(These first lines are answers to questions, and things in the letter I wrote to him.) so yes they do show the twilight movies here, its playing right now at the movie theatre right next to the computer place I'm at. and that's awesome all he needs now is his own car. (referring to the new TV Tyler bought during Black Friday) lol! but with the ipod someone always has to have a newer one, just like i had the iphone 4 after you wanted it, it happens. (Kamrie got the new iPod touch, so now Chad and Scott want newer ones!) I'm really missing football too. but oh well, no one has footballs here! (Guess what's in his Christmas package!) but they sell soccer balls and i have a basketball. and the thing with cooper is ridiculous, my soccer ball fell down into the big hole that drops down for the basement level windows and i climbed down it and got my ball and climbed back up and no one even cared. i think some one was over reacting, but oh well. (His cousin Cooper is still in the MTC, and one day grabbed a light pole and swung around it. There was leader that saw him and really let him have it, telling him he could be sent home for that! Crazy!)
Christmas conference is coming up and we get to have a p day in tacloban with all of the missionaries in the whole mission. it ll be crazy! our zone leaders are setting up a b ball tourney with tacloban zone so it'll be super fun!
so to start out i am now the second counselor in the branch presidency in dulag. (now you understand) and the whole goal of the entire Philippines for missionaries has changed. we are no longer allowed to go tracting. (this is gong door to door looking for people to talk to about the gospel, this is what almost all missionaries do) we are only supposed to teach members, because there are 25000 members in the Philippines and about 17000 are inactive. so lots of work to do here. the only investigators we are supposed to be teaching are ones we already had or referrals from members, otherwise we don't teach any one but members. one goal we have set as a district is to make sure that people are visiting each other and the inactives. bringing active members with us to share with other active members and inactive members because they don't know how to visit each other without gossiping, which is the cause of a lot of inactive members here. so its going to be even harder now than before.
so of all the things this week we have taught 2 lessons now to the family that doesn't speak warry warry and i am learning so much tagalog its crazy. and on Thursday this week elder ostler had a training meeting in tacloban so i worked with the other elder in our apartment who has only been here for 3 weeks and only speaks tagalog and cebuano. so he spoke tagalog all day, it was nice, i would start talking to people and they would just speak warry until he start talking then they would switch to tagalog and i would get so lost. but we ended up walking to a part of my area i have never been to to try to find an inactive family. i thought it didn't look to far so we walked and walked and walked and after and hour and a half when we got there it was time for his appointment in mayorga. so we had to find a motor to take us to the highway so we could catch a ride to mayorga. so we did that and got there, his investigator is from manila and speaks tagalog cebuano ilacano ilango and warry-warry! so it was an interesting lesson mostly tagalog but i was able to follow along and help him out a little. then we caught a bus back and went to my tagalog investigator family, yay! so basicly tagalog all day, it gave me a headache, but i was able to learn so much.
so then on to Sunday. we got up in the morning and i went out back to go pee and slipped on some moss stuff on our back porch and sliced the skin off the outside of my pinky toe. then there was no water so i had to wait forever to be able to make my breakfast which was delicious Pillsbury pancakes. but it was extremely difficult to walk. so then i put my church stuff on and put my shoes on and it hurt quite badly, but i was like oh well I'll be sitting all day I'll worry about it later. then i spoke in sacrament (Sacrament Meeting is the meeting at church where all the congregation is together. In other churches the minister or pastor would give his sermon. In our church the members are asked to speak.) about reverence and taking upon ourselves the name of Christ. i found a story in an ensign (a church magazine)nephi 4:8-10 about them fearing God and not the massive army, and how they were protected. i then related that to our day to day lives, how we need to just do what we know we are supposed to and don't fear the people but fear what God will think if you rebel against him. then after church we had planning for our Christmas party, and then we had to count tithing, then we had a meeting right after. so no lunch. we went to tolosa and didn't get home until around 6 and president elder ostler had a temple recommend interview so we went to do that. then sent the tithing stuff on the computer because the internet was down before. then we did our planning and went home around 9, still no food and i am now in a lot of pain from my foot. so we ate, i wrote in my journal and went to bed around 10. then got up at 5 to do my laundry this morning and this whole week feels like we did no missionary work when in reality that's our new purpose, and its going to be weird and hard getting used to. we have lots of plans to reactivate some old branch presidents and we have already seen a little change in their hearts. we haven't talked to them really, but we got the members to go visit them because they don't like the leaders of the church. so we won't really be visiting to much but i know it will work out as long as we do our best.
well that's really all for this week sorry if its not all clear but that gives me more questions to answer next week i love you all baboosh
