Monday, July 11, 2011
Guimaras Island, the Philippines
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| consequence of pushing the liquids |
Elder Conjelado was sick this week. He finally got his kidney stone out. He showed it to me like he was way proud of it. He has to drink like a lake worth of water every day, and so he is peeing like every 15 minutes. It was actually hurting our work, as well as hurting him. He is getting better, though. At the beginning of the week he started to have an allergic reaction to his medical pot. Like way red eyes and a scratchy throat. Is this funny? Kind of, yes, but it wasn’t great for work.
On Thursday morning, I woke up all the sudden. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Then I had LBM until 2:00 p.m. I guess I had food poisoning. It was way bad. We didn’t work until 3:00 p.m., and then we had to stop walking every once in a while so my stomach could settle down. I had eaten some old ramen noodles and rice the night before. The worse was in one of our lessons. We were teaching about the Book of Mormon, and all the sudden my stomach turned upside down. I just handed the pamphlet to Elder Conjelado and he took over for a while.
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| writing in journal - during a brown out |
This next Wednesday is mission conference. Some Elders and I have been working on “Abide with Me, ‘tis Eventide.” The Guimaras zone was chosen to put together a musical number. I got drafted. We actually sound pretty good, but probably only because of Elder Light teaching us the tenor part. I’ll tell you how that goes in next week’s e-mail.
Every P-day is basketball day, for like 6 hours. Each week I have been getting a little better, so I was a little excited to play today. This morning before we left Sibunag, I went out to the front porch to get my tennis shoes. I could only find one. Now, we have a bunch of shoes on our front porch, mostly ones that got left after someone was transferred - and they’ve not been touched since. These are terrible shoes. My tennis shoes were the best of the bunch, but one of my tennis shoes has gone missing. We guess a dog carried it away. I looked all around our overgrown yard, but I couldn’t find it. I’ll probably buy new tennis shoes on Wednesday when I go to Iloilo for mission conference. Today, I’ll play basketball like a Pinoy: in sandals.
Every P-day is a sleepover. We have district meeting on Tuesday morning, and we couldn’t get back in time if we returned to our area after p-day. The last ride leaves at 5pm on Monday, and the first ride out of Sibunag is 7:30. District meeting starts at 8. As a result, every Monday night we sleep at the missionaries’ apartment here in Alibhon. We always leave a mess. Not really me or Elder Conjelado, but the others do. Last Tuesday in zone meeting we kind of got talked to about it. So, on Tuesday before we returned to our area, we broke into the Alibhon Elders’ apartment and did the dishes and swept the floors, plus left two referrals for them.
I’ve been collecting and passing on a lot of referrals lately. I’ve been doing a lot of street contacting lately, just talking to people. My companion and I often find ourselves waiting for transportation, so I’ve been getting a few investigators this way. We met with one of them yesterday for the first time. It was the funniest lesson ever. It went well despite being a weird lesson. I think the guy just wanted to listen to us because I am white. He tried to talk to me in English even though I know better Ilonggo than he knows English. He kept on high fiving me, all of the time. I’d ask him a question, such as “From what you understand, what is the gospel?” He’d give an answer, and I’d be would say, “yes, that’s right” and he’d put his hand up for a high five. We did maybe 30 high fives in 20 minutes. It was awesome. We have a return appointment to teach him on Tuesday.
We got a baptismal date this week! That’s pretty cool. We have 4 progressing investigators, though they are a different four than last week. The work is going well, but we just couldn’t do a lot of it this week because of our health. We taught only ten lessons for the entire week. And some of those lessons, it would be better if they had not happened.
We had a lot of other distractions this week, too. On Wednesday we had interviews with President Pagaduan, and on Saturday was the lamest church activity in history. It looked like a (bad) church dance with people just sitting in chairs against the walls. Only 3 people of group came. It was a Guimaras-wide activity. I spent about 30 minutes talking to the members from our area, but then I was out of vocabulary to use. In fact, it was really just a large gathering of members and food, with everybody sitting around bored until they finally brought out the food. Then they ate and left. I spent most of my time practicing our song for mission conference with the other missionaries, but I did fellowship a lot of other people too. Some of them even said I was good in Ilonggo. That is cool, because nobody said I was good at Aklanon. Or, maybe I just didn’t understand them when they said it!
Sorry if this was a boring letter. Nothing awesome really happened this week. I spent most the week kind of frustrated at myself for being sick, or frustrated that I couldn’t work.
Elder Conjelado and I are getting along well. He told me that he has a lot of fun working with me. I think I learned how to be fun while working from Elder Arrieta. We teach in unity. We usually teach about 50-50 in our lessons. That’s the way I always wanted it to be. The only problem is I think we hang out too much at members’ houses. We’re working on that, though. I’m sure he’s just tired of the area. I’m sure he wanted to work real hard and maximize his time working when he first got here, but after being here so long it become a lot easier to just relax at members’ houses.
So yeah thanks for the emails I love you all so much. I wish you all the best.
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