Alright, Alright. Alright-Alright-Alright. Hey! (Props to anyone that got that!)
So you know how last week was great? Well this week was like pretty much the opposite...
juuust kidding! This week was great too of course!
haha I must share this experience from last Monday. So we went out to the shore to try and see the sunset at the end of p-day and it was fairly anti-climatic, I only got like one decent picture. But as we were leaving, I was walking with Elder Osumo and this high school girl tries to discretely take a picture of me with her phone. She turned around and took it and then went back to talking with her friend. Osumo was like "You saw that right?" I was like "yep." It was pretty hilarious. And I'm ridiculously good looking.
So on Tuesday we had our District Meeting. I'll just pretty much copy what I wrote in my journal for Tuesday. "In District Meeting this morning, we learned about listening (From Preach My Gospel). Elder Bagahansol said that this lesson was especially for Elder Robbins and I, which, quite frankly, I wasn't too happy when he said that cuz I don't like being singled out like that. I thought 'One, obviously I'm trying my best to listen, but its kinda hard when you can't understand what's going on sometimes. And two, if I'm not constantly planning out what I should say in my head, I won't have anything to say.' But by the end I, slightly grudgingly, said to myself, 'Alright, whatever. I'll try it. I'm going to just listen to our investigators, pray I understand, and pray I have something halfway intelligent/correct to say.' So somewhat begrudgingly, I decided to test the Lord on His promise that my mouth will be filled, and I won't be confounded before men. So we went about our day. At the Maanyo's we were informed that Coron has received reports of an aswang (means mythical creature, in this case a vampire and I was informed yesterday by Ivy that the aswang likes to feed on Pregnant ladies) and there has already been two victims. In relation to "aswang," I related Elder Robbins' story about his district at the MTC always saying "May aswang po ba kayo? (Do you have a monster?" instead of "May asawa po ba kayo? (Do you have a spouse?) And they thought that was hilarous. Later, I learned some Cuyonon! The dialect they have here in Coron/Palawan. It's not too common, but plenty of people here know at least some." So yeah that was Tuesday!
Wednesday was the mark of 8 weeks now in the Philippines! And Sunday meant two months out here! and 4 months into my mission! That's crazy! Also, on Wednesday I finally smartened up a bit. Elder Robbins is a big time runner. But Elder Osumo is not a runner at all, so Robbins has been kinda dying being out here unable to run so finally I decided I should start running with him so we started on Wednesday.
On Thursday we had exchanges because we had 5 people in need on baptismal interviews by Elder Osumo on Thursday. So pretty much the whole day he was interviewing while I was chilling outside or wherever else with the kids or whoever else. So I got a bunch of Tagalog practice! An experiece I wrote in my journal "While interviewing the Lucerianos, the rest of us were chillin at the Durans. Now that was hard core practice. I had the young kids competing for my attention, Ivy and Arliza talking to me about music and whatever else, and then more like a regular conversation with Alriza cuz she does not stop talking (She even told me that herself haha). But I did pretty good! I focused on listening and understanding and I didn't do too bad!"
But Friday was where its at! I'm just copying the journal for this one. "Well first things first, I got up to go run like a good person when...Pala! May palaka so aking sapatos! (That's right you have to look that up). Yeah, I wasn't too happy about that. Kasi it's like 6:30, so I'm like barely conscious and I go to put on my shoe and felt something weird. I saw what it was, was fairly startled, and threw my shoe on the ground. The thing was huge! Like the size of a Ding Dong Hostess cake (ask Yocum about Hostess cakes). After I macho-ly removed the thing from my shoe by thrusting my shoe to the ground and it was all good. Later we went to Stephanies. So we get there and Josaphine is doing this ladies nails and the ladies' husband is there too. So we couldnt really teach but that's ok cuz we mostly needed to get info from Stephanie for her BCR. Well Bogs, was doing that so I was left to pretty much fend for myself, great.... So the husband starts talking to me. At first he didn't think I knew Tagalog, then he thught I didn't know very much because I had only been here for 2 months, and by the end he was very impressed! We talked for like 25 minutes! He said he was a born-again christian and he was a missionary like on a boat for 12 years. He told me he got to travel much of Asia. I told him that my dad served a mission in Korea. So he asked if my family were members of the church, too. He asked a little about my family. I told him about us. He said that like they used music for his mission and for church. He asked if we had music for church. I said we do but just piano. He asked if I played. I said no but I wish I did (fact.). But I do play trombone. He told me his favorite was piano but he also taught himself guitar, accordian, drums, and I think a couple other things, I forgot. I was impressed. He let me in on the 'secret' to learning anything like that. He said 'If you want to learn to ride a bike, first get a bike. If you want to learn to play basketball, buy a ball. So if you want to learn guitar, you've gotta get a guitar first; then practice for 20min-1hr a day and you'll learn it.' That wasn't all our conversation, pretty much the highlights. But it was legit. The Lord rocks! This guy originally thought my Tagalog would be minimal and funny/entertaining, then we ended up having a cool conversation! D&C 100:5! It wasn't a gospel conversation, but I was still not confounded before men. That experience gave me confidence for the rest of the day. The Durans had offered to make all 4 of us dinner that night so we get there and they still had a little while until it was ready so we hung outand Robbins and I were having Tagalog conversations, our comps were impressed. And yeah pretty much Tagalog was fun today."
Then Saturday we had 5 baptisms (Edna, JJ, Aurora, Stephanie, and RJ)! Four of them were our investigators (should've been 5 but Keith was sick and couldn't make it with his mom and brother). We now have a font at the church. They constructed it in less than a week, definitely with some help from the Lord. They had to get up at 5 Saturday morning to finish it, and we were still filling it up with water until like 9:30. The service was supposed to start at 9..haha We had to fill it up by dumping bucket after bucket after bucket of water into the font it was pretty classic. The water was like barely past my knees and I was supposed to baptize 2 full grown adults (one of them pregnant!) Yeah that was hard..haha Of our 4 investigators being baptized I got the honor of doing 3 of the baptisms. It was sweet! But later we visted Edna because E-Kay (my "best friend" haha) had a really bad fever. We gave her a blessing but Sunday she ended up going to the hospital, I think she's okay now but I haven't heard anything new. The hospital here is definitely different..haha Ok so unlike E-Kay cuz she was sick she didn't say like anything, but when she was at the hospital and they were putting on IV in her to keep her hydrated she got a little more like E-Kay. She shouted at the nurse and everyone else there "Mamatay kayo lahat!" Keep in mind that she's like 3..haha But that means "You will all die!" hahaha So yeah she wasn't happy with that IV but after that was done she went back to her depressing self. Also, on Sunday I heard the song that we Cha-Chaed to allll the time in Social Dance, and so I, of course, had to cha-cha for Stephanie and Josaphine is was pretty funny.
So yeah that was really long too, sorry! But that was pretty much my week. I would like to give any faithful readers the opportunity to ask me any questions that they might be curious about. So if you read this and have a question for me. Email it to my parents and they'll email me any questions in their next email.
Love you all!
Elder Michael Gadberry
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