Pamilia!
I love you all so much and I miss you! Michael, I am glad to hear that things are going so great! I am excited for all of your investigators!
The plane ride was great, for the most part things went smoothly. Half of our party threw up while we were landing in Hong Kong, or me, threw up right after we landed. It was because of the breakfast food they fed us--something was not right with it, and we were not the only ones on the plane to throw up. It's okay--we all felt much better after ejecting the bad stuff from our stomachs. My companion is Sister Segovia, a native. She is great, and so patient with me. We both really want to work, and we are eager to really make our area prosper (double our numbers as they said in missionary in-field orientation). We are in the Taytay zone, Cainta 2nd Ward area--it is new! The ward is awesome and so eager to help us. We hope to get a lot of referrals from them to help us with our goal. We started working the day I arrived--we got back to the apartment and then went to teach a progressing investigator. I was so tired I had a hard time staying awake during the lesson, but it went well. The Lord has really helped me--I slept more on the planes than I usually do, and I have adjusted very quickly to the schedule here, even though it is opposite from what I am used to. I do not feel much jet lag at all, which is really good because it is work, work, work. No rest for new missionaries :D
A couple months ago the Church came out with a new 12 week missionary training program--Michael, I am sure you are going through it, aren't you? The goal is to make missionaries effective and able to train themselves (minus language stuff) after the 12 weeks. I think they were getting sick of people to take 6 months to get adjusted. I think it is a great idea. We are starting it today (tomorrow really), but we have already applied a lot of the principles-- the new missionary teaching lessons and extending commitment invitations, and we also get another hour of companionship study. The one downside to that is we don't leave our apartment until 1pm because we have four hours of study plus our hour of lunch (and breakfast + getting ready).
We ate dinner at the Bishop's house on Friday, and I think we are eating at the Stake President's house tonight. Don't worry about me getting enough food mom--everyone is so eager to feed us. We gave a lesson to a progressing investigator last night and they insisted on feeding us dinner. We also had a baptism on Saturday--two sisters, Heidi and Pamela. Their dad came to see the baptism, and he came to church on Sunday! We are hoping to be able to teach him as well. We have a baptism planned for each Saturday, except this coming Saturday because President DeLaMare did not want them to have to wait a week for confirmation. (FYI, Sister DeLaMare asked for your e-mail address, I do not know why. I gave her the sisterk one and the digis mail one).
There is so much going on it is hard for me to take stock. It is a good thing I have my companion because I would not know how to get home. They do have jeepney, and tricycle things that are motorcycles with a car thing attached to them--they stuff people in the car thing and on the motorcycle where they are not sitting. Wow! It is a good thing I am not much bigger, otherwise I would be having some problems. I can discern words usually (depending on the speaker), and sometimes I understand what they are saying. They tell me I have very good grammar, and that I am clear and easy to understand--I just need to be faster, because right now I am really slow and it is sometimes a little uncomfortable for them to listen to me because of it.
Everyone stares at me--I would stare at me too, because so far I am the only tall very blond and very white person I have seen on the streets (not counting the other American missionaries who we only see at meetings). I hear "parang Barbie" a lot. I am the average size of a male here, and oftentimes bigger, actually. So different.
I have to go now. I love you all so much, and thank you for all your love and support!
Kat
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