So being out of the MTC is amazing so far. My companion is great he is from the Philippines and speaks 7 languages. English, Tagalog, and 5 other dialects here in the philippines. Its really hard being a missionary here when its so hard to communicate. My Tagalog is improving everyday but they say it takes about 6 months to get it down. One of the hardest things is the sentence structure. Is reversed from English you say the verb first and then you just say the main words that are connected with a linker. Its hard to explain but after a while is actually easy to get the hang of. We have several investigators an some with baptismal dates but right now the numbers in our area are down because the missionary here before me just went home and since he only had a few weeks left he slacked off and was disobedient. My companion and I are working very hard to get the numbers up. We met a family the other day who is going to let us come teach them this week and when we went to go see them yesterday we met the people who live right by them who also has allowed us to go teach them. So we have two potential investigators which are both families. We mainly teach a lot of less active members because we are short on investigators.
The city is crazy I have never walked so close to moving cars before. There are homeless people everywhere and when we are proselyting at night we see homeless people sleeping on cardboard boxes in the streets. The neighborhoods are crazy. The homes here are super small and most are old. We teach one family who is active except one of them who we are trying to get to come back to church who lives in a home the size of my bedroom. When out on the streets we walk in small ally ways that lead to neighborhoods that are like giant apartment complexes made of falling apart concrete, rotten wood, rusted metal slats, and some even have portions constructed out of blankets. Of course there are some here who live in nicer conditions but nothing like at home. Our apartment is super nice though. Our shower doesn't work so we shower with a bucket of cold water but our apartment is large and clean without any cockroaches ( mga ipis) We eat rice and oatmeal everyday and rarely get dinner appointments.
We saw General conference yesterday it was great I took notes on every talk and learned a lot. A bunch of the members from this stake and all the missionaries met at the church to watch conference all day. Some of the sisters made us all food and yes it was rice. So my new p day is Monday so I wont be emailing on Fridays anymore and the days are going by so fast its crazy. I feel like we are back in bed 4 or 5 hours after we woke up.
The other day someone called me Jo that's what us american are referred to here and some one yelled out "Welcome to the Philippines" as I walked by. Also little kids will chase us and say "look americano americano!"
Things are great here right now Im working hard to learn the language but still of course have a long way to go. I LOVE YOU ALL AND CANT WAIT TO HEAR FROM YOU AGAIN!!!!!! GOOD JOB on your castle Rylee and on your cake Devon!!! I cant wait to try it save some for when I get home!!
LOVE YOU ALL!!!!
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