February 16, 2014

It's getting hard to think of things to write now because the weeks are just going by so fast now. It feels like yesterday was just P-Day. It's always so busy here. 

So this week we were nowhere near our numbers. By saturday we only had two lessons with a member present. We needed 20 by sunday. So we had a one day mission with the ward members and went on splits. That day, together with my lessons and Sister Dequina's, we had 19 lessons, 15 of which counted toward the member present. I was so exhausted when I came home that I went to bed at 9:00. Then yesterday we had four more lessons, so we reached our goal! We also had 6 investigators come to church. Last week we didn't have any. And we weren't even expecting them to come to church. But they did, and it was awesome. 

So when I write emails, what do you want to know? More about my investigators, more stories, more about the culture? I don't know what's fun to read and what's just boing. haha. 

So I've noticed I'm getting a little "dense" here. (That was for Amber.) Every time a member sees me they say "Sister Watkins, tambok ka (you're fat) or mangin dako ka (you are becoming big)". There's this one sister that that's all she says to me. Every time she sees me, she calls me fat. I've never heard so many fat jokes in my life. It's the culture here to say stuff like that all the time. It's not offensive here. But I am going to try to find a way to eat less at the member's houses. They kind of make you keep eating. You don't just dish up your plate and finish. You dish it up, eat it, dish it up again, eat it, and dish again, until the whole meal is gone from the table. Maybe I'll just eat slower and made Sister Dequina eat all of it. The Filipinos here can eat soooo much and not gain any weight. Anyway, I'll try to send a picture of my density. haha. (who's the fat one now Emily?! I win."

So funny story, kind of, kind of gross. Yesterday at church during class, our investigator is taking the shoes off of her baby so he can run around and not fall (he's not used to shoes so he can't balance in them) and when she takes one off, two cockroaches fall out of it. It's normal. Just finding two cockroaches hangin' out in your shoe. She just steps on them to kill them and kicks them under her chair. haha. After church I went ahead and cleaned them up. She's really poor so she lives with cockroaches and is used to them. We found a huge cockroach in our house the other day. Man they run fast. It's so funny trying to get them out of the house. We use the broom, but usually that doesn't work and it starts running towards our feet so we all scream and run while Sister Grohse (the Samoan) just goes over and steps on it. Oh what a life! This morning the drain smelled so bad that I took a bucket shower outside again. 

I think that's all I have for this week, I'm going to try to send some pictures now! Love you all so much!

Love, Sister Watkins

February 9, 2014

Hello. Happy Birthday Dad and Amber tonight. Tell Amber I hope she gets feeling better soon and to take it easy! I wrote a letter to Dad and Amber and sent it this week, so you might get it sometime next month. Haha. When Maegan wrote me a letter it took 6 weeks to get here. 

So, yeah. What happened this week? We had a baptism on Saturday, which was awesome. I gave the talk and the musical number. I always give the musical number. By the time I come home I'll probably know every song in the hymn book. Funny moment at the baptism. So our investigator goes out into the hall to go into the font, we realize that we don't have a picture with him yet so we chase after him to take a quick picture. The Elders realize they didn't take a picture with their investigator either so they run out to do the same (two people getting baptized). Bishop and our investigator get in the water and bishop starts. I realize something is not right: there are no witnesses. I try to stop Bishop "Bishop, bishop, hulat lang! Hulat! Wa'ay witnesses" He doesn't listen and keeps going. I run out and grab Elder Cannon and drag him in. He sees our investigator go all the way under. I guess that counts here. President Lopez says that when things like that happens, just forgive them. It would have been worse had we told bishop to do it again, he would have been humiliated and gotten defensive. So we just let it go. The church is still developing here. The Bishops are still learning. Just this past week we got cushions on our benches, it was so weird. Yesterday during relief society, I realized that I missed the relief society rooms back home. The soft chairs, carpet, nice walls. We have no idea what we have back home. I never knew what a blessing it was to have such a developed, organized church where people know what they're doing. 

Last week during the Sacrament hymn, the piano played one song while the congregation sang another. It's one of those hymns where there's two tunes to the same hymn. Apparently they only knew one of them, so they sang the one they knew while the piano played the other. I tried to help them get back on track, but it didn't work. So I just waited until it was over. It was... pretty gloomy. 

We didn't have any investigators at church yesterday. It's hard when that happens because that moves everyone's baptism date another month. They have to go to church 4 times in a row in order to qualify for baptism. President still wants us to get a baptism every week, that hasn't happened yet in this area, but we're trying. It's so hard to balance everything: finding 18 new investigators every week, teaching them, teaching our other investigators, helping them get to church, helping them progress, getting to know all of our ward members, finding all of our ward members using a list that's not updated that has no addresses. We're pretty busy here. The time is starting to fly by for me. I can't believe it's P-Day again. 

Anyway, sorry I don't have anything too crazy and interesting to write this week. Both Sister Dequina and I are exhausted today, we'll probably take a little nap later. Next week I'll try to send some pictures and stuffs. The person behind me is watching a really inappropriate show behind me with soooo many swear words so I'm trying to finish as fast as I can. I have not heard those words in a long time and I don't think they understand how offensive they are. Oh my gosh, every other word is the bad F word! Ah! Anyway I love you all and I'm getting out of here. 

Love you all! Love, Sister Watkins

Part of her area

A water buffalo with tons of flies! :P

A bridge made from bamboo

February 2, 2014

Happy Birthday to Daddy and Ber-Ber! Yay, another year older. Hope you do something fun. I don't really know what else to say about that.
And yes we have had a lot of rain lately. The big downpour was at night, right after we got home. It was raining earlier, but hadn't down-poured yet. We passed by the Elders on the way home and they had forgotten their umbrella. Poor guys, soaking wet. haha. I was joking with them saying that they had to plan in their proselyting attire (because President said so) so they weren't allowed to change. We got a text that night saying that they did, they planned in their soaking wet clothes. haha. But anyway, the downpour. It was soooo loud. It's hard to hear each other because all you can hear is the pounding of the rain. It's like a shower is on outside. A really big shower. I'm so glad it wasn't while we were out though, we would have been soaked.
I think the rain affected our drains though, because our water smells like rotten eggs. It's so gross. I couldn't take a shower in it because it was too gross, but I still needed to wash my hair. So I just filled up a bucket from the sink and washed my hair outside. It reminds me of camping. It's so weird that that's my way of life now. 

So this week we met a kid that's 22 and is sooo nice. He was so receptive to our message and wanted to learn more. He's looking for the truth and is just perfectly golden. Yeah, until we talk with him again and he tells us all about his past. He was a part of a really bad gang here where he smoke, drank, did drugs, slept with girls, and killed someone. He KILLED SOMEONE! Great, so now I've met a murderer. And we found out that that whole group of guys that we teach here and there were all part of the same gang. But they are so nice and I can't imagine them doing anything like that. So we're going to talk to President to see what we should do. They're not a part of the gang anymore and seem to have changed. They want something good in their lives and say they feel a weight lifted when we talk to them. So maybe they'll be like Alma the Younger and his gang and turn into awesome missionaries. 

This week we went on exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders (equivalent to Zone Leaders but for the Sisters). I got to go over to the other area and it was so cool. So my area is just houses, nothing cool. But they have fields and rivers and water buffalo and hills and bridges and rocks to jump across the river and yeah. It was so fun. I'll see if I can send a couple pictures. But that's the real Philippines! 

Hmm, what else? Did you know that we live off of around $40 each week? Crazy that we can live off of just that every week. So I found out the Filipinos missionaries pay around 1000 pesos each month for their missions (I think) So when I did the conversion of $400 x 44 = 17,600 pesos (because they wanted to know) It blew their mind that we were paying that much. It's just so crazy when you convert the money here. Anyway, that was random.

I really can't think of anything else that exciting. Um two birds flew into our apartment earlier today and freaked Sister Ludwig out. She hates everything that's living. And yeah, that's all. I'm going to send pictures now! Love you all so much!

-Sister Watkins