Kumusta,
I can't believe it has already been another week!
And Lauren is married!!! And Laura is engaged!!! SOO exciting!!
I have seen so many people this week that I know! Especially Cassie! I saw her once for the first three weeks. And now I see her every day! It is easily a highlight of my days! There are at least four of us from Jerusalem here. Annaleah, Cassie, Mary and I. SO exciting
Thanks for the cookies! So maybe we already ate them all. At first they thought they were store bought, no you fools. They are home made! One of my elders was in heaven, well he actually asked multiple times if they were ecstasy. They were great! Smashed, but still soooo good. Apparently we will now be catering every ones weddings here. Surrrreeee...
Last Tuesday at devotional Richard G Scott came and spoke to us!
It was super great, he invoked an apostolic blessing for us that we may be successful missionaries and master our languages. He was so great that the girl who was saying the closing prayer was walking up to say it and he stoped her and started talking again! It was great. He also reminded us that our calls were inspired, and we were called to succeed-not to fail. We also heard from Cheryl Esplin (in the Primary Presidency) on Sunday and the YW president and one of her councilors was there as well. It was a great week for speakers. She talked about how the world needs the joy and light that we have. One of the best things about being in the mtc is that every week we have amazing speakers.
We have been learning a lot of new conjugations in Tagalog, pretty much it is just pure memorization. And when you are trying to think of a sentence to say you have to literally think about it for a few minutes to figure out the proper grammar. But hey at least we are progressing. One day during language study my mga kasama and I made up a game. It was called the kasama beater. On the chalkboard we wrote up the conjugation charts for all of the pronouns and left the 21 spots for the words empty (this is kinda hard to explain), so one person would be the announcer. They would in a boxing fight style voice introduced the contestant. Then there was the caller, they called out the pronouns in English and what form. Then the contestant had to write it sa Tagalog in the correct place in under three seconds. If they could not accomplish this they got a tally. And at the end depending on how many tallies you had, that was how many beatings you got. And I can gladly say that I had the lowest amount of beatings overall.
One day our teacher Brother Nuttell told us how a previous district of his were very proud about completing what is called the tower challenge. I attached a couple of pictures from it. So clearly we took it as a challenge and the next morning decided to accept the challenge. Pretty much there are these giant things filled with cereal and as a district we had to finish off the entire thing. And we were dumb and picked Life to eat, which was perhaps the worst decision ever. I only committed to eat two bowls. And yet I somehow ended up managing to eat four. Cereal for days. A few boys ate around 8 or 9, can't remember. One ate two, we now call him the two bowler. Success. We ate the entire thing, granted we forced a few random people to eat our last few bowls. But all together we ate 47 bowls of cereal. And for the rest of the day we were all so, so sick. Later we found out that our teachers previous district consisted of 12 big boys. We are 5 small girls, 4 small boys. But somehow we still finished.
This week with all of our candy we made a few care packages. One of the Elders in my Zone that is going to Angeles with me had his tonsils out and they found a mass (not cancer luckily) the other week, so he has been pretty sick. We made him a huge box of treats, he absolutely loved it. Another elder dislocated his shoulder so we made one for him. And we made another big package for Sister Watkins (one of our teachers) because she has been super stressed with finals. We loved giving everyone their boxes and they all loved it.
Here are a few great Tagalog mistakes I made this week. I made it into my teachers journal of "dumb things the missionaries say." First I was teaching the lesson on the plan of salvation and I tried to say that everyone on earth will die. But instead I said everyone on earth will suicide. oops. Just making up my own doctrine here. Another one. I was in class and after having a conversation about how to properly use gusto (because it can mean either to like or to want) I jokingly turned to my companions in a hushed tone and said gusto ako. Which means I am wanted. And my teacher overheard me and had quite the laugh over it.
There is this one district of boys here, I think they are going to Peru or something. But they are beyond obnoxious. They think they are super cool, like my freshman year kids who called themselves the 'shiz.' And unfortunately they have the exact same schedule as us so we see them everywhere. Twice this week we were walking past them and they pretended to run into poles and get hurt. Both times they were video taping our reactions. The first time Sister Marcucci yelped, but the second time none of us were even phased. We call this group of boys the pterodactyl tangga (stupid) and friends. Because one of them made this dinosaur type sound at me once, thus the pterodactyl.
Also one day I was peppering with a volleyball with a few of the elders and a sister and I was allowing the Elders to hit it at me as hard as they wanted. So I passed one to Elder Tufele and assumed that he was going to hit it to someone else and next thing I know he is slamming it at me. Even worse I was not ready and screamed and it nailed me. He felt so bad, it didn't hurt physically-it only hurt my pride. Ha.
Now for a few embarrassing moments. Twice this week I had problems with my skirts.One morning I was just minding my own business in class when I looked down and the side seam of one of my brand new skirts was coming loose and had already came loose and had a giant hole! Thus I had to carefully walk back to the room and change. Another day I went to swipe my card to get into a building, because you can't get in any doors with out a card, and it was slightly windy. But apparently where the card swiper was just created a whirlwind with the wind. Thus my skirt completely flew up and I was practically on the ground laughing and trying to push it back down.
Now for the most embarrassing. Luckily this did not happen to me. Yesterday we had a sub teacher, Bro Lopez (we played volleyball together last semester), he took us outside to practice doing street approaches to each other. He sent my two comps and off to say a prayer and then walk over and practice the approach. Sister Marcucci was wearing one of our elders jackets because it was still pretty cold and being the people we are we put both her and Sister Littlefield into the jacket before we started praying. I then proceeded to try to button it closed with both of them in it. We were all laughing really hard and they feel onto their knees. They were stuck in the jacket, so I was trying to help sis Littlefield get out because she was laughing too hard and thought she was going to pee her pants. Once I got her out Sister Marcucci stands up as well, still dying of silent laughter. Low and behold she herself had just peed her pants (skirt). I didn't realize it had actually happened until I noticed the giant puddle under her. Bro Lopez started walking over to see what was going on, noticed what had happened (we were all on the ground at that point laughing) and he allowed us to go back to the room so she could change. It was seriously one of the funniest things. I have absolutely no idea how she let that happen. But it was so funny. And apparently she was the third missionary that Bro. Lopez has had that wet themselves. It was so great and awkward. But she handled it so well. Now we just constantly say remember that one time....
Two of the districts in my zone left on Monday! It was super sad to see them go, because we had gotten pretty close to a lot of them. And most of them I will never see again, because they were international students. We only have 5 districts in our zone, so now about half of them are gone! We get more tomorrow though. But now we are the oldest zone! We will be the next ones to leave, in just under two week! Crazy! And we get our travel plans later this week!! SO excited to go!
Well I have exceeded my time limit. Rebel. Okay disobedient. Hanggan sa susunod!
Sister Lindsay Hall
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