Palompon Week 9

Mom & Dad~

I love yoooooooooooou!

Eva & Jessie~

Happy Birthday!! You are both one year closer to going home to the Celestial Kingdom! Harharhar. :)

I've heard of the Shakespearian Festival. It makes me want to wear a cool medieval dress.~

Please send me post-its. Haha. We bought a pack of post-its here, but they weren't the same. :P

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You asked a good question today Eva, about do I know anyone that speaks Warai-Warai or Tagalog. Here's my answer:

Languages in the Philippines are really mushed together like a mesh pot. America is the giant mesh pot of nationalities, but everyone speaks English. Over here, everyone is Filipino, but there is a giant mesh pot of languages! NO ONE speaks pure Cebuano. When its really pure Cebuano they call it "deep Cebuano", the same way we would say "old English". Tagalog is the national language, and usually its Tagalog that is playing on TV. So everyone here understands Tagalog, but they speak bits and pieces of it. The same with English! They somewhat can understand some English, but can't really speak it because all they do is listen to English movies w/o practicing how to speak it. And because the Philippines was governed by the Spanish for so long, Spanish words are in the languages too. Like pwede and ciudad. So in total I end up hearing a combination of Tagalog, Cebuano, Spanish and English. Then there's the possibility of Warai Warai someday. Agoy!

We had ZERO investigators come to church! :( We were a little surprised. Attendance was really low too.

We did manage to teach Justin this week even though we didn't have a set appointment with him. It was AMAZING. We taught him the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity and he accepted it RIGHT AWAY. He said he'd stop drinking coffee and when we told him that living together without being married is not God's way, he said: "Maybe the Lord will forgive me, cuz I didn't know."

AHHHH SO GOLDEN!!

It was especially funny when we taught him that earrings for boys isn't good and he had one on during the lesson. He just laughed and said: But it makes me gwapo. He said he would take it out later that day. And the next time we saw him, he pointed out to us: Look! I'm not wearing an earring anymore! He was smiling so big. :)

We have this community (barangay) in our area called Dry Dock. Half of it is literally houses on top of big bamboo sticks in the middle of the ocean! Our relief society president lives on top of the ocean! We joke that she has "Air con" because the wind is so amaaaazing wonderful over at her house. We walk on bridges made out of bamboo sticks. I reaaaaally have to take some pictures of it at some point.

The other communities (besides the main roads and houses) are basically swampy rock places. When I first got here, sister Farnworth told me: Our branch president lives in a swamp. o.O It's only half true. There were a couple of times where we couldn't get to the 2nd counseler's house because there was water all the way in front of his house.

I've included some pictures...

Me with a chicken. (Sister Farnworth has a picture of me with him when he was still a fluffy pink chick. Yes, he was painted pink by the kids in the neighborhood)

Our Branch presidency!

One recent convert, Juliet. She wants to be a missionary! She's only 17 though so she has a while to go.

Me with our 3 month plan of investigators. We have a lot! (That's what I need the post-its for. Haha)

I read a LOT of general conference issues yesterday because Sis Farnworth had a fever. It was pretty cool catching up on all the words of the prophets. :)

I'm in Mosiah 7 right now. How's your reading going?

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~the end~