It's been an awesome week

It's been an awesome week. Wednesday night we visited an investigators home for his birthday, and I found out how easy it is to preach to drunk people. they love to listen to anything about God, especially the Catholics. The investigator is 16, and his sister is 24. Their dad joined us for dinner after getting drunk, as is typical for a Filipino Catholic. We asked about his family (He has 7 children) and he said to us "Wala kong anak" (I don't have any children). His reasoning was that he wasn't able to bear any children, so his wife has 7 kids but none of them are his.

Friday was the first day in 6 weeks it didn't rain. And it actually hasn't rained since, I'm not sure if i'm still in the same place. its so weird not worrying about the clouds overhead.

Saturday was pretty cool, I sprayed some bug spray minutes before we left the apartment to get to work and broke out in hives. We also taught some old ladies who tried to speak Ilocano to us. It would be like if your mexican neighbors tried talking to you. You might pick out a word or two and it may even seem familiar, but you wouldn't be able to respond.

I cannot believe the Filipino people here. Remember last week how I said they just don't care?  There was also a street vendor who set up a stand with some snacks outside the Church, and along with the Elders Quorum, we were probably the only ones who didn't go out and buy a snack. And this is in the middle of church. I saw our ward missionaries, the youth, and several leaders and parents leave to buy what is called "Fish Balls". It's basically a deep-fried dough filled with bits of fish, and you dip it in a sweet and sour sauce. super delicious.

You know all those stories about missionaries saying things wrong in the language and how embarrassed they were when they screwed up? Well, everyone here calls ties 'neckties' and this week I found out why. We were walking between appointments and my tie felt funny, so i tried to fix it. After I was done I said to Elder Casilac and Brother Rodel, one of the members, "How does my tie look?" and they couldn't stop laughing. I found out the word tae (pronounced Tah-E or tie) in Tagalog means "poop." Which is why they say necktie, so situations like that don't happen to them. I did't tell you this Wednesday but Sunday a week ago I was incredibly sick all the way through  Thursday. I had a fever of 38.8 C and a headache that could kill a person. I was also coughing up green and yellow phlegm roughly every 15 minutes. Super gross. But don't worry, I'm over it now and feel just fine, although I thought I was going to die on Wednesday night.

I learned some Ilocano this week: "Papanam?" means "Where are you going?"

I also learned that "Anak nak ni apo Dios" in Ilocano means "Ako ay anak ng Diyos" in Tagalog means "I am a child of God".

Plus i have pictures this week, and I sent a package in the mail, hopefully it gets to America before I do.

Elder Williams

This was our part of our email chat.

Sorry you were so sick!  That is awful.  Do you think it was from the food or water? We know when things are not good with you, it is a parental feeling.


We love the story about buying things during church HILARIOUS!  Dad loves this idea!! he thinks we should adopt it in our culture!  Your email was funny! We love to hear this kind of stuff. 

The pictures are awesome!  I cant believe how big the bug is!  That little boy is SOOOO cute,  is that during church?

yeah the church has a giant gate in the front entrance and kids climb up it all the time.  I dont know what made me sick, but i'm pretty sure its over now. my tagalog is getting better, but its still kind of rough. Some days i talk to everyone and laugh and  make jokes, and some days i can hardly stammer through lesson 1. Tell all the cousins I'll be home next week, because when I do come home it will seem like it was only a few days that I was gone.

That little boy is adorable! I love that this is happening during church

Only a boy would do this

GROSS!

Just the friendly lizard that lives in the apartment

Oct 18, 2011

It was transfer week for the Angeles Mission.  On transfer week they wait to email on Wednesday so the missionaries that get transferred have the day to prepare to move. This makes it so every sixth week we will have to wait a week and a half for email and then we get another one again on Monday.


This week we spent more time "chatting" so here is our conversation.

Kenz wants to know what language do you speak when you go to heaven?
How is the Tagalog coming? And how is the teaching coming?

Yes this week was transfer week, sorry I couldn't email you Sunday but I am here now for the next two hours. Tell McKenzie the knowledge you have on this earth you will take with you to the Spirit World and into Heaven also, but I imagine because we will all be perfected, glorified people in Heaven we'll probably speak whatever language Adam spoke when he was in the Garden of Eden.

So happy to hear from you! Will this be the way it is on transfer week? 

Are you going to write us a long email about your week? And pictures?

Every six weeks I will email you on Wednesday. I'll always warn you, but this last week I didn't realize we had transfers already. The purpose of this is for people who are transferring to their new areas on Thursdays get all of Wednesday to pack up their things. I cannot believe it's already been six weeks.
I will send an SD card today if we can find a post office in Camiling (the city we have to travel to for our groceries and email) because ours is temporarily closed or something. I'm not sure because Elder Casilac has a really thick Filipino accent and his English sounds like his Tagalog. But it has pictures of traditional houses made from bamboo. I don't know what Adam spoke in the garden of eden, probably some refined, perfected form of Hebrew or Greek.

I can't email pictures this time because I haven't taken any lately, and the two SD cards i am sending are packaged up. I also don't know what to say about this week, do you have any questions?

Any crazy stories?  Any investigators you want to tell us about? Have you lost any weight?  Have you met any Muslims yet or are they all Catholics down there?
crazy stories:
You know that game Missionary: Impossible? there is a card in that game called "Monsoon" where a missionary is completely drenched with water and his umbrella is destroyed. That happens to us on a weekly basis.
We put out some fly paper the other day before we went to sleep. When I woke up, one piece of fly paper had a lizard stuck to it, and the other had a mouse stuck to it. I wish I would have taken pictures, but things like that are normal now so I didn't even think about it.
investigators:
I love teaching families with kids. the kids here either really like me or laugh at me like I'm a clown, but when we teach the kids seem to like it. Nothing special about any investigators really, we just continue to teach
I have not lost any weight. In fact, I'm getting fat. Believe it or not, since being here I've been able to pull skin from my stomach. I'm actually embarrassed because something like that has never happened to me before.
There's actually alot of religions here. Born Again, 7th Day, Jehovah's Witness, Muslim, Catholic, and Iglesia ni Cristo. Most of them don't attend church regularly, and probably some people tell us they're from a specific church to make us go away.

learning to love the culture

    

Thanks to everyone for all the prayers in Elder Williams behalf.  He survived his first typhoon with some crazy experiences. He has hit the three month mark and one month in the Philippines.

So we got hit with two typhoons this week, I gave a pair of garments to the cause. They are soaked to the most minuscule of fibers with dirty river/rain water. I want you to know that before I continue, everything I'm about to tell you is entirely true, and I am hesitation telling you because its so outrageous:

People say they love the sound of rain on a tin roof because it's comforting and peaceful, which is true, for about the first 12 hours. This week we had 48+ hours straight rain martes-biernes,  of intense it destroyed a dike from the dam that is at the base of a mountain (a hill if we were in Idaho)  and a huge rainstorm on saturday,. The main road in San Clemente was like a river, up to my waist at the deepest point. And that was in the road. We live in a house that has three big steps leading up to the inside, and we almost had water flood us. We helped a member of our branch push his tricycle (motorcycle with a sidecar), I saw a bunch of guys lead a 600 pound pig across the road, and we helped a bunch of people push a travel bus because the water was so deep it lost all momentum and couldn't move. It was about twice as bad as what we saw at Upper Palisades this summer.

You would not believe the things I've seen this week. I took a bunch of pictures and video of the flood we had, hopefully I can email them or send them in the mail soon. Also, in my apartment, I've seen a small lizard, a cockroach the size of a D-cell battery, a mouse, a frog the size of a small fist, and flies as big as nickels. INSIDE my apartment. This week I also ate cooked Heron eggs. If you're not starving and about to die, I wouldn't recommend it.

We cant wait to get pictures and the video from him to see the destruction.  He is having a great time and is learning the language.  I am sure everyday is easier than the last. This is from this week's email

I am finally learning the language and figuring out what to say to people. For the first three weeks and even now, I still have a hard time understanding what they say. But it is the same in English, I'm slowly learning that.
I got the dear elder from dad with a bunch of questions last week so here's all the answers:

How and what is the food?
     The food in our apartment is typically rice with an ulam (dish), sometimes corned beef, meat loaf, shrimp (real shrimp. They still have legs, the head, eyes, everything. and they are about twice as big and twice as gross looking as anything you'd find in Washington.) We bought the shrimp at the local market. The same lady who handled a fly-infested raw fish still swimming in the drained blood that pooled in the bottom of the container moments before we bought anything was the same lady who gave us our shrimp. Also the same lady who gave us 24 eggs for the week. The eggs were probably not within 2000 feet of a refrigerator. When we eat at members homes, I think its rice and whatever they killed earlier that day. Last week I ate the small intestine of a pig. "It's clean, Eldar. Kain na!" is what the member told me (its clean, elder, eat!) I think i told you about the herring eggs last week. I wouldn't suggest it if you don't have to.
Can you stand to eat it?
     I try to. The herring eggs weren't so awful I couldn't eat them, but after about 4 bites of pig intestine I wanted to stop. there is a girl we teach and every day across the street from her home a street vendor tries to persuade me to eat chicken feet and chicken head. She has them cooking over a coal grill, soaked in some sauce of something red or maybe orange. so gross.
How could will winter be there?
     I expect winter to be freezing cold, and i expect to see it in roughly 25 or 26 months. They have two seasons here: Rainy (June-December) and Hot (January-May).
Can you spend US cash?
     I'm not sure if I can or not, i've never had to worry about it. They gave us a bank card with our support money on it, but we are supposed to pay cash for everything. So every month I withdraw 7,800 pesos and make that last all month (which is actually really easy. Everything here is so cheap.)
How fast is the internet? Do you have to pay?
     Generally its slow, but some places its faster. Depending on the area, it costs P12-P16 per hour.
Sorry I haven't sent pictures yet, I always forget to bring something with me to send  pictures. But from now on I'll send pictures every week.
Mahal Ko Kayo

Every week we get to spend a little time email "Chatting" with him.  He told us how much he is enjoying his time and learning to love the culture
  

Typhoons

Philippines took a double hit in this week with two separate Typhoons. We have not heard from Elder Williams and feel like no news is good news.  Tomorrow evening is P-Day and we will be anxiously waiting to hear from him.  Many are without power and their is massive flooding so we wont be surprised if we don't hear from him. Here are a few details....

Powerful Typhoon Nesat crashed into northern Philippines Tuesday,  causing authorities to order more than 100,000 people to seek shelter from torrential rains and strong winds gusting up to 106 miles per hour in the capital city of Manila.

Nesat made landfall before dawn over eastern mountainous Isabela and Aurora provinces, which face the Pacific Ocean, packing sustained winds of 87 mph, the government weather bureau said.

 The Christian Post

The second typhoon in a week battered the rain-soaked northern Philippines on Saturday, adding misery to the lives of thousands of people, some still perched on rooftops from previous flooding.
Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate their homes after Typhoon Nalgae slammed ashore south of northeastern Palanan Bay in Isabela Province with winds of 100 miles an hour and gusts of 121 m.p.h. At least one person was killed in a landslide.
The fast-moving typhoon blew westward, barreling across the mountainous regions of Luzon Island. It weakened slightly as it reached the shore of La Union Province around 4 p.m., about seven hours after it made landfall.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

 We are praying for the safety of the missionaries and the Filipino people.  It is a very sad situation.  We will keep you posted on how Elder Williams is doing and how the typhoons affected him.

growing experiences and culture shock

Elder Williams sent us an email last Sunday night. He is going through a little culture shock and is now learning the Tagalog language was not the one he learned in the MTC. Here is a portion of his email.

My companion Elder Casilac is a native from Davao, I understand his english about as well as I understand his Tagalog. I can't believe the traffic here, literally EVERYONE drives like Need For Speed. They have these things called "Jeepneys" which are basically small buses with the back door permanently gone. Easily the most unsafe thing ever. I saw a girl about 6 or 7 leaning out the back with one foot on the bumper, and another kid on the same Jeepney resting on the front tire well.

One of the best things about my area is that its every ten year old kids dream. There's tree houses, makeshift shelters, stick pole homes on the banks of the canal, and trees everywhere

Yesterday my neighbors killed, cleaned, and cooked a pig in the front yard. A bit traumatizing but hilarious at the same time. Everyone here calls me "Elder William" and they always forget the 'S' and they gave me my own scripture! read D&C 66:3 sometime. Its already Christmas here yesterday I went to FHE at a families home and we sang Oh Come All Ye Faithful and Joy to the World. All the shops and stuff are playing Christmas music and decorations are for sale.

The movie The Other Side of Heaven make primitive living so appealing, but I miss some very basic things about home.

At masdan, ako rin ay isang lalaking kilala ang pangalan sa lahat ng yaong nakakikilala sa akin; oo, at masdan, ako ay maraming kaanak at mga kaibigan, at ako rin ay nagkamit ng maraming kayamanan sa pamamagitan ng kamay ng aking kasipagan
Patnubayan ka nawa ng Diyos hanggang sa muling magkita

The only pictures he sent last week were of the bathroom, must have made an impact.  

The bathroom in his apartment 

San Clemente

Sept 11, 2011
So I'm in an internet cafe, and I absolutely love the Philippines. Plus it's an american/chinese/filipino/every other eastern islands language keyboard, and I can't hardly type on it. So far the philippines aren't so bad, my first area is in a small town called San Clemente, but all our investigators live in grass huts by rice fields, its like an area that people would film to make missions appealing. But they would never film the geese who live in my backyard or the semi trucks rolling through at 3am or the ants that eat my rice faster than I do. But I still love it here, the kids are so awesome! a drunk guy called me Joe the other day, and I left my umbrella in my apartment on the first day we had a monsoon-type rainstorm. So now one of my favorite ties is ruined. But no worries.
Mahal na mahal ko kayo
Elder Williams

p.s. When I figure out how to mail things I will send a long letter of the first three days of my time here. Just know that I'm still alive and I always know what time it is there, I still haven't changed my watch yet. I am 14 hours ahead of you.
Tell McKenzie that my first transfer was Sept 7 to San Clemente and my first companion is Elder Casilac so she can update the calendar.

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