Merry Christmas!

Two post in 1 day! I had a hard time writing last weeks post so it took me longer than just cutting and pasting Elder Williams email.  It was very emotional and every time I started writing I would cry so I had to put it off.

We were very blessed this Christmas to Skype with Elder Williams and get some time emailing! BONUS!
I need to explain the first part of Elder Williams email. He sent pictures while he was Skyping. These are pictures of Balut, chicken embryo cooked right before it hatches. He was telling us about some of the gross things he has eaten over the last few months. I asked him to not eat Balut because is was so disgusting. His answer was "will see".....

I hope you liked the pictures. ;)

We just got done looking at them!!! That is so GROSS!!! Did it taste gross?


I didn't eat it. it’s so disgusting.

ok good! That is really gross. We watched that on bizarre foods and it was the most disgusting thing next to the worms out of tree branches. Do many of the native elders eat those?

All the native elders eat balut. It's so gross. There’s an elder here from Arizona assigned in Bamban (the mountains, which means they're about 15 years behind the rest of the Philippines) and he's eaten cooked blood.
So far I’ve had boiled Herron eggs, snails (straight out of their bukid), frog, and small intestine of a pig

I bet the frog was interesting. The cooked blood would be absolute disgusting. That actually sounds worse than Balut. Not many people could eat that kind of food. Do the native elders like the candy you get?


Everyone here loves American candy. I'd like to assume candy is okay on the shelf as well, but it’s not. Literally everything but oil and soy sauce goes in the fridge, or something else will eat it before I will

Are you still able to run?

yeah we run sometimes, but missionary work is hard. I haven't felt rested since before my birthday

That is good! Missionary work is hard and if you were not being a good missionary then you would feel rested. You have so much time in your life for running and the Lord will bless you for being a good missionary.

I love being a missionary. I feel like missionaries have more of an eternal perspective than anyone else, but we rarely think past today, because it’s not important. we don’t have tests to study for or projects to complete, literally our only concern is our next appointment. It’s awesome.
I'm also really mad right now because the space bar just sucks on this keyboard

That makes Dad and I happy to hear that. You understand the purpose and know what is important and that is really the best part. Nothing makes parents happier than happy children.

Special Moments and True Christmas Spirit

I have spent the last few hours trying to decide what to write this week on the blog. Elder Williams' email this week was very short and too personal to share with the world.

I have decided instead to share a story about Elder Williams and Christmas spirit.

To start I need to give you a little background leading up to this "Christmas spirit"
Last year Kolton was given an opportunity to run cross country and track at college. He received several scholarship offers and ended up choosing TVCC in Ontario, Oregon. Ontario is about 5 hours away from Idaho Falls and it was very difficult for our family to have him so far away. We spent many hours driving to meets in different cities to watch him run his races. Many people thought we were crazy for investing so much time and money just to be able to spent an hour or two watching him run a race. Looking back now it was worth every trip we took and all the sleep deprivation.
While in Oregon Kolton was in a community that had very few LDS members. It was difficult for him to adjust to a life where the church was so small. The experience forced him to rely on the Lord and find his own testimony. The cross country team traveled many weekends so church could not always be attended. As a parent I worried about this many times, and found me being a pushy mom about religion for the first time ever. "Are you going to institute?" " Did you go to sacrament today?"....I am sure it became quite annoying.
Kelly and I got the chance to travel with his college team on the bus to Portland to NWACC'S. After 48 straight hours with his team it gave us a unique look at him and his testimony of the church. The difference between his college team and the high school team became very evident. One of the most amazing traditions his high school team did was to gather in a circle and pray before each meet. This tradition started back when Kolton was in high school and continues on today. Being at this meet with his college team was similar to the high school State meet. One difference was there was no prayer offered by the team. I knew at that moment Kolton had to pray on his own and find out if he really believed the teachings of the gospel. As the weekend went on many of the other team member kept teasing Kolton all because of his standards. I loved hearing this because I knew Kolton was living his standards, his testimony was growing and he was finding out what was important in life.
Soon after the weekend in Portland Kolton came home for Christmas and we could tell he had grown up and his life was changing. Instead of waking up Christmas morning and opening gifts, he gathered his two sisters and deiced they were going to let Kelly and I sleep in and make us breakfast. They worked like little elves in the kitchen trying to be so very quiet while making a very large breakfast. When our children woke us up they had made the most amazing breakfast of waffles, fruit, eggs, smoothies, and bacon. The breakfast was amazing and it totally changed the atmosphere of our home on Christmas. The focus of Christmas was on each other and not on the gifts under the tree. Even after we cleaned up breakfast we waited to open the gifts and enjoyed the feeling of peace in our home. I know everyone could feel the Christmas spirit in our home that day.
Our little boy was growing into a man and he realized these were the final glimpses of his childhood. He was beginning to recognize what was truly important in life.

As most parents know your children appreciate you more as they get older and the reward for all the hard work has payed off in sometimes just small moments.

12-11-11

HELLO!! :)

You are really early..how are you?

pretty good. I found out we can use skype on our P-day, which will be Christmas for you

I am so excited!!! Where do you have access to Skype?  Do you go to a members home or can you do that at the internet cafe?
What time can you Skype?

Dad wants to know why you didn't get transferred?
How often do you talk to the mission Pres?
Do you ever get to leave San Clemente or Cailming area?
What happened during your week?

Why are you so early?  This is fun because everyone is awake!

I will be able to use Skype in camiling, probably between 10:00am and 4:00pm my time at some super sketchy internet cafe. It's incredibly rare to find anyone, much less a member, with a personal computer. i can set up an account here but it would probably be more effective if you did it for me instead.

I almost never talk to the president, but I email him every week about the work here. The pictures attached are of the three people who got baptized on Saturday. One was a nanay whos' daughter is a member, the other two were eight year old kids who haven't been baptized.

I almost never leave Camiling or San Clemente, but for transfer day we went to Tarlac, its a huge city. I've been there twice in the twelve weeks I've been in the Philippines. I didn't get transferred because E. Casilac, my trainer, had been in San Clemente for 6 months, and that almost never happens so he was guaranteed to leave. Also if I were to get transferred, that would mean two brand new elders would go to that area. and that does happen, but its rare and totally sucks because nobody knows the area.

I don't know what to write about, everything is so normal to me its hard to know what to say. But on the bright side, i see about as many random strangers in a week as you would in a summer of vacations

We just love to hear about your week...So many crazy things happen to you. The town looks small enough it looks like you can get to know everyone.
How many other people do you email regularly?
Did you get any packages this week?
Kenz needs dates of and how many baptisms?

Every week I generally email you, my mission president, sometimes rowland and sometimes Alex and Caroline. About 578934 people told me I'd get letters and emails from them, but as of now, awan. (Thats an Ilokano word for "nothing.")

No packages yet, but maybe tomorrow? we have training in camiling with the AP's so maybe they'll bring it if there is one.

Here's all my baptisms:

Nov 20-1

Nov 27-1

Dec 10-1

The kids in the picture are super cute!!  You should just bring one of them home in your suitcase when you come.
Are you still liking the food?
Do you have any pictures with you at the Internet Café that you could upload and send?

The food is... interesting. I don;t mind it though. I would love to take a kid home with me, they are so great here. I actually rarely see mangoes, theres about 3 different kinds of bananas and papaya everywhere
my time is up

Mahal na mahal na mahal ko kayo! 

 Elder Williams

5 month mark!

What kind of plugs do you have for electricity?
We have really lame plugs that run 110 or something. no triples just doubles only.

What is your favorite sweet to eat in the Philippines? 

My favorite sweet to eat is Frootees, the candy I sent home ayoko kung bakit hindi nila gusto. But I also drink this stuff called "Chuckie", it's like the better version of Yoohoo.

What new Tagalog words have you learned?
As far as new words go, nothing new i feel like sharing, but the following words all mean rice, but it depends on the context how they're used:
bigas

palay

saing

kanin

And the word kanin also means "to eat." Cool right?

How are the youth in the Ward/Branch?  Are you making friends with them?

The youth here are great. generally every Saturday morning all of them go to the church and play games and just hang out.

What are some things that happened in your week?

Here's what happened this week:

Monday I ate pig liver. It tasted like... pig liver. It was like I had these subconscious expectations of what it would be like, and every one of them was fulfilled in the first bite. I don't recommend it. Somewhere in the Philippines had an earthquake, my desk was shaking a few days ago, and shaking pretty bad. But nothing happened to us.

There's a kid who's brother just got back from a mission, so we visit there a lot. This kid is 8 or 9, and his parents bought him an air soft gun. He spends the vast majority of his time shooting his dads chickens until  he runs out of bullets, then finds them all and does it over again.

We visited an investigator a few days ago who was super lasing and wanted us to teach him. We told him we'd come back another day and mentioned that alak and cigarillio are totally bawal, so he says to us "No, i don't smoke. Pero..... alak. gusto ko. I am... drink."

I feel like the more alcohol a Filipino has in him, the better he is at English.

My new companion is elder Abuan, he's so great. with me and elder casilac, we never had problems, but it was just kind of... kaiba sometimes because we were never comfortable with each other. Me and elder abuan get along so well, kahit minsan 'di-ko alam kung ano sinasabi niya sa akin.

I'm slowly starting to learn how insignificant time is. After this transfer, I will have been a missionary six months. That means I'm 25% done, even though I just started because its still summer time here. Last Thursday a bunch of new missionaries showed up, I feel so bad for them. I hated my mission for the first six weeks. 

On Wednesday our neighbors killed a chicken in their front yard. The dad sliced its neck while his son held the chicken in his arms. Such a beautiful bonding moment between a father and son, right?

HELLO!
I am glad you like your new companion?  Does that mean you stayed in San Clemente?  Time does go by very fast!  We keep thinking that every week.  I know when you were in Oregon it went by faster than we thought.  The chicken story reminds me of the time when "the guys" killed the turkey for thanksgiving.....The picture with of the families living under the bridge is sad.  I am sure you see so much poverty.  Are you sending anymore pictures this week?

Yeah i am still in san clemente, for at least 6 more weeks. I got a package today with the maps.  My new companion is great. this week was stressful because I had to take on all the responsibility of leading him around the area, but it wasn't too bad. 

 

11-27-11

Last week we had a crazy busy week last week so we did not post.  This will be a double post from last week. Check out the new pictures I posted on the picture page.
11-20-11
This has been such an incredible week. Maybe I mentioned this last week but Sundays are the reason I don't hate missionary work. Every day it's humid, hot, and we walk everywhere.
 But then it's Sunday morning and we get to see the results from our efforts the last week. Yesterday we had two part-member families show up to church. The parents in both families were baptized over 10 years ago and their kids were never baptized, but they want them to be baptized, so its been no problem visiting them. I wish I could express with words how happy I was when I saw both families show up to sacrament meeting. I've been pretty happy before, but that might have been the happiest moment of my life. The joy that was inside of me was of such high quality I cannot describe it.
Speaking of church, i think I told you before how nobody cares when its a sunday, right? yesterday I came to the conclusion that in our church building, between 9am and 12pm sunday mornings, there is, at any given time, at least three children in places they shouldn't be doing things they shouldn't do, and twice as many parents who couldn't care less.

 

11-27-11

Last week we played with someones pet monkey. And we trekked into the jungle to harvest bamboo for a member in someone else's area. My companion is probably getting transferred this Thursday, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I really like him and we had great success together, but he has such a thick accent I can't understand when he talks to me.

I also learned the angel on top of the salt lake temple is 12 and 1/2 feet tall, in case you were wondering.

I found out this week why there are a surprising number of Muslims in the Philippines. The smart ones do business in places like Saudi and move to the Philippines when one of two things happen: 

1. When their operation has been found out and he doesn't want to get caught, so he takes his family to an obscure location in a grass hut without an address. 

2. He gets too old to work and moves here because everything is so cheap he can live like a king the rest of his life. 

I got your letters about the dance and the carpet with the mustard. That's easily the best story I've ever heard.

Hope everything is well.

Love,

Elder Williams
 PS: I got the planking pictures today! I cannot tell you how happy they made me. And they were some of the most legit planking pictures I've ever seen in my life.

are you still there???? 

yes! are you?

YES!!! you are early!  I was just going to get on and write you our weekly email.  We were sad we missed you last week.  But the emails did not get to my phone until 4:30am but the time said 12:40.  weird.  How is your week?  This week is transfers?  so we wont hear from you until early next week.

actually they changed it so we will email every Monday. the reason I'm early this week is because we don't have meetings anymore on Mondays. the reason i was late last week is because of the thanksgiving dinner. so this is probably going to be about the time i will email you every week from now on.

Extra Bonus!

We received a package from Elder Williams in the mail today.  He sent some cookies, native money (peso), and 2 SD cards full of pictures and video.  The video is from his travels to Philippines and of the Typhoons that hit San Clemente.

 

sorry this email is so late, we went to a waterfall today as a Zone, I'll send a bunch of pictures. Also on the walk to the computer shop just now a random filipino waiting in line at a street vendor gave me a high five, more than likely because I'm white. It was pretty cool.

This has been an incredible week. It has been so wonderful to see the people who are prepared to hear  what we have to offer. I always feel on Friday mornings during weekly planning that we haven't done nearly enough work during the week  to be planning for the next week, but Sunday evenings we count up how much work we really have done and its amazing. This has easily been the best week we've ever had. I feel like Sunday mornings at church is the time when we see how effective our work has been for the last week, shown by how many less actives and investigators come to church. Yesterday three less active families we have been visiting for weeks now finally decided to come back to church. We also had 5 investigators come to church, which is the most we've ever had. Our attendance this week was roughly 120, and average is about 90. This week we have a baptism, and another one is planned for next week. Both of them are young men who have incredible faith. One of them has been taught by missionaries since April, because  he had problems before with the word of wisdom, especially when he was with his friends. But every time we visit him he tells us how  he wants to stop and be baptized so he can serve a mission. We also found an incredible amount of new investigators, and each of them are truly anxious to learn more, and not just being polite by letting us visit them. Establishing credibility and trust with our new investigators is actually relatively easy, most people, if not all, have some sort of belief or faith in Jesus Christ.

The waterfall was so cool, we met in Bamban, an area where two elders work (everyone calls it Outer Darkness because the work there is pangit talaga and the leadership is just as bad.) After all the missionaries arrived we loaded into the back of a big truck and climbed a mountain for about twenty minutes, then a twenty minute hike. I've seen a lot of cool places, but this waterfall rivals Upper Palisades. 

I miss snow so much. I wish more than anything I could go snowboarding right now. But I'm not within 1000 miles of a place where I could do that. Thanks for sending the redvines, I also miss those a lot. I absolutely love it here and actually wouldn't mind living here if I could find a job that paid dollar for dollar what it would pay in America, but its nice to see things that are native to america.

I've been trying to get pictures of my mafia neighbor, but its difficult. I'll send some as soon as I can.

11-6-11

We have hit the four month mark!  Does that mean time will keep going fast?

Elder Williams,

Happy 4 months!  It is day light savings weekend, do you use that in the Philippines?  We got an extra hour of sleep last night!
We have been watching bizarre foods from the Philippines, WOW!  I am sure you are not eating such crazy things. The one thing that is super gross is Balot, it is the duck egg that is 16 days fertilized so essentially a baby duck boiled like a hardboiled egg.   what do you typically eat daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

I don’t think they have daylight savings here, I haven’t heard anything about that.
usually I have a typical American breakfast, pancakes or toast with eggs and some juice or chocolate milk. Lunch is rice and whatever they make hot dogs out of or mincemeat from cans. Generally dinner is the same, unless we go to a members home, then we have whatever they killed that afternoon. But I've eaten some pretty gross stuff. Herring eggs, pig intestines, etc. Last week an Elder in our district bought an ulam for us and we had them over to our house for lunch. It was pork, I think. But nothing like you'd see in America. The lady who gave it to us had it sitting out in the open under a tarp and some bamboo poles. She cut off a piece for us from a huge piece that was probably pulled right off a dead pig that morning. As I was eating it, I noticed thats exactly what she did. It was cooked and everything, but I saw on the bottom the meat, then a layer of fat, then the skin.

The skin still had pig hair on it.

I have been trying for the last 8 weeks to love the food and the culture, but this was just too much for me. Easily the grossest thing I've ever seen.

That being said, they do things here that I wonder why we don't do them in America. For Example, they use a spoon instead of a knife for everything. Nobody eats steak here so no problem. And it's incredibly useful when I get to the bottom of a bottle of Coconut Jam. A spoon gets into those awful, almost cruel corners of a jar. PLus eating rice is way more effective, I would highly suggest that if you are going to continue eating rice. There's also this thing called Ice Candy, which is sort of new to me still. It's like Otter Pops, but they are homemade and they put weird things in it like beans.
My tagalog is getting better, and consequently so is my English, because I can talk to my companion in Tagalog now and not that awful English I used a few weeks ago. Two days ago we went to one of our areas, and we literally walked back in time. Most people here have electricity and homes made of concrete. Its (generally) more civilized that I thought. So we're walking down this road and all the houses have electricity and people live pretty comfortable. Then every other house has electricity, and soon every third and then every fourth house. After awhile, the houses turned from concrete to bamboo. As we continued on this path, we started seeing candles and more mga bukid and more mga carabou. Then the road turns to gravel, and its pretty much dark around us everywhere. It might have been the sketchiest thing I've ever done.

The pronunciation here of the people is so terrible. Our second counselor in the branch is named Howard Pascual, and for the first 7 weeks of my stay here, I thought his name was Whaord. Seriously.

Something else cool this week, my neighbor runs a rice mafia. Here's my theory:

1. His house is huge, even for a house in America. That almost never happens here.

2. People bring bags of rice to his warehouse on the other side of his home, and he weighs them and stores them in the shed

3. The owner is easily the mastermind behind all of it, sort of like a rice/drug lord. Being a rice farmer is hard work, and he has no muscle at all.

4. All the guys who work for him wear shirts over their heads like pirates, and one of the guys has a pirate moustache

5.He has two dogs who run around begging for food

6. One of his "Top Officers" checks the bags of rice that people bring in with a giant stick that looks like an apple corer. He thrusts it right into the bag to check the quality of the rice, as if to say "hopefully, this rice is good enough for us to buy, or else you've just lost 50 pounds of rice, and we don't really care."

Anyway, this is my theory. I don't mind if he's got a mafia or not, because I know if he does we're protected. our home is within the gate he has around his property.

Next time you send a package (for my birthday or anything) will you fill it full of redvines? a new senior couple showed up last week and shared some with me last night. It was wonderful and I wish they had it here.

When you eat, use a fork in the left hand (to scoop) and a spoon in the right hand. its so much more effective (except maybe spaghetti)

The new senior couple are absolutely wonderful. They are farmers from Emmett (I knew Elder Roberts was a farmer before he had even mentioned it. Is that bad?) And its great to talk to them, because they are still in the shock from leaving behind everything they know and getting used to this place.

Halloween already?? 10-31-11

halloween already?? so that means state cross country is over, huh? Elder casilac at ako pa rin ang buhay, kaya manganda dito! may 2 hours sa email saakin kung mayroon po kayo ng oras 

I dont really have much of a p-day. The missionary handbook says its great to visit zoos or historical sites or other cool places, but we dont have time. we have a district meeting from 8:00am to 10:30 or 11, then we eat, email, buy groceries, and go back to the apartment around 3. Then I clean our horribly disgusting bathroom and our kitchen as best I can, because we have to be back to work by six. I haven't opened your packages yet, i just opened hers because I knew it would be all candy and I had to make it fit in my backpack. I didn't get to eat anything strange this week, but I ran into more than my fair share of drunk people. I don't know what it is about being a missionary, but i feel like the more alcohol a person has in his system the more attracted he is to a missionary. on saturday we found some old guys sitting against a house super drunk. it wasn't even 11:30 in the morning. There's also this family we teach about once a week that I absolutely love, its the family in the pictures with the Coconut Beetle. I brought them some tinapay (bread) because one of the children had a birthday and i have never seen someone so happy in my entire life. One of the kids, Angelo, is the greatest kid i've ever met. He is 4 years old and always tries to impress me with his english skills.

The members usually don't feed us, we generally work from 2:30-9:00 every day. I've only had two dinner appointments with the members since I've been here.

I actually hate basketball, but we play occasionally. The town I live in is small, but its surrounded by barangays (big housing areas, pronounced "brown-guys." when I first heard that I thought it was a racist joke.)I bet there's probably a few thousand people in my area. The funnest thing I've done since being here is Branch Home Evening a few days ago. It was less like Home Evening and more like party time. I watched a bunch of old filipino guys make fools of themselves while singing karaoke. One of them actually looks remarkably like elvis, I think he's in one of the pictures I sent. I have a bunch of videos but I don't know how to send them

I watched General Conference a week late. The church buildings are super weird. Tile everywhere, the benches are super lightweight and slide around in the chapel, and regular chairs are plastic. The main foyer isn't even closed off to the outside, just a giant metal gate with a lock on it. The spirit is generally the strongest in sacrament meeting, it would take alot of faith to be an active member in San Clemente. But roughly 100 people show up each weel, which is awesome. We have A/C in the branch presidents office and the clerks office. It's nice, until you walk out of the room and are reminded just how humid it is here. After every PEC meeting, I leave the presidents office and think "how can people breathe this air??" (they call it aircon here, super annoying. also, a fridge is called a ref. Or a ruff if you're a native). I haven't seen carpet since the mission home, but places get flooded here all the time so now I understand why.

Well I have to go buy groceries, so I'll take more pictures and talk to you next week! I love you!

Elder Williams