December 22, 2013

So while I'm waiting for skype to load I'll just email you now! So nothing too new this week. I finally recognize everything and know where everyone lives. Last night I ate fish at a member's house and it was so good! It the kind where they cook the whole fish and you have to get the meat out. Let's be real, that's how they cook everything: whole shrimp, whole fish, whole chicken, etc. And most of the homes don't have a stove so they all cook over the fire. It's so cool. It's like the pioneers. 

So yesterday we had a hilarious lesson. The day after I arrived here, so like three weeks ago, this guy stopped us and said, "I'm catholic, and you are mormons, so what do you believe that is different than what I believe?" So we set up an appointment to come back and teach him. It took a couple weeks for him to finally let us back into his house, but yesterday he finally did. And he is hilarious. He loves loves loves to talk. And it's all in English so I understand it all. He thinks that we're discussing and arguing about religion. So pretty much we started the Restoration and through his many many questions, gave an overview of EVERYTHING we teach. So finally he's like, "Sisters, there's a lot to discuss, I think you should continue to come back and teach me. And I want one of those Book of Mormons so I can read it to be better prepared for these lessons. It's not fair that you're teaching me what I haven't read." So funny, we don't have to do anything. Then the best part. We were telling him our purpose, "faith, repentance, baptism" He stopped us at baptism and said that that's something he wouldn't like to talk about because he's already baptized and will never ever be baptized into our church. He doesn't believe in the need to be baptized more than once so he doesn't ever want to talk about it, because we would just argue. I prayed in my head "please help him to soften and open his mind and heart to this." Then he said, "actually sisters, this voice just told me that I need to open and soften my mind and heart to this and not just close it off and maybe i should get baptized. So if I do get baptized into your church, what would happen to my life?" I about cried right then and there. Of course he kept talking and didn't even let us answer the question. haha so pretty much our plan is to give him a Book of Mormon and let him teach himself. It was the best lesson ever. We didn't do a thing!

Sister Nielson and I are continuously becoming better teachers. We keep trying to progress every day. She said that none of her other companions tried to do that. But that's pretty much my motto here. Be better than the day before. 

We are meeting a lot of people now that are just ready to receive the gospel and it's just so exciting. The hardest part though is getting them to go to church. They just don't understand the importance of going to church. They all say they have work, which they do, but they can change it because it's like home/family-runned. So hard. So sister Nielson and I are trying to find a better way to teach and promise the blessings of church attendance. 

So remember in my setting apart blessing that I would learn things about the doctrine and the scriptures that I've never seen before? It's so true. I'm re-reading the book of Mormon and it takes me 15 minutes to finish just one page. There is so much in there, it's amazing! Who knew there was so much in the Book of Mormon. I can liken every verse to my life and the lives of the investigators. It's just so exciting. Sister Nielson and I also have a lot of fun during companion study just talking about the doctrines and things that we've never learned before. She says she loves listening to me because I say things we've both never thought of before. I like receive revelation as I talk. This is the coolest calling the the whole world. I've never learned more about the gospel. 

And speaking of talking and revelation, I gave a talk in church yesterday. Bishop texted us saturday night and said I was a speaker for tomorrow speaking on tithing. I'm like, great, that gives me time to prepare. So I wrote down a couple notes and spoke for the full 15 minutes. Totally had so much help from the Holy Ghost. I spoke Ilonggish. (Ilonggo/English) And I had stuff to say. It was so cool. I did everything I could to prepare in the time I had, but the Holy Ghost helped me so much. Even Elder Van (one of the Elders in our ward) said he took down some notes and wants to use them in his lessons. And then the person after me was President Deyro. He's the president of the Seminary here. Their family has us over for dinner a lot and one of the times I told him I was in the Bible Videos. So he told the whole ward that I was an actress and famous. The Bishop thought he was just making stuff up so when I told him I really was in it he felt pretty embarrassed. 

Anyway, that's all for today. I can tell you some more fun stuff on Christmas/Chrismas Eve! I love you all!!

-Sister Watkins

In front of the LDS church

Frogs in her shoes!

Enormous spider!

Julie and the Filipino children

Trycicad Ride

December 15, 2013

Hey, so I had mission conference yesterday that I didn't know about so I wasn't able to tell you last week that P-Day is today now. So sorry, hope you all weren't too stressed. 

So last week, right as I was sending the pictures, we had a brown out (a power-out/black-out) and it didn't get sent. They happen almost everyday now because of the storm earlier. They're fixing all the power lines. So we have to be creative in our cooking and just use candles. 

So this past week felt soooo long. I just had an interview with President Lopez yesterday with Sister Nielson and he asked us to teach him a lesson so he could see how well I was doing at the language and how well we are teaching. Talk about stress! haha but we did fine. Afterwards he was like "wow, you are doing really well at the language. I loved everything about it. You are confident but yet humble. I can tell this is a very strong companionship." We were so happy. We are doing so well together. I am just picking up the language so fast. We are finally getting the area to progress. Before I came no one was qualifying for baptism and they weren't reaching our goals. I wasn't okay with that so we've changed the whole way we go about things. Now we have like 23 new investigators, and like 30 potentials. It's great! And I've figured out a way to organize it all so we don't forget about anyone. Sister Nielson is just so happy, she says she's never had this kind of success before. We are just so busy now!

Ok, I'm going to go off on a few random tangents of things that I just think of, okay? okay.

So President loves my voice. He will not let me leave the mission home unless I sing a solo to everyone. I sang with a group for the special musical number earlier, but he wanted to hear me by myself. At every meeting he puts me on the agenda. I pretty much sing at every lesson too and every other district meeting. It's a little ridiculous. And it's harder to sing here. There's always something stuck in my throat because it's so humid. 

Um, everyone loves my nose here. It's different than everyone else's and they like to touch it. It's a little weird. 

I saw a huge spider. I'll send a picture. I finally got a picture this time. The first one a saw disappeared in 1 second and we freaked out. They run soooo fast here. Ah! And the kids play with the spiders. There's a black fat spider here that looks like a black widow that all the kids play with because they don't bite. Ew, so gross.

It's really easy to wake up here because the sun is already up at 6:30. It just gets dark early. 

So, this is for Emily, yesterday I got a real life fat joke to me. This guy wanted to make us pay extra for a trycicad ride (motocycle with a side thing) (they always try to make us Americans pay extra) and we finally got it down to a reasonable price, but he was like, "I was just thinking 30 pesos because you know, you are heavy, it's not good for my bike" hahah too funny. Especially because they can pile like 16 people in those things if people sit on the top and they don't complain about that. So rude. We're just fat Americans. 

I'm glad I ate a Gretel's house so many times, it really helped prepare me for the different food here. I've tried a lot of different things, I just don't ask what it is. But I love the fruit. There's pineapple and mango and coconut. A member just gave us two huge coconuts last night and we had to carry them home. Good thing we live with two Polynesians who know what to do with it. 

Um, what else? hmmm. Oh so this year we're focusing on teaching tithing so if anyone has a story about tithing, could you send it to me so I can share personal experiences in lessons?

Speaking of lessons, there's like this huge group of people in a neighborhood that like to listen to us. There's different people everytime so we just take role and keep count how many lessons they've heard. Hopefully they all come to church. If they do we could probably convert their entire neighborhood. It's so fun. It's so easy finding people here, they find us. People invite us to come in and talk to them. The hard part is keeping track of them all and getting them to progress. 

So I'm still getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. I got like 20 new bites in the last week. Maybe I should put bug spray earlier than 4:00? haha. Well I'm actually going to try to get some pictures sent to you. If I think of some fun stories I'll just write again. I love you all so much! Palangga gid ko kamo!!

Love, Sister Watkins

First Email from the Philippines! December 8, 2013

Hello!!!

Holy Cow I love it here so much. I'm in the Philippines! It's so crazy! I think my jet lag has worn off now, I couldn't sleep for the first two nights because my schedule was off, but all is well now. And it is so hot here! I'm in this little internet cafe and I'm just sweating everywhere. But it's awesome. I wouldn't want it any other way. I expected it to be hot, so I'd be disappointed if it wasn't. It's actually bearable. I just don't think about it. We have fans in our house and that helps a lot. Our house is really nice, really rich compared to everything else. There are only little jumping spiders and lizards that live with us. Oh and frogs. There are a million frogs here! And roosters! They don't shut up. Constant crowing.. all night long!! Stupid birds. And dogs. It's so sad. There are a million dogs here. All pretty small and extremely skinny. Because I worked with dad this summer, I can look at a dog and say, "he needs a rhinoscopy, he needs an ultrasound, he needs to get rid of whatever that thing is that makes him lose all of his hair, he has fleas, etc." and all of them need to be spayed. It's nasty. They are the ugliest, saddest dogs I've ever seen. The hairless ones are the worst, the ones that have that disease; dad knows what I'm talking about. And there's a lot of cats. They're not as bad, but they're all really small. 

So that's for the animals. There's also so many plants and trees and flowers. It's too bad that you can't really enjoy them because you're too busy looking at all of the poor houses. People are soooo poor here. It's so sad. But at the same time that's how life is here. I'm in the Bacolod South area, Mansilingan 2nd Ward. If you wanted to google maps it. It's near the area with all the streets are named after planets. Some other areas that I can remember are Pana-ad and paghidaet. But yeah, it's awesome here. They absolutely love Americans. Everytime we walk down the street they yell "Guapa!" to us. Meaning "beautiful!". It's even more awkward when they try to speak English to us and say "You are butiful wimun." So awkward. Seriously, everyone turns and stares at us. We're are going to cause an accident one of these days. They stick their heads out of their cars/tricycle things to see us. But it makes sense. We are the only white people we've seen here. The other two sisters in our apartment are Polynesian. 

Anyway, what else? They provide permethrien (?) and bug lotion stuff for us. We only have to put the bug repellent on at four every day. That's when the mosquitoes come out. I've had a few mosquito bites, but not too bad. I've actually been getting bitten more from ants than anything else. On my feet. But it's ok too, not that bad. Thankfully I don't have bed bugs though. At least not yet. My companion has them, so it might just be a matter of time. But the bugs aren't that bad. I'm the bravest in our house. All the other sisters hate them so much. One sister freaks out everytime she sees a spider. She also says "Gosh dangit!" every five words. She's so funny though. I love love love the sisters in our apartment.They are so funny. And they blame me for everything because I'm the greenie. haha. 

So I spoke in church yesterday. Church is in Illonggo, English, and Tagalog. Mostly Ilonggo though, so I gave my talk (introducing myself and bearing my testimony) in Ilonggo. The person giving the talk after me was a return missionary coming back to visit the area. He was making fun of me, saying that he used to be as bad as me at the language. Then after sacrament he found out I had only been there 5 days! He totally thought I had been there much longer. Everyone does. Everyone is shocked when I say "Nagabot ako sa Miercoles lang sa Philipinas so pasensya, nagatuon ako sang Ilonggo subong" - "I just arrrived to the Philippines on Wednesday, so sorry, I'm learning the language right now." Everyone says "Sagad gid!" - "So talented". I'm learning really fast I guess. I can understand the gist of everything that's being said. It's awesome. And I am already teaching in the lessons. I just need to get rid of my American accent now. 

So we found 35 new investigators. Pretty much an entire neighborhood/street wants to hear the gospel. We hold like a class now to like 15 people. It's crazy. We're constantly finding people. No one rejects us. There is so much to do! So pretty much every morning we get up, study, take a tricycad to our area (a bike or motorcycle with a side thing for people to sit in) and walk around and find people. We don't really make appointments with people because they're always home, and appointments don't work. They never remember. So we walk around and talk to everyone we see, trying to hit our investigators and less actives all at the same time. There is a lot of walking, but it's not bad at all. Oh and I am totally going to gain so much weight in this area. We are in a ward that loves to feed us so we have a dinner appointment almost every night. Last night they dished our bowl up for us. When I saw it I literally said these words in my head "HOLY SHIZNIT, HECK NO I CAN'T EAT THAT MUCH!!" But I did. And it disgusts me to think how much I ate. It was like daddy size after he got seconds. AND RICE EXPANDS IN YOUR STOMACHE! But oh well. It was a really simple meal, and my companion hates it, but she ate it anyway. Pretty much it's all rice with an eggy mix/sauce over it with quail eggs and a little pork. Hopefully I'm really not allergic to eggs. But family home evening with them was a lot of fun. We played a game similar to big buddie (?), but instead of saying numbers to pass it we said parts of a cow in Ilonggo. They all thought it was HILARIOUS because I had to not only play the tongue twister game, but I had to learn all of those words in Ilonggo and remember who had them and what they meant and how to pronounce them and learn all the words that go in between. They laughed their heads off. But I actually did very well and learned all of the words. They are like "dang, you're fast at learning this language". Haha, it was a lot of fun. (Sorry, I'm starting to talk like the Polynesians in our apartment)

Anyway, I don't have too much time left, but this is the perfect place for me. I love the rain, (we got caught in it once and had to go back to get our umbrellas because we forgot them, hehe), I love the plants, I love all the baby chickens and duck everywhere, some of the baby dogs are cute, I love the food (even though it hurts sometimes to eat so much of it), I love my companion and roommates, the shower is cold and even though I don't love it, it's okay, I love to see all their little houses even though they are so poor and made out of garbage and sticks, and yeah, I love it when I can understand and hold a conversation with someone in Ilonggo. And yeah, everything is great! I'm going to try to finish my training in 6 weeks not 12, because that's just how I am. Um, my mission president is extremely strict, but that's okay too. He is making Sister Kumar take her nose ring out after all that we went though at the MTC. He won't call President Nally. I mean, the general authorities told her that she can keep it, but I think she's so tired of the problems it's creating she's just ready to get rid of it. So yeah, I'll see if I can send pictures now. I love you all!!!!!!

 - Love, me