1/3/11
So, just like every week in this strange country, it has been an interesting week. To start things off we had exchanges on Tuesday. Elder Scott came to Elder Clark and I went back to San Enrique with Elder Whitman. It was nice to be back with him. Busted out all of our inside jokes again. Our schedule in SE was going to take us to Helbert's house, they are teaching his g-ma, but no one was home, so I didn't get to see him. He would have been really happy to see me.
So, Wednesday I returned to La Carlota to find out that Elder Gruninger was being emergency transfered on Thursday due to girl problems. One of their investigators got this crazy crush on him and was texting them two weeks ago, the office told him to be bold in telling her that that kind of stuff can't happen, and she stopped for a week. So Wednesday about 1:30 she and a friend show up at the house and demand to see E. Gruninger. Elder Clark and I had to deal with them while Grunny hid in our room listening to the conversation. We pulled E. Daniels in to help us too. They were there for an hour before we could even close the door. Then they just sat outside and shouted at the house. They left after about 20 minutes of that. We figured that they would be waiting at the terminal to get to the area, so they couldn't leave. 15 minutes later they came back and just start knocking on the door and shouting.
We spent 15-20 minutes coming up with a plan of escape. Luckily our house has a back door too, and they weren't watching it anymore. So the zone leaders snuck out while we kept an eye on the girls. Then we snuck out too and headed to the sisters apartment. We were doing a last dinner there for E. Gruninger, the Bicol Express we had been planning. Everything went well after that. It was sad to see Elder Gruninger leave on Thursday morning. He's really cool. Glad I had the chance to live in the same house as him and have him as a zone leader. So they took him to the office and will be AP next transfer because the two current APs go home at the end of the transfer.
Thursday Elder Clark was having stomach problems, so we were not able to go out. Elder Clark was in and out of the bathroom. 'Gaboraguet sia! Friday was fun though. Not much work got done. New Years Eve and all. People were all preparing for later that night and we had to be in early. President Tobias was really nice to us and allowed us to watch Disney cartoons and stay up as late as we wanted. So we watched Toy Story 3, Bolt (Elder Clark hadn't seen it), The Incredibles, and Tangled! Tangled was really good! Audio was bad quality so sometimes we had a hard time understanding what as being said, but we loved it! Yay for pirated DVDs!!!!
Answers to mom's questions: As far as church starting late, it always starts late, usually at 9:30 though. But since they still want to get out at the same time we shorten, sometimes just skip, priesthood class. Yeah, it is interesting...
O, typical New Years celebrations here in the Philippines just involve tons of loud ground fireworks (firecrackers) and everyone getting drunker earlier. That's how most people are at least.
Man I miss snow... But I'll get it next year. My happy, and trunky, thought for New Years was that next New Years I'll be home.
Love you all!!!
Elder Jordan Phelps
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuig na, tuig pa
12/27/10
The Bicol Express didn't happen. The sisters were invited to Bacolod to eat at the mission home, so we rescheduled for this Friday, New Years Eve. As for the amount of pork, filipino dishes don't use too much meat, typically. That is one reason why they eat so much rice, if you don't, you don't get full.
The group in our apartment is a great one. We all have so much fun together, goofing off and just having fun. It's a good group. Our part in the Christmas thing was way easy, all we did was sing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful." The sisters wrote a catchy song about being sick in the mission and the interesting recommendations of the doctor. Yeah, just wearing stockings will not fix anything. It was a really funny song, especially for anyone that has visited the doctor here.
So, the warm climate here in getting warmer, moving in to summer here. Well, not really summer, just the dry season, which does make it hotter. It's okay though. There are ways to handle the heat, but you still will sweat like crazy.
Christmas was interesting, that's sure. We played Mah Jong while we took turns calling, then got ready to go to the party in Masville with the Zone Leaders. The party started late, but was still fun. We participated in some of the games.
Church yesterday was...alright. We got to the church just before nine, almost impossible for Ayungon, there were four people there. The building was still locked, and remained that way until 10! The branch president was way late! One of our recent converts (probably the strongest member in the branch) and his investigator family show up at 9:20 ish, and he tells me that he thought that they were late. When church finally got started it went pretty well. We had the 2nd counselor in the district presidency visit for the second week in a row, he spoke a couple of times while I was in San Enrique, he is a good speaker. Simple guy but good teacher and has a really strong testimony.
Well, due to many reasons we didn't get too many days of actual work this week, Christmas Conference, Christmas, and Christmas Eve. But our investigators are still doing well. We are working on finding more too. And visiting the families of our recent converts, many are either less active or nonmembers. That is going well with one of the families. The dad and brother aren't members, so we are teaching them. We saw the dad yesterday and he confirmed our appointment with him tomorrow.
We are going into this next week with confidence and high hopes. We have four investigators to be baptized in two weeks, and they are all doing great.
Well, until next week! I love you all!
Elder Jordan Phelps
PS Tuig na, tuig pa is one year now, one year to go
The Bicol Express didn't happen. The sisters were invited to Bacolod to eat at the mission home, so we rescheduled for this Friday, New Years Eve. As for the amount of pork, filipino dishes don't use too much meat, typically. That is one reason why they eat so much rice, if you don't, you don't get full.
The group in our apartment is a great one. We all have so much fun together, goofing off and just having fun. It's a good group. Our part in the Christmas thing was way easy, all we did was sing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful." The sisters wrote a catchy song about being sick in the mission and the interesting recommendations of the doctor. Yeah, just wearing stockings will not fix anything. It was a really funny song, especially for anyone that has visited the doctor here.
So, the warm climate here in getting warmer, moving in to summer here. Well, not really summer, just the dry season, which does make it hotter. It's okay though. There are ways to handle the heat, but you still will sweat like crazy.
Christmas was interesting, that's sure. We played Mah Jong while we took turns calling, then got ready to go to the party in Masville with the Zone Leaders. The party started late, but was still fun. We participated in some of the games.
Church yesterday was...alright. We got to the church just before nine, almost impossible for Ayungon, there were four people there. The building was still locked, and remained that way until 10! The branch president was way late! One of our recent converts (probably the strongest member in the branch) and his investigator family show up at 9:20 ish, and he tells me that he thought that they were late. When church finally got started it went pretty well. We had the 2nd counselor in the district presidency visit for the second week in a row, he spoke a couple of times while I was in San Enrique, he is a good speaker. Simple guy but good teacher and has a really strong testimony.
Well, due to many reasons we didn't get too many days of actual work this week, Christmas Conference, Christmas, and Christmas Eve. But our investigators are still doing well. We are working on finding more too. And visiting the families of our recent converts, many are either less active or nonmembers. That is going well with one of the families. The dad and brother aren't members, so we are teaching them. We saw the dad yesterday and he confirmed our appointment with him tomorrow.
We are going into this next week with confidence and high hopes. We have four investigators to be baptized in two weeks, and they are all doing great.
Well, until next week! I love you all!
Elder Jordan Phelps
PS Tuig na, tuig pa is one year now, one year to go
Christmas Week
12/20/10
Well, Skype is not going to work this time. None of the computer places in La Carlota are good enough, loud and annoying environments. So we are just going to buy an international sim card and load it up to call you all. We are planning (the four of us) to call Saturday (Christmas) morning so it will be Christmas Eve for you. But if we run out of time some of us will call that night para Christmas morning sa inyo. Can't wait to call you all! Definitely the highlight of the week. We also have Christmas Conference this Thursday, that will be good. We are doing a little performance for it.
The new area is good, very interesting. There are soooo many women in the branch! Almost all the men are inactive. So we are trying to change that. All the less actives we visit have multiple males so we can boost priesthood from 6-7 including us to much more. Yeah, that can be pretty hard, but we will try. The new companion is great. Elder Clark and I decided quite a while ago that we should be companions together, and now we are, and it is great. The four of us in the house are really cool. We have fun talking at the end of the day. There is just one problem with the four of us, I know the most about cooking out of the four. So we have good meals, and some interesting meals. Last night was a good example. We were out of any real food so we got creative. Rice, pepper, italian seasoning, patis (soy sauce), and ketchup. It wasn't as bad as you might think. Basta, we are trying to plan our meals better. We got the sisters (missionaries) that live nearby to make us dinner on Christmas Eve, but we are buying the meat (2 kilos of pork!!) and bringing our own rice.
Sorry about the short email, but we still got a lot to do today, an we have the phone call on Saturday.
Elder Jordan Dean Phelps
Well, Skype is not going to work this time. None of the computer places in La Carlota are good enough, loud and annoying environments. So we are just going to buy an international sim card and load it up to call you all. We are planning (the four of us) to call Saturday (Christmas) morning so it will be Christmas Eve for you. But if we run out of time some of us will call that night para Christmas morning sa inyo. Can't wait to call you all! Definitely the highlight of the week. We also have Christmas Conference this Thursday, that will be good. We are doing a little performance for it.
The new area is good, very interesting. There are soooo many women in the branch! Almost all the men are inactive. So we are trying to change that. All the less actives we visit have multiple males so we can boost priesthood from 6-7 including us to much more. Yeah, that can be pretty hard, but we will try. The new companion is great. Elder Clark and I decided quite a while ago that we should be companions together, and now we are, and it is great. The four of us in the house are really cool. We have fun talking at the end of the day. There is just one problem with the four of us, I know the most about cooking out of the four. So we have good meals, and some interesting meals. Last night was a good example. We were out of any real food so we got creative. Rice, pepper, italian seasoning, patis (soy sauce), and ketchup. It wasn't as bad as you might think. Basta, we are trying to plan our meals better. We got the sisters (missionaries) that live nearby to make us dinner on Christmas Eve, but we are buying the meat (2 kilos of pork!!) and bringing our own rice.
Sorry about the short email, but we still got a lot to do today, an we have the phone call on Saturday.
Elder Jordan Dean Phelps
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