Week 30 (Feb. 1, 2015 Guimba, Philippines)

Hello mine Mom whom I love so much :)

This week has been good, and I like my new area a lot :) I'm now in Guimba District, Guimba 1 Branch. My area is Guimba 1B. Guimba 1A are the Sister Missionaries in our Branch. That's where Sister Dalley just was, but is now a Sister Training Leader out in Tarlac. Our area boundaries were just changed a little bit too, so now I'm teaching some of her old investigators. It's pretty cool :P She was also the Branch Pianist, but because she's gone, I've taken the job. We showed up 1 hr and 15 min early so I could practice the songs first. I had all of them down, when the Branch President walks up to me 5 minutes before the meeting started and told me that I had been lied to. The song list I was given the night before was for next week :P I was doing sort of alright with the first song, but then realized too late that I was missing the other page :P So I stopped playing and sat down. We didn't have a pianist the rest of the meeting. Ah well :P
Our church building out here is an actual church building! It's two stories, and the sacrament hall is up top. There were a TON of Mosquitoes. I'm wearing long sleeve shirts to church from now on. The Senior Couple is also in our ward, so it's fun to see them and talk a little bit in English. Elder and Sister Hobbs are super nice :)

Anyway, my new companion is Elder Ezra Gallego. He's nice and fun, but is ready to go home and he still has more than a year left. He refuses to contact people, and I still really struggle with it, so we don't have a lot of people to teach. Things are alright though.

Most of the people out here in Guimba speak Tagalog as a second Language. Ilokano is their first, and so I'm currently trying to learn that :) It's a lot of fun. We have this one recent convert family that loves to help me learn and use it, so I'm getting it down pretty quick :D

Not much else to say. A 15 year old investigator of ours just had her baby the other day. That's......something.. I guess.
...
Love you lots!!


Elder Syphus