First Full Week

Alright, so this week was a lot better. It took a little while to get into the motion of things, but now we feel like "pros." We are still super busy here at the MTC but nothing compared to the first few days. Those first few days were completely packed schedules and it made it impossible to even read scriptures which actually REALLY concerned me. After last Friday things began to slow down a little bit. When I say slow down, I don't mean we had free time. I mean that we actually have a few hours between classes to get our scripture and language study in. It feels so nice to just read the scriptures for an hour at a time. At home it would seem difficult to do it, but here reading seems like a break. The times where I often feel the most spirit are when I am reading. Also, the language is already stressing me out way less. The first day was super difficult and concerning and we had a huge list of words that we need memorized by (as of now) tomorrow, but now everyone feels so much better about it. The gift of tongues is real. We got here the first day and saw the missionaries that have been here for several weeks speaking what seemed to be fluent Tagalog and we were intimidated for sure, but at this point we can basically say full prayers in the language. We have this philosophy called "Speak Your Language" (or SYL) and we are just supposed to try and speak Tagalog always and if we don't know certain words just speak them in English. This results in a weird grammatically incorrect Tagalog-English hybrid that takes a ton of time. Everyone has to think for a long time to remember their Tagalog and saying basic sentences seem to take forever, but at least we can communicate. To give you an idea, the word for faith is "Pananampalatay." If you were wondering, that's 7 "a's."

Anyways, I am going to break up this week day by day. So last Friday after I sent my email we basically  had exercise time and then a class afterwords for about 3 hours and then the day was over. During exercise we went up to the MTC exercise field and all the different sports and things were super congested and packed with people. We (meaning the elders in my district) decided to play horseshoes because no one was doing it at all. So, I mean... it was okay. It was just a game of horse shoes I guess. It was nothing amazing, and also seemed moderately dangerous. If you missed the sand pit, the horseshoe would land on a rubber panel that surrounded the pit for about one foot all the way around. When it hit the rubber it would go flying. There was surely some potential to lose some teeth. 

On Saturday, August 4th our schedule consisted of waking up at 6:15 (instead of 6:30 because the bathrooms get super crowded, not to mention gross). We immediately get up, shower then shave. After, at about 7:00  we put on our church clothes and head to breakfast (your not allowed to go in the cafeteria in normal clothes even on your p-days). Then, once we're finished, we go to class at 8:00. Class lasts from 8:00 to 11:30. Then we at lunch at 12:00 and did some personal study, until more class instruction begins at 1:30 and then ends at 4:30. After that we ate dinner and then went to exercise time. This time we went into the gym instead of the field and it was still super crowded. Tons of the elders were playing basketball and the games seemed to be heated and contentious. It wasn't something I was super interested in on a mission. Most of us opted to play some volleyball with some elders and some of the sisters in our zone. It was actually pretty fun. That lasted from 5:30 to 6:30 and then we basically jammed in language study from 7:00 until about 9:00.

Most of our days consist of two classroom study periods that are both around 3 hours long. We sit in the same room for all that time which can get a little painful but the spiritual and learning aspect make it not nearly as bad as a school class. In the mornings we usually do personal, companion and language study before class starts. Our first  class starts in the afternoon around 1:30 or 2:00-ish.  Then we have dinner, then our second class at about 6:00 and it ends at about 9:15. After that we head back to our residence hall, write in journals and then try and sleep in our hot room. That's what a normal days typically seem like but the first coupe days were a little different because we were being taught other one time information. Most of the days you can assume are similar to this so if I only talk about certain events that happen each day, you can assume that it happened at some point in this type of schedule.

On Sunday, it was our church day of course. We woke up, studied from 7:45 to 8:00 (studying meaning anything from personal scripture study, companion study, or language study... each of which we need to squeeze in 1 hour of each day). Then we had priesthood and district council early in the morning. From about 10:30-11:30 is when we had sacrament. Every week everyone needs to have a talk prepared to give in sacrament because you aren't informed you are giving a talk the day of. You also have to say it in as much Tagalog as possible... so that's cool.. I guess.. After that we had mission conference. An apparently famous violinist named Jenny Oaks 

Baker came to it and basically played church  music the whole time with her kids that also played a bunch of instruments like piano, classical guitar, another violin, and a viola or something. Don't get me wrong the music sounded really difficult and complicated to play but you couldn't even recognize the hymns because of the ridiculous amount of ornamentation. She played Child of God for one of them and it was nearly unrecognizable. After that, we basically had other types of class activities that weren't like our normal everyday classes. It was a mix of people going to different missions and stuff. We ended the day learning stuff in different classes until about 9:00. The Lord rested from his work on the sabbath, but we don't rest from his work on the sabbath. Also, we had a choir practice at some point in the day. You're not required to go, but it seemed like the whole MTC did. ALSO, we finally got our keys to our rooms on Sunday, so that's nice.

On Monday  (I'm gonna type way less because you have a general idea of how my days go) we basically did all the normal stuff, except in our classroom we had to teach an "investigator" in Tagalog. This investigator was just our teachers (we have two of them, Sister Atkinson and Brother Roberts, Roberts  teaches later in the day and Atkinson at the start) pretending to be Filipino people while companionships taught really simple  lessons to them in Tagalog. Saying everything in Tagalog really limited what we could teach but it was okay. I'm not a huge fan of role plays because they are cringey and seem really insincere but we do them frequently so as missionaries you just get used to them. 

On Tuesday we had another fake lesson that we gave during class and my companion Elder Witt and I did a lot better in this one because we know what was expected unlike the first one. During the  first one we basically  had no criteria about what we were doing, but in this one we had it figured out and it seemed to go a lot more smooth. Also later that night we went to choir. Immediately after that we had a devotional, in which the choir performed. We were already preforming after a second practice. The Relief Society General President gave a talk about the concept of order in God's plan. It was alright, but the quotes and things she took from past prophets and apostles made it way better. 

On Wednesday it was basically the typical everyday schedule. The main difference is that in the morning we did service. Every Wednesday we are apparently going to do the same service. We didn't know what our service was going to be until the time of. We got a sack breakfast in the morning to conserve time and still ended up being a few minutes late but it was no big deal. As we were sitting and eating, two of the Elders in our district were walking around looking for us. They were in tall rubber pig boots, long green rubber gloves, and goggles. When we got up to the building we were doing service in we were told that we were going to be cleaning a few bathrooms and showers. We didn't have to clean the toilets (luckily that job was for someone else) but we did have to clean the floors, walls and sinks. Our job consisted up hooking up a hose to the wall, connecting it to an acidic cleaning liquid, spraying everything, wiping everything down with different variations of mops and squeegees and then finally, taking the cleaner off the hose and rinsing everything off with normal water. We were warned not to get the cleaner on our skin and if we did, to immediately rinse it off. Apparently it would burn our skin. I got some on my skin and so did a couple other elders and we rinsed it off and seem to be fine... so far... That was the most exciting event of the day. While cleaning we all sang songs and stuff. We sang church music and some Disney songs (I'm not sure if that's allowed, but they didn't have any "romantic overtones" that our missionary handbook prohibits so I think our salvation isn't vetoed yet). Other that you can imagine what the rest of our day in classes and things was like. Learning to say new types of phrases and grammar in Tagalog and stuff is what we do every single day.

This Thursday was pretty basic but one thing that happened is that during personal study I was reading Alma 32 and it was really awesome because it talked about how Alma and the sons of Mosiah were finding lots of success in missionary work among those in poverty because of their humility and it reminded me of how blessed I am to serve in a country like the Philippines.

Finally, today, we woke up at 6:15 and did laundry (it's so nice to have a bunch of clean clothes). Then we went to the temple today. It was super awesome and spiritual. And that's basically it. SORRY for the huge email, but I really just wanted to set up how the days go around here. From now on I'm going to try and focus on the most interesting events of each day rather than all of each day, that way, I don't have to waste a ton of your time. :) Everything is good awesome!

Also, the pictures are of each companionship in my district and then a couple group pictures and stuff. Also, I took a picture of a humming bird that flew into a window and was dying. The sisters in our district showed up and were like "oh no come help this bird." We ended up taking pictures of it dying, then my companion tried to pick it up. This resulted in it trying to fly away and then suddenly falling out of the sky.. presumably to it's death.. We were about 4 stories high in the build. Hope you like the email.