greetings from Gapan

thank heavens for 7-11

laundry room

Hello po!

SO guess what! I finally made it to the field! I am serving in the Gapan City Zone.  I have the most beautiful Nanay (mom/trainer) in the entire mission! Her name is Sister Tu’akalau from New Zealand and she is so SO AMAZING! She has been out for 11 months now and I am actually her second anak! SO I have an older sister and she is actually training one of the Sisters in my batch so I have a niece too! But I really love it here! I do understand now why new missionaries are called anak or children for the first part of their missions. It’s because we are helpless useless things that can’t talk or buy food for themselves or walk anywhere without their Nanays (trainers)! Haha I honestly hold her hand as I cross the street because I have no idea what I am doing! She is the best. But I will say I am so surprised how much Tagalog I understand (through the help of the spirit) after lessons and church and things like that my Nanay will always ask me what I understood and usually I get almost everything! I still cant really say anything back but she says that’s how it was for her too. I guess everyone starts to understand before they can actually speak (just like little babies) the streets around here are crazy too! We will walk through this little thing that looks like a dirt path to the middle of nowhere and suddenly it will open up to a big street! Almost everything is different here, the roads, the houses, showers, washing clothes, even the way you have to flush the toilet! But it is so much fun! So a little about the houses, most houses are just broken fences with tarps over them. A few of them are actual “houses” you could say. Like four walls a door stuff like that but they’re actually pretty cool! People over here are resourceful! It amazes me daily! As for showers J I take bucket showers. So you walk into out bathroom and its just a room with a toilet in one corner and a bucket and drain in the other one. So you feel the bucket up with water and there is like a little plastic pot that you use to dump the water on yourself. It sounds weird but it actually works great! My hair loves it! My feet though are always kinda hard to clean (walking around anywhere makes them dirty) Also washing clothes! I washed my clothes for the first time! So you start by getting them all really wet in a bucket then you fill up a wash bin with water and put soap in it and mix it all up so you have a lot of bubbles then you just put your clothes in and scrub them with your hands. Its kinda hard to explain so I’ll make a video next time! Then you rinse them off twice soak them in a bucket with fabric conditioner and hang them to dry! Then you wait J oh and then our pluming is so funny! So to flush the toilet you flush it like a normal toilet then at just the right moment you have to poor a cup of water in it so it will actually flush and if you mess up you have to wait like a minute before you can try it again! And our sink in the kitchen will randomly be really weird to turn off most times you turn it off and to turn it off you just push it back around to the off spot but every now and then you will go to turn it off and it will go past the off point and start turning on again, in that case you have to turn it all the way one and then half way off and it will turn off. I don’t have any idea why! But the Philippines does have one thing in common with America and its 7/11! We found one the other day so my Nanay let us go in and we ate dinner there, hotdogs and Slurpee’s. It was fantastic! The weather here is crazy but I love it! We always have our umbrellas out, one second to protect us from the rain and the next to keep the beating sun off us! And it with honestly change in seconds! I don’t know what else to say and I’ve already said a TON! But if you have any questions let me know! Wait I just want to add one last thing! BE A MEMBER MISSIONARY!!! You don’t have to do anything to great to be a member missionary! It doesn’t take a ton of time, its not hard but it makes the work so much easier! Right now in our area we have a really hard time getting people to come to church because when they come NO ONE TALKS TO THEM! If someone walks into your sacrament hall and you don’t know who they are you better get you booty over to talk to them! Its so hard to be an investigator! You walk into a place full of new cultures and new language you’ve never heard and a schedule you’ve never gone through and if you don’t have anyone to help you through you bet you wont want to come back! I never know how that felt until I came here and experienced it for myself so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! For me help them out! I love you all so much but I don’t want to see any of you for 16 more months because I love it so much here ;) Mahal Kita! Kitakits!