Happy to Serve.

Magandang hapon po pamilya! This past week has been well, not as crazy as the others. And probably for the first time here in the PI, I don't really have much to say. Late on Monday we finally got our new companions. My new companion's name is Elder Realin from Pangasinan. He is Ilocano so he's been teaching me a little bit. I can understand enough, but found that I've been losing my Ilocano ever since I've been learning Tagalog. He's actually going home at the end of this transfer (next week) which is crazy. So I'll be "killing" him and getting another new companion next week. That's the mission for ya. Tuesday we had "mission tour" which was a nice experience. We had Elder Teh of the First Quorum of the Seventy come and speak to us (for a really long time) and then had lunch with them and...

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Change is the Only Constant.

Maligayang Thanksgiving pamilya! Well this email will probably be short, so my apologies in advance - tell you why in a second. A second - so I'm experiencing my first "emergency transfer" today. Elder Jennings is out since he needed to have surgery and I'll be getting my new companion within the next hour. Everyday a surprise here in the mission. Tomorrow we begin our "Mission Tour" with Elder Teh. Not really sure what it is or what it's about, so I'll tell you about that next week. All I know is that he's doing a surprise check up on apartments and I woke up early this morning to begin cleaning the house at 5:00am and we didn't finish until 10:00am. We literally scrubbed and more importantly bleached every part of the house today so it was quite the job and really tiring. It was definitely...

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So Come What May.

Magandang hapon sa inyo pamilya! It's a gorgeous, raining, humid day here in the Philippines. Got so much to share and so little time! A few funny things I wrote down to share about the Philippines first. Sunday was Pacquio fever, the whole nation was literally inside watching. It was a sweet victory for the Philippines! Funerals are weird here, before the funeral they leave the casket open in front of the house until they're tired of seeing it; I was really creeped out by that. Have I told you about toilet paper? Yep, don't have that here. Natives use their hands. Elder Corpuz uses baby wipes. The richer people have this hose thing, kind of like the ones you sometimes see at the sink to wash dishes to... I don't even know, use your imagination. Mom, I learned the rice trick! How to measure...

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Sorry for the Shortness

Magandang araw! Sorry, this is going to be really, really short. My time has really run out because we've been so busy today. I'll make sure to include things that have happened this week in next week's email as well. We knocked on a lot of doors this week and got most of them slammed in our face. It's humbling but at the same time still a good experience. We had a really funny experience with one lady. We were at the door and we could see her washing the dishes. We shouted "Tao po!" because thats what you do here instead of knock (it literally means "Person!") and she didn't respond. We were just like... jeez are you deaf? Finally she came to the door. She was really nice at first. When we started asking her questions, she started responding with really funny answers like: Hey where are...

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The First.

Mabuhay! Magandang "All Saints Day" at "Halloween" sa inyong lahat! Mayroon akong maraming karanasan na nais kong magbahagi sa inyo! Unang-una, kumusta po ba kayo? Puwede po ba akong mag-ingles? This week has been full of changes and surprises. We had a new addition to our house with the end of this transfer. Elder Ablog was transferred out, and Elder Arthur, a Tongan from New Zealand, was transferred in. It's been awesome with him around; the house is definitely a different place! After I emailed you guys last Wednesday, we got to share the rest of the night with the Angoluan family for our dinner appointment. We had previously scheduled it with them because we thought that one of us might be transferred. But as the verdict goes, both of us were staying and they were really happy about...

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Walking on Water and Getting Stoned.

Kumusta po kayo! This week has been CRAZY. This is not an email you're going to want to breeze through - just throwing that out there. First! All the rave here is that Charice is on Glee! That's awesome! I'll never forget Glee. Winter Semester at BYU, all of the girls in my ward got together for this huge girl-watching party every week for Glee. Sarah Kron was like the leader I guess you can say. Anyway of course, if all the girls were there, my friend Mike Swindle (who I'll be living with) and I were there too because it was, well, a jackpot? Anyway we ended up liking the show so it's awesome that a Filipino super star is on there now! Well, the week started out slow. My companion got sick with the weather change so we were in for two days. He couldn't even get out of bed. The typhoon came...

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