Monday, November 9, 2015

Week of November 9, 2015

Dear friends and family,

I had another great (and hot I might add) week in the Philippines! At the request of my mother, I will talk more about the details of where I am living and such this week. I live in a two story house, which I estimate is about 1000 Square feet. It's definitely not fancy, but it does the job. However, I do miss having an oven and microwave! I share the house with another set of missionaries, so there are just four of us in the house. Because of the fact that the only appliances we have are a rice cooker and a cook-top, my diet is a little bit different than it was before. Many meals consist of some vegetables, some sliced ham, sauteed onions, and of course, rice! However, because I don't much care for cooking, I have been eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Although it's not exactly a fancy dish, I have been making triple-decker sandwiches, and with the really good bread that the Philippines has (it's more moist and sweet), it makes a great dinner for me nonetheless. In the mornings, I eat oatmeal with some fruit, which is a nice way to break up the rice, and fills me up.

Speaking of food, I ate some interesting things this last week. Remember how I said I wasn't going to try dugo (blood) again? Yeah, well that did not come to pass. Last Monday, we ate at a members home, and intestine, cooked pork blood, and cooked worms were served. Now, I don't know if the Lord just blessed my taste buds, but it actually all tasted good to me. The dugo over rice wasn't bad, the intestine just tasted like regular pork, and the worms, to quote the warthog from the Lion King, "tasted like chicken." Now, I'm not saying I will miss this type of food when I get home, but I will eat it if it is put in front of me again.

There is one humbling experience, out of many, that I would like to share with you all that occurred this last week. On Monday, on the way home from that interesting meal I mentioned earlier, I was riding on a tricey. I felt somewhat cold, which is not something I feel very often, so I checked my watch to see what temperature it was. It turns out that it was 29.9 degrees Celsius. Due to the fact that I'm not that familiar with Celsius, I took out our phone to convert the temperature. It turns out it was 85 degrees, and I was cold! However, to make a long story short, I didn't put the phone back in my pocket as well as I should have, because it soon slipped out of my pocket and was run over by the rear wheel of the tricey. I was a little perturbed to say the least, but my companion was very calm, and didn't seem the least bit concerned. The other missionaries could have laughed at my stupidity, but instead, they comforted me and didn't make a big deal of it at all. My companion told me that "that everything happens for a reason", and the next day we bought a new phone (which consisted of a lot of bartering I may add). 

My companion and I have a good teaching pool, and we have 6 investigators with a baptismal date! We also have been making a lot of good contacts while we are walking around as well. That is where my Caucasian ethnicity has come in handy. On a regularly basis, we have a group of teenagers approach us, and ask if they can take a picture with me. I of course say yes, but tell them before I do so, if we can share a quick message with them and share our purpose as missionaries. They always seem happy to oblige in return for a picture! The other day, we had a group of 20 kids approach us! Don't worry, my head is not growing bigger, my abilities regarding Tagalog keep me quite humble! Haha...I'm moving in the right direction though. I figure if I just keep learning new words every day, I eventually will be fluent.

I hope all is continuing to go well at home! Thank you for all of your emails!

Love,
Elder Pulley

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