August 3, 2015: The Magsico Family is an Inspiration

Natalie: what's the best advise your mission president has given you? And what do people think of Obama?  haha.  I like these questions today..   So maybe the best advise that my mission president has given me is that I should have a goal of how many people I want to baptize and then write it down.  When he told us this it really kind of just made me realize that I really didn't have any expectations for what I wanted to accomplish for my mission.  But a lot of the advice he gives us makes me just laugh.  Like he tells us that if we don't honor our covenants that God might strike us with lightning, like literal lightning and he tells us that if we work hard on our missions and use our time wisely that the Lord will for sure bless us with gwapa wifes haha.  He tells us that one all of the time.  And most people know who Obama is but they don't really have any opinions of him.  
Lacy: what is a popular toy kids play with? Kids have a lot of cool things that they play with.  They make this thing by wrapping plastic a sertain way around a coin and play a kind of hacky-sack game.  then kids always take used tricycle tires and race them by hitting it with a stick.   People play badminton a lot too in the streets (with no net)  I don't know.  Kind of make-shift stuff like that.  
Chloe: are the schools nice? Do they have to wear uniforms?  The schools are ok.  They aren't nice, but yes, everybody wears uniforms, even college.  
Mom: can you get descent basketball shoes there?-  You can buy real basketball shoes but they are the same price as America, around 100 dollars, otherwise its fake ones, which are actually ok.  They just seem to fade really fast on the bottom from playing on concrete. I could probably make a pair last for 5-6 months.  It would cost around $15.
Oliver: how tall is the tallest Filipino you've seen? Maybe around  6-6. We one time played one of the college basketball teams and they  had like a 6-6 center and I was guarding him.  He was good and dunked on me a couple of times.  
Dad: what's the political/electoral scene like there? Do they advertise? Knock on doors? Politics over all are very sketchy.  Elections aren't very often though.  People advertise but it's not nearly as much as America.  I've never seen knocking on doors either.  It's so corrupt though here.  There is an election coming up here next year and so what happens is that the current mayor and stuff just start becoming passive on everything.  They don't enforce any laws just so they can get votes to be put in again.  It's bad. 

Don't worry about the package!  I'm fine, I just didn't want you to feel bad that I got it and didn't say anything!   If I can request one thing it's the journal paper from Papa.  What's happened is that a lot of missionaries here have been converted to the papa style of journaling that he showed me before I left and people are requesting some of that paper that he gave me.  I'm running out. Maybe like 400-500 pieces of paper would be good.   Thanks! 

So, this week was a lot of fun and I have had some inspiring experiences as well. 

We did a service project this week on our yard of our apartment because we were going to have an apartment check and our yard was like a jungle of weeds, so we called over some of the members  to help us out.  It's really not that big of a yard, but it took forever to finish because again we were using machetes to cut down the weeds.  So ending result for me was so nasty blisters, a sore back from hunching over and hacking with the machete, and some pretty nasty ant bites.  We still have those fire ants in the back of our house.  They hurt other people when they get bit, but I have kind of a bad reaction to them.  They swell up so big.  I had one on the back of my elbow that seriously swole up like a small egg.  

The Magsico family, our last baptism, are going through some pretty crazy trials right now.  Their house owner, who is actually the father's sister, is giving them a pretty hard time because they joined the church.  I'll make a long story short, she just told them that if they keep going to church that she's going to kick them out of the house, but there are actually a lot of people right now that are not being nice to them and telling them a bunch of stuff about the church, but I'm still just so impressed with their family because they have defended the church through all of this.  They don't have any other family in the church or close friends because they are new in New Washington and have only even been going to church for 6 weeks but have defended it through all of this.  They didn't complain at all to us except for that they felt bad because it seemed like they were the only ones who knew God.  They just told us how they had been comforted so much through their prayers and through the Book of Mormon.  This family really has inspired me.  It's only been 6 weeks and they have more faith than I do.  It's kind of like the quote you sent me. It's pretty major stuff that we do as missionaries, and to have a convert like this family brings a lot of inner happiness and peace.  It's kind of hard to describe, but it feels really really good.  

That's about all I've got for this week.  Halong!