Magandang hapon po sa inyong lahat!
Kamusta po kayo na?!
What a great surprise, it's been another busy and incredibly fast week. Monday-Wednesday morning we were in Tuguegarao, which meant 2 nights of having to bum at a different missionaries' apartment and with the awesome mattresses that leave a nice coil spring mark in the back when you wake up. I forgot what it is like to have a mattress that my feet don't hang off. On Monday night we had a "Zone Home Evening" which was fun for being able to get to know some missionaries a little better. After district meetings on Tuesday, we just bummed around in Tugue because by the time we would have got back we'd just have to leave again for the fireside. The fireside was really interesting. It's pretty sad that even after growing up in Utah my whole life, I have to come all the way to the Philippines to see leaders of our church. Before the fireside started, I made a fool of myself when Elder Nielsen (Quorum of the 70 and area presidency in Philippines) came up to greet the missionaries and when he asked me where I was from, I answered him in Tagalog. Then when he asked where at in Utah I answered again in Tagalog. You'd think my brain would have switched gears as soon as it saw another white person, or at least after the first response in Tagalog. When he walked away I thought, "Wow. That was dumb." Oh well. Life goes on I guess. I guess I've been speaking Tagalog too long! If I'm already this bad at speaking English at my 8 month mark, it should be really interesting after 24 months! Sis. Dibb (Young Women general president) took the majority of the time talking about Thomas S. Monson because she knows him a little better than most people being a daughter. It was really interesting to hear aspects of his life that most people don't really know. Did you know his favorite color is yellow? Or that every night when he gets home he feeds his chickens? Dad should be interested to know that he is also a WWII buff. She even left it for an open mic for anyone to ask any kind of question about President Monson. In the end, it left me realizing that even though he is our Prophet in this day to lead and guide all of us, he is also just a normal person that does some every day things and has hobbies. I think we all sometimes imagine him in a suit everyday either behind a desk or in the temple that does nothing else. As missionaries, we also managed to get a picture with Elder Nielsen before he left but Sis. Dibb was swarmed pretty quick with everyone that was there so I never got to say hi.
I feel dad's pain of being sick these few days. On Friday morning I woke up to a nice little surprise. Over a time of about 5 hours, I had thrown up 5 times and diarrhea 6. Knowing I was losing fluid very quickly I kept drinking water, but it would just come right back up soon after it went down. Sometimes it was even cool still on the way back up from coming from the fridge, which left a nice cooling effect in my nose and back of my throat. :) To make it even better I had a fever of 102 and my whole body was aching. Pretty soon it was all I could do to lay in bed with the fan and make trips back and forth to the toilet then lay back down because I was so weak. Who knows what I ate or drank because Elder Aguila was fine, and nothing really seemed risky, but it was pretty obvious that everything on my insides wanted to be on my outside. Sis. Carlos said that if the vomit/diarrhea kept up too much longer, I would have had to go to the hospital to get an IV. Darn, I missed my chance for a field trip! Haha. I couldn't eat hardly anything except a banana on Friday, then on Saturday I was able to graduate to plain toast. Needless to say, I didn't have any strength or ability to work for 3 days because I was so weak from not having anything in my stomach/being sick. On Sunday I went to church but then came back afterwards. It was weird only being able to work in my area for a day and a half for the whole week. I'm all better now though and still in the process of eating to try to catch up for lost time. It did give me a good chance to read though and I read pretty much all of Our Heritage in my downtime. Poor Elder Aguila was going crazy from being locked inside for so long that we arranged for someone to come babysit me while he went out and worked with some other ward members. That's pretty much all I was able to do this week!
Seeing the pictures of Milo, I couldn't help but notice how much of a fur ball he really is. And of course, his cowlick on the top of his head.
That's sad to hear that Tia is on her downward slope and on her way to "processing" pretty soon. That's cool though that there is an extra horse to fill the ranks and help haul the crap up the mountain. And dad, hopefully it will be a little while longer before you are on your way to Mexico for "processing". Haha
It was cool to hear a little update from Ben. If you want to send them, I'll read them if I have time. It was interesting that some things just don't change much-as many people are baptized, if they don't get baptized for the right reason, they're just going to go straight into inactivity. Which is exactly why earlier in the year the area presidency changed the focus of missionary work here to teaching less actives and recent converts. They said that over 659,000 people in the Philippines were baptized last year alone, but church attendance is still the same as it was a couple years ago. We don't want numbers, we want quality. I shouldn't say want because after all, we NEED quality. The Lord doesn't want starters, he needs finishers. Being a member of the church isn't necessarily easy, but neither was Christ's life or His sacrifice for all of us. And yes, that even includes all the people that don't want to accept it.
Good luck on your adventures this week,
Mahal Kita,
Elder Nay
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