Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Life in the Trenches: Taking Cold Showers



It's hot today really super hot! I'm in this little shack of a Internet cafe writing emails today. It's really loud all the school boys are playing World of Warcraft and shouting at each other. It's always loud everywhere. This mission is not one that you can teach without expecting distractions. I am now officially jealous of the American-going missionaries but this is way more of an adventure!

We spend most of our P-Days in town. We go play basketball in the mornings and then take a shower in the patron housing because it has hot showers! It's nice having a real shower once a week. Some mornings it's hard making myself take a cold bucket shower but there is no way I am going to skip taking a shower. We get super dirty and gross during the day especially in the city with all the smoke and car pollution. Good times.


We then go to the mall and withdraw our money and go grocery shopping we get 4000 Pesos twice a month which is about 100 dollars. Everything is super cheap here (if you convert it to dollars), but as a missionary you can't think of it as dollars you think of it as Pesos. Real pearls here run from small 30 Pesos to large 100 Pesos which is about a dollar for real pearl earrings. They have necklaces but they are like 150 Pesos still only about 2-3 dollars. You can get some cheap things in the Philippines but you cant go crazy. The elders always spend their support money super early and basically starve. A lot of them like to spend their money going out to eat its kind of funny then they have to pull personal funds out to pay for plete/bayad (payment for the jeepney rides).


I don't feel like our investigators are progressing very quickly but I quess I just have to be patient and they will accept all in Heavenly Fathers time.

Its hard having companions and being with someone 24 hours a day but both of my companions aren't too bad I get along with them so I can't complain.

My companion told me about this boy she dated before the mission and how he was a return missionary. She said she realized that the boy BRTed her (build a relationship of trust) from preach my gospel. I asked if she liked him and how she reacted and she said that she liked him a lot. HAHA I'm so going to use it when I get back for everyone I meet. It's not a bad thing to do! That's probably why people are so weird when they get back from their missions because they use missionary techniquesto "friendship" people

Well I miss all of you and Hope all is amazing Love you so much!

Annika

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