for 3 months), but Sis Farnworth would tell me about him. She didn't think he would be there because he's a really busy guy, but we tried anyway. And he WAS THERE! So I got to meet him. haha. We talked a bit about the past visits with the missionaries (3 months ago) and how he liked the Cebu temple open house. It was a GREAT lesson! And we got to teach in English because he's really good at speaking English. And we committed him to be baptized on October 30 when he finds out the Book of Mormon is true! It was so cool! :) We came home super high and happy.

We gave a BoM to a recent convert named Jesus that can't read. We used to teach him before Church on Sundays, but now we're trying to spend our time bringing our investigators to church. (The past two weeks it hasn't worked. x_X) BUT Jesus is now living with another member so at night they spend time practicing reading. It makes me so happy to know that! :)

Our BoM fireside was cool. We borrowed Elder Reyes' "The Testaments" DVD and showed it. There were lots of members and less-actives that came and we had 5 investigators come to watch the movie. Our only regret is that there was no Tagalog option for the movie, so we had to watch in it English. I hope everyone got the idea. haha.

This week I was reading Alma 5. I've decided that that is my favorite sermon in the Book of Mormon. He gives a lot of self-reflecting questions like "Have you received His countenance?" and at the end he basically gives his testimony! It was so great reading it and feeling the Spirit. Testimony is so important! I really need to include it more in our lessons. As I was reading it I started to laugh because Alma 5 is basically the sermon that the prophet gives in "The Testaments" and the part where Kohor gives his defense of the judges during the trial he basically quotes the last chapter in Helaman! Hahaha. Sister Farnworth and I love that movie. :)

How's your Book of Mormon reading?

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~the end~

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I am a LDS sister missionary serving in the Philippines Tacloban area. I made this blog so that I may share my experiences with my friends and loved ones and anyone who may need to hear my story. My sister will be updating this blog with letters that I'll be writing home.