Survived the War.

Maningong Bagong Taon!
Naku! Well, I survived (barely) my first New Year's here in the Philippines. I'll get to that in a second.
Last week was pretty good. We were able to do service for a naka-buntis (pregnant) sister in the ward and ripped out this huge vine from her house. It was a lot of fun to get out and help someone. Elder Tengelsen really enjoys helping the members and getting to know them and I'm really glad we had the opportunity. It was kind of rough because they don't have all the tools we have in the U.S. for making gardening (or anything for that matter) easy - like rakes or what have you. So all I was really left with was a pair of hedgers and my two hands with my companion. It was fun though and we had a great time.
New year's was CRAZY. I can't even explain. I almost died.
Fireworks are illegal here but everyone still has them and uses them, and they would be classified as super-illegal in the states. The little kids set them off and walking around that night was seriously like walking through a battlefield. Things blowing up left and right. If my companion wasn't with me, I probably would have gotten really hurt. We had dinner with Cecelia, one of our converts, and of course, Bishop Angoluan's family - our second home here. They both made really good meals. Sister Jen was even sick that day but still did her best to prepare a huge, great meal for us. We talked about all the Filipino superstitions like eating noodles for a long life and fruits in the shapes of balls, jumping at midnight to grow, and making it really loud at midnight to get rid of the bad spirits - just stuff like that. I explained how we did all that in the states as tradition, not as superstition. My companion really got a kick out of all of it. We had a taxi driver that day say how it's a New Year so everyone should change and we'll all be happy. We won't need police and we won't need laws if everyone was just good - too bad it's not that easy. When midnight struck, we couldn't sleep because it sounded like a war was going on outside. Things blowing up left and right in the sky and on the streets for hours. When I woke up the next morning, I could barely see outside because of all the smoke. It was insane! The sky was really lit up that night, and it was truly the craziest new year I've had so far.
Hope you were all safe! Miss you tons! Only have 30 seconds left so gotta run! Happy New Year!

"Epically,"
Elder Corpuz