Day 133 Carigara, Philippines

First off, MY PACKAGE CAME!! I got it on October 3, so less than a month! Awesome! THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!! I haven’t watched the video of Alex yet but I’ll let you know when I do and I’ll try to record it. J I love the PJ shirt----both the color and fit. Perfect for nighttime in the Philippines. Also, I loved the notes inside from Mom and Moo! I love seeing handwritten letters (hint hint!). ;) Everything looked fine inside. The CD case was a little cracked but other than that I don’t know if anything was missing. No bugs or anything. I don’t think it was opened at all.

I chose to serve because I can’t stand living my happy life without everyone else knowing how to be happy too. I just don’t feel content living my life just for me. There’s so much more value when you live and serve for others---for God.

Yeah we cook everything from scratch. Nothing prepackaged. It’s cool to see how to create certain flavors completely from scratch. Also, I learned what Filipino food really means: cooking with the most random ingredients in the shortest amount of time and STILL having enough food and it tastes crazy good. I don’t know how they do it, haha.

Yeah CSP is service, sorry I forget we have missionary lingo.

Haha, I showed my comp the picture of Mf. Loafer you sent me and she said, “what’s the yellow??” And I told her how the leaves change color and she was like really????

We watched the Relief Society Broadcast just this past Saturday. Everything here is a week behind so General Conference is this coming weekend. They forgot to announce conference so there was only like 15 people from the whole stake at the RS Broadcast so we’ll see how many show up for General conference. Not a lot of people come from what I’ve heard because it’s in English and most people get bored because they can’t understand. But we were able to bring one of our brand new investigators to the RS Broadcast. When our prophet spoke, I was able to point out to her: that’s our prophet! Her first response was: he’s old! Hahaha! I missed the first speaker because we were 30 minutes late. . . any chance you could send me a copy of the talk so I can print it out and read it later? I also liked the idea of preparing the day before for the Sacrament. I want to try and remember to prepare both physically and spiritually for the Sabbath. Did you notice that most of the talks were about covenant keeping? They really focused on the basics: the doctrine of Christ. Also, during the Broadcast I started out taking notes for myself only and then realized that I’m a missionary and should be focused on helping OTHERS understand too, especially since it’s all in English. After I switched my thinking, I found the broadcast to be much more meaningful. President Uchtdorf teaches that if we only focus on ourselves, we may miss some of the most profound revelations of our lives.

I haven’t used the permethrin yet. I don’t have much time on P-days. . . maybe next week???

Don’t worry the typhoon hasn’t affected my area much. Maybe in Borongan (Samar—the other large island in my mission), though. I’ll have to write to Sister Malietoa---that’s where she’s assigned right now. And we’re safe from all the military stuff.

Where else has Alex raced? And has Moo applied for college yet? I want to hear her thoughts about Snow.

Sorry this is really random this week! LOVE YOU ALL!!!

fhe at the Bardiago family

last Zone Training Meeting with Christian

thanks for the package!!! Happy Amanda :)