November 17th,2014: Teaching Frustrations and Gross Dogs

Hallelujah!!

I finally just got the internet to work!  I was able to read all your emails, but I couldn't get the reply to work.  I have been trying to find decent internet for an hour now, bouncing from computer shop to computer shop.  So, unfortunatley, this email will probably be really short.  

I just want to send this email first just to let you know that I'm still alive haha, then ill type as much as I can before we leave.  

(The next day this email came in...)

Hey!

So, I'm just talking a little bit of time to email again today because my email to the president didnt work yesterday as the main reason why.  I tried sending a bunch of pictures to you yesterday, but my computer crashed right before we left and now none of them sent, and its not working on this computer either, so sorry!  It's just not America here.  The computers we use here are pretty ghetto haha.  Our week was fine.  We actually had a couple days that were pretty rough this week though as far as the work goes.  We had one day where we only had one lesson because we were going to a lot of our far away investigators and they were all pretty rude to us in sending us away.  They never actually say that they don't want to meet with us anymore, but you can tell when their done.  They just keep making up excuse after excuse haha.  But, we have also had a couple of really great days.  Oh wait the pictures are working I'll try and send some really quick. 
On Saturday, I went on splits with E. Guzman, so he could interview two of our investigators for baptism.  We went to one of our investigators and had a really interesting lesson.  To make a long story short, we ended up teaching like 5 people.  Three of which were already investigators, 2 who were new to us.  So, we were kind of already in a weird situation because they were all at different points with the missionaries. Then there was one sister who didn't speak any Karay-a, Ilonggo, or english, just tagalog, so that made things weird too haha.  Then when we were about to wrap up, our two oldest investigators came home (They weren't there at first, and we were meeting outside their house), so then they started to sit in right as we were about to wrap up.  Those two were the actual ones we went out there to meet, so we just kind of started a continuation lesson.  It was just crazy, but it was actually a really good lesson.  

We have one investigator who is about a 19 year old boy.  His two parents are the ones who got baptized in my pictures, so you might be able to see the boy I am talking about here. But they also have two of their daughters are members.  So a part member family.  But, so this boy is gay, or at least he acts like it.  Like, he dresses up in girls clothes.  I don't think hes actually homosexual, he just dresses like that because he really is into fashion... i dont know, But, actually there are a ton of gay people here, its kinda disturbing because sometimes they really actually look like girls haha, anyways.  We had this boy, who was really close to being baptized, but then he started to have some doubts and some questions, which is great.  We don't want anyone to be baptized if they don't believe the church is true. So we just backed up his baptismal date for a later date, but now, he is having more and more doubts, and I'm pretty sure he's reading anti mormon stuff on the internet because hes asking us a lot of questions about joseph smiths life and about plural marriage and stuff like that.  It's just really frustrating and sad. He is focusing a lot on really not-important doctrines, for example, he didn't actually believe that Jesus Christ was born on April 6.  Right now, I just feel like he is not investigating because he is looking for the truth, its just like hes just looking for ways to see if the church is not true.  We have really just been trying to help him develop faith in the Book of Mormon, being the corner stone of our church.  If the book of mormon is true, then everything we teach him is true and Joseph smith was the prophet of the restoration, and God has given us the priesthood again.  I have complete faith in the promise that we will recieve an answer if we read, ponder, and pray sincerely with real intent.  

To answer some of your questions.

One thing that is kind of gross here are the dogs.  There are dogs everywhere and none of them are normal. There is always at least one thing gross or weird about the dogs here.  Always. haha.  One time we were walking and I see a white dog, and it looked normal!  I didn't believe it  but as we got closer, I couldnt see anything wrong with it!, No bald patchs, no weird funguses, or cuts, missing limbs, nothing, but when we passed it, on the other side its eye was so freaky looking. One of its eyes was brown and normal, but then the other side, the eye was huge! like 5 times the size of the other one and blue. The dog that I thought was the most normal ended up being one of the weirdest ones ive seen.  But, all the dogs here look almost exactly the same and same size.  Because of all of the uncontroled breeding.  Its pretty gross.

One thing that made me laugh... I actually laugh at a lot of stuff around here.  A lot of people around here are just characters.  So funny.  Some of the elders too.  Filipinos are just pretty funny.  Just light hearted people.