Elder Phelps is Getting Smaller

Hey all!

Sounds like you all are having a blast in Cali and Disneyland! I remember that, good times. It’s probably actually cooler (temp) there than here. It’s soooo hot, and it’s just gonna get hotter. So after the first two weeks here getting tons of comments about how big I am because to a filipino I’m huge. (20 points to whoever gets the movie reference. I’ll even give you the real quote “To a ten year-old, I’m huge.” I’ll decide a use for the points later…) But now I have received multiple comments that “Elder Phelps is getting smaller.” I’ve gotten it from members and other missionaries. It’s true too, I haven’t been able to find a scale, but all my clothes are fitting looser and my belt wasn’t doing anything anymore. Luckily I had ordered a new one my first week here. It’s an awesome caribaou horn belt. Totally bringing a bunch of those home. I’ll probably send one to Andrew for his birthday, they are awesome!

Wow, this last week has been a rush. Lots happened and there was a lot of travelling done. First last Monday we went down to Bacolod, pretty normal. Tuesday we have District Meeting in Victorias, which is 45 mins. – 1 hour, depending on the bus, south of Cadiz. That’s still pretty normal. Then on Wednesday we had Zone Conference down in Bacolod. That lasted most of the day. It was fun, informative, and especially spirtitual. Thursday was just Thursday, nothing special there. Friday we had a CSP (Community Service Project) in Victorias with the rest of the zone. We planted young mangrove trees. They grow on the beach and protect the shore from erosion by waves. It has to be done at low tide so there’s no water. That was fun and took up the morning. In the afternoon we had to stay in Victorias for a while, as District Leader Elder Claven interviews candidates for baptism, the sisters in Victorias had three that needed to be interviewed. We got the zone leaders to help speed it up. Then the zone leaders came with us to Cadiz to interview our baptismal candidate, Kristine Romero. She was baptized on Saturday and it was a good experience. We visited the family last night, we do every Sunday, and taught about the temple and family history work. Kristine is the only member in the family, for now.

Dinner with members, we hardly ever have dinner at all, just always working. There are a lot of members that would gladly have us over for dinner, but we usually have appointments. The first counselor in the bishopric and his family and some friends always do a family home evening Sunday night and they have dinner afterward, we are always invited and have been a coulpe of times when appointments fell through. Other than that haven’t had any, always busy.

This coming week is a very special week. Transfer week!! We’ll find out on Tuesday who’s transferring. Not where they are going or who their comp will be, but just that they are leaving their current area. Then on Friday Transfer Meeting is held at the Galo Street Chapel, chapel next to the mission office. So that will be an interesting thing to find out tomorrow. I don’t know what to think about the possibility that I might leave Cadiz already, I don’t think it’s likely, but still possible. I love Cadiz and the people here, I can’t leave them yet.

One amazing thing happened yesterday. We had an investigator that is an Iglesia ni Cristo come to church! I’ve talked about him before, and about the Iglesia. He is a very open guy. Most Iglesia wont say a word to you, but we’ve been in his house, taught him, he’s halfway through the Book of Mormon, AND he came to part of church the FIRST time we invited him! He was well dressed also. It’s just so amazing. He’ll be baptized some time soon. Oh, he’s actually questioning the Iglesia, which is like death for them. Such a cool little man.

Well, that’s what’s up in the life of Elder Phelps. Until next week!

A New Apartment

Hey all!

Sorry about the late email. We were way rushed yesterday and had to push it to Tuesday.

This last week has been really interesting. Lots of exciting things happened. We moved appartments on Saturday and that took most of the day, so we had to run around to our appointments and tell them we weren’t going to be able to make it and reschedule. The moving went really well. The new apartment is much bigger and has a balcony! It’s really dirty though… I guess they didn’t bother to clean it to make it more presentable to possible renters… It also has some interesting marks on the walls; crosses of dugo sang manok (chicken blood). It’s a traditional blessing on the home that the previous renters had done, we are working on cleaning them off. It’s quieter at night and in the morning. At the old one we had the bowling ally in the evening and the small manokan (rooster farm) in the mornings. The roosters just go and go starting around 3:30 -4 am.

Sounds like you all had a good week too. Lots going on back home. Our investigators are doing well. We have a baptism this Saturday, Christine Romero. She’s gonna be the first of her family, but the rest will follow shortly. We are gonna have some major improvements with investigators in the next few weeks, most of them should be coming to church by then. It’ll be awesome.

On Friday last week we did exchanges with the Elders in Manapla. Elder Reynolds came up here and we went around to our appointments. Elder Claven went down there. It was an interesting experience and I learned a lot. Sorry, it’s a short email this week. So, until next week! Hope you all have a good week!

Elder Phelps

Pretty Good Here Too

Hey!

Sounds like you all had a fun week. It’s been pretty good here too. We seem to go to Bacolod every other P-day or so. SM is the best place to get all of our shopping done. Bacolod is 63 km from Cadiz, however many miles that is. If we get a 1-Stop Ceres it doesn’t take too long, fun ride. Bringing stuff back isn’t bad, usually just have two bags and just put them in the over-head storage on the bus, then trike it to the apartment. It’s fun to see a lot of the other missionaries at SM when we go down. We are heading down again after email for shopping of course and we have a zone activity in Bata, which is just north of Bacolod, this afternoon.

We don’t really do much official “sightseeing,” but everything here is a sight to see. It’s pretty crazy and there’s always something that surprises and possibly shocks me every day. When we are out of the apartment on P-day we still need to be in our white shirts and ties. In the apartment we can be in “normal” clothes. The humidity and the constant sweat are pretty bad. To accurately describe the sweat I must reference a movie. So, in “Airplane!” when he’s trying to land the plane at the end and the sweat is just pouring like a waterfall down his face, yeah, that’s what it’s like, at least once a day I’ve had that experience. It burns your eyes.

So, my week. Well, it was pretty good. We got to meet with a lot of our investigators, but we were also punted a couple of times. The ones that we did see are doing really well. They are all progressing at different speeds, but it’s good. We actually had eight of them attend sacrament yesterday! It was way cool. Brother Romero had bought a white shirt and was wearing some nice pants, huge step for him. It’ll be awesome if next week he has a tie, we are thinking of giving him one. One of our investigators that I had doubts about in the beginning is turning out to be nearly golden. We taught them the Restoration and they understood it really well, we gave them a Book of Mormon relatively early and asked them to read the Introduction, standard reading assignment. When we went back to check on them the mother had read all the way to 1 Nephi 3! Including the testimonies! She’s now on 1 Nephi 9 and has an amazing testimony of the Book of Mormon already. She’s encouraging her kids to read it. They use the time excuse with school and all, but she says that they can find time and it’ll help them. It’s just awesome.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them but there’s this religion called the Iglesia Ni Cristo. It was founded by a guy who left our church. They’re interesting and some aren’t very nice. They basically copied us in a lot of ways. So, we have an investigator that’s an Iglesia member, he’s way receptive though and really thinks about it. He’s this awesome little guy, he’s pretty old. He’s progressing well too. I was shocked because I’ve heard lots of the horror stories about dealings with the Iglesia.

Well, that’s it for this last week, time to start a new one!
Love you all! Elder Phelps.

Exhausted but excited for the next day

Hey Everyone!

It’s always good to get your emails. Sorry for not emailing earlier this morning, we didn’t have much time and decided to delay email until later. We went down to Bacolod today for shopping, they have SM there. Which is like Wal-Mart meets Gateway. Not quite that extreme, but close.

There strength of the members here is good, those that come to church are all pretty strong. But there is a HUGE amount of inactives. More people actually attend the Branch than the Ward here in Cadiz. Everyone is really nice. Every one says “Good Evening” and such to us. Some just want to talk to us and listen to us because we are the only “kanos” (Americans) for miles, AND we speak their language. I’ve become famous in one of the neighborhoods with the little kids. They all marvel at how tall I am and follow us around. Many have measured themselves to me.

Hmm, parent-teacher conferences, don’t miss those at all. Sounds like Kat had a great time at the dance (Jr. Prom). I’m glad everyone is alright (car accident after).

So, transportation in the Philippines… There’s a bus company called Ceres Liner, They offer services between all the different cities. They have a terminal in most of the larger cities. If you aren’t near a terminal, just flag one down as it goes down the road. So we use Ceres to get to Bacolod and District Meeting in Victorias. And for the Primary kids, yes, the buses have a sort of magic quality to them. There are hardly any cars in Cadiz, pretty much just Trikes. A Trike is a motorcycle that has a sidecar attatched. They are personally owned and the drivers just pick up people and take them where they want to go. There are also Jeepneys, none in Cadiz though.

I was wondering how long it would take dad to check mom’s email (last week).  I hadn’t thought about it until after I sent it. This one I’ll send to dad though. That’s cool that dad presented to the Primary about my mission here. To Natalie, Balut is what it is called (partially developed duck egg), and no, I haven’t eaten it yet. I might, but it’s not very likely. Oh, fish paste is also a type of dish here, haven’t seen that one yet.

Well, this last week has been long and tiring.  I’ve been exhausted at the end of every day. I’m always excited for the next day though and all the people we get to visit and teach. One of my favorite families, and we really shouldn’t have favorites, is the Romero family. It’s the father and mother and two daughters, Christine, 16, and Donna, 14. Christine and Rodolfo (the dad) attend church the most. Christine has decided to get baptized and Brother Rodolfo is okay with it. The others are still working on deciding. It’s clear that they will sometime though.

That’s really all I have time for right now. So bye until next week! Oh, I’m gonna include some pictures with next weeks, hopefully… if the email isn’t too big.

Answers to Mom's Questions

Hey Mom!

It seems we are both having problems emailing! Oh, the church now does email through google so I have a new email address (jordan.phelps@myldsmail.net). This is much nicer. So the internet was having problems letting me load the pages I needed to set up my new email, then just when I was about in, the café lost power for a couple of minutes! But all is well now. Dad told me about reading my email at the third Sunday, that’s pretty funny. I am farther ahead (time zones) than Stuart is (in Romania). I’m glad Grandpa is doing well.

I told Elder Claven that dad found that Facebook page and he said he hopes there’s nothing embarassing on there. Yeah, he is pretty cool. The language is going okay, because it is pretty similar I can inderstand a lot of what is said, but I cant really say much back yet. I can respond in Tagalog though. Everyone understands Tagalog and basic English, they teach them both in the schools. There’s this four year old that speaks amazing English, but he watches Cartoon Network pretty much all day. He’s funny.

You have a lot of questions, and I’ll do my best to answer. You’ve got the height thing about right (shorter than my shoulder). We sing a standing rest hymn every Sunday in sacrement and I am reminded how much taller I am than every one else. And I hit my head on things constantly. Riding on trikes and buses is always interesting and uncomfortable, it’s all too small. Oh, so all the stories you might hear about Filipino traffic are probably true, it’s some crazy stuff. The only way to describe the bus rides is it is like the Knight Bus in Harry Potter, that kind of driving and the bus is packed with people. There’s always room for one more. I’ve seen trikes packed with people. Typically they have five people on them, but I’ve seen some with close to ten! They are on top and hanging onto the sides.

Sounds like you all have a busy schedule, I’m sure you can get by without me driving. Visiting the “old” people is what we do sometimes. We visit a lot of less actives. The membership is huge here, but the amount of active members is really small. The wards and branches here struggle with organization, things like ward council and PEC.

So far I love the food and havent eaten anything all that strange. Though I have come to hate the smell of fish! Dried fish is big here in Cadiz, the have huge fields with boards of fish on them drying in the sun. Fish is big in the costal cities, which Cadiz is. Our appartment is a very small “L.” Study/ living room, kitchen, and tiny “bathroom” and bedroom. We usually do our own meals, oatmeal for breakfast then we try and vary lunch, usually don’t have a dinner, just work right through. I’ve never really been hungry for dinner anyway. We do laundry by hand. Soak it in a big tub and rub it together, then hang it out to dry. I suppose Cadiz is about the size of half of West Valley City, with just as many, maybe even more, people.
Things have been going good. We have two sisters with a baptism date for the end of march. The missonaries had been teaching the family before I got here, and commited the sisters to be baptized. The parents are undecided but are letting their daughters do it. They’ve all come to chruch, but I guess they have some concerns.We’ll be seeing them again later this week.

Well, hope you all have a good week! Time to read Dad’s other email!

Take care!
Elder Phelps