2 Months All Ready!

 This week was a really good week!

Right after I sent the letter last week, we were headed back to the other Elders apartment to stay one more night and of course right across the street someone was selling balut!  Of course all the Elders were EGGING me on!  Get it? Ha-ha Jokelong!  So we went across the street and they bought me one and told me how to eat it and everything! I asked the lady how many days the eggs had been fertilized for and she said 18 days!  I was told that the best eggs are at 14 days!  I couldn't see the egg much because it was dark but you could definitely see a little ducky in there!

 First you crack the top of the egg open and suck all the juices out!  It sounds disgusting but is really good!  Then after you drink the juices you peel the egg back a little more and take a big bite!  My first bite wasn't very bad and tasted and looked exactly like the yolk of a hardboiled egg.  The second bite was the chick and I got a little crunch from the beak and then swallowed!  It was surprisingly good and tasted like a hardboiled egg!  The only bad thing about it was that I got little feathers in my mouth that I had to spit out!  I'll send you some pictures of it after I send this!

This is to answer dads question about what I do if I don't use toilet paper...  Well, you have a barrel next to you and it's full of water.  You never sit on the toilet so you're always squatting.  After you are finished with your business you take a little ladle type thing and kind of pour it down the lower part of your back and rinse...  Do you get it? Hahaha The pipes all drain out right behind our house except for the toilet, thankfully!


This is how we wash our clothes weekly!

Our work here is mainly based on bringing less active members back to church!  There are around 200 members but only 60 on a good day come to church!  Speaking of church!  The other day when I was sitting in the congregation I was told I was speaking that day in church!  I've never been so thankful for the MTC in my life!  In the MTC they told us to write a talk each week in Tagalog. I didn't have to speak long but I gave a good talk about pananampalataya or in English, faith! 

It's a way different culture here!  They drink a lot of soda and so when nanay or Grandma in English, drink it they just start burping all over the place!  It's freaking hilarious! They also eat with their hands a lot here and so they taught me how.  They told me to tell you that I am eating with my hands!  

We had our first FHE it was really funny and the food after was so good!  It was homemade fried chicken, pancakes, and pancit!  I think they tried to make the food a little more American for me which I was grateful for!

After FHE back at our apartment we were having nightly planning and I looked at the ceiling and saw a HUGE spider!  It was massive!  We have some bug killer stuff that the mission home gave us and they said it's 30x stronger than the wasp killer we use back at home so I was pretty excited to use it!  So I grabbed it and started spraying the spider!  It started going crazy and ran under our fridge!  My companion was trying to see if he could see it under the fridge when it all of a sudden it ran out and started chasing us around the apartment!  It was terrifying!  It was really fast and had its fangs ready to bite!  It didn't get any of us before I sprayed it a bunch more and then it died!  We have had 2 spiders try to attack us so far...  It makes things exciting here!

Most of the time back at home when it feels like something is crawling on you like a bug or something it's just your mind playing tricks on you. In the Philippines something is always crawling on you!  I'm always finding ants in my bed and all over me!

I went on splits this week for the first time!  I went with Elder Linnel.  He is our zone leader and is really hard working!  It was a good change for a while to have someone that knew fluent English to talk to.  It was also kind of cool to be in charge and show him where to go and introduce him to people.  We taught a whole bunch of people and rode our bike to Alicia.

 Alicia is the biggest city next to us.  It was dark when we did it and I later found out that we probably shouldn't have ridden our bikes in the dark to Alicia that night because we are both Americans wearing nice clothes and some Filipinos told us that you have to be careful around here.  Nothing happened to us but it was still a little sketchy!  

We found a couple new investigators on Sunday!  

Mark is doing great!  He is still coming to church every week and is following all of our commitments! I'm thankful for your prayers!

On P-days we mainly just go to another area and play basketball with the Elders there!  It's kind of cool being the tallest one on the court!  It's super hot here!  I've sweat more here today than any day at home!  The richest member in maybe all of Alicia bought us lunch today!  I had fried chicken and some other chicken things with rice!  You don't eat fried chicken here the same way you do back at home.  Here you eat everything with rice.  You also never have a knife unless you are a wealthy family.  You put your spoon in your right hand and use that to cut and eat with.  In your left hand you have your fork and you use it to kind of just scoop things into your spoon.  

This week has been pretty amazing!  Its super hard being a missionary sometimes but it's also the best thing in the world!  It's cool to see people change their lives!  I went to a baptismal interview the other day and the guy had quit smoking and you could see a huge difference in the way he looked and acted!  The Church is true!

Has Bridger left yet? What about Zach Annis?  I want their E-mails! Maraming salamat po

Can't wait to chat on Christmas! :)  Love you so much. ingot po.

Elder Tribe