Manila MTC and Laoag

 Basically, my whole email got deleted because of crappy connection so I have to keep it short now. I had more info than even previous emails so I'm pretty upset with this internet.. You'll have to learn most of what's going on here with pictures alone.  Anyways,   because other Elders are waiting and the longer I take, the more pisos we have to pay. Anyways, Manila was good, and Laoag is crazy. We already have several investigators that have been taught  a little before I got here. So far it's been good and I've even asked one lady to be baptized. We're planning for October 20, but she needs to show up to church and stuff. We also got  a new investigator which is awesome. It's my first legit investigator I guess that I didn't just stumble into. 

I got assigned to the Ballesteros a area which is 5 hours from Laoag. My companion is named Elder Viador. He's a Cebuano so Tagalog isn't his native language and sometimes it's a little difficult to communicate because he's not great at English, but everything is good.

Anyways, there's no electricity here because of the typhoon so we use candles at night. Because it's hot at night we leave the door open and mosquitoes eat us up. We shower outside on our porch out of buckets, and we also flush the toilet with buckets. It is the hottest I've ever been in my entire life. You can never cool off because lack of AC. I haven't had a cold drink of water for a while either. Everything is hot, but it's been an awesome experience so far. Difficult but awesome, the ward loves us a lot and we do lots of fellow shipping with members of the youth. I've never seen so much poverty in my life as I have the last few days, but I'm super excited to be here. We wake up to the sound of school children playing Despacito on glockenspiels and drums every morning. It's been weird and crazy. There's so much I have to say but because the poor internet deleted my email you'll only be able to find out what happen when I come home and you can read my journal in like 2 years.

Notes from Mom

Brodie sent quite a few pictures, but we were unable to access them. I have to say networking and my super sleuth skills are coming in handy. I was able to find a few pictures.We were actually very fortunate to receive an email from him this week. He is in an area that was hit really hard by the typhoon, and he could be without power for over a month. We are praying for him and the people in his area that this is not the case. There are two Filipino missionaries and one American missionary that he is living with right now. The American is Elder Butler that went into the MTC the same day as Brodie and they started their mission journey together.

Here is a response from Brodie to an email I sent him. I told him that we would be praying for him and that I hoped he would be sent to an area that has power (that didn't work out like I'd hoped).

Haha thanks. I love you too so much.. Not having power is hard. Actually everything is super difficult here and painful except for the joy the people have. It's fun to share the gospel, and it's gonna be a really hard adjustment. Let's just say shower outside, no toiletpaper, no electricity, no AC (which we never will have), and no fans is hard. Not to mention the language. Anyways though, it's good.


Here are a few pictures that were shared with me.

Email from the Mission President

Dear Brother and Sister Hunsaker-

It was a great moment when your son walked out of the Laoag Airport to join our mission!  The events following the Typhoon were quite a welcome for him!  We would normally send this picture much earlier, but due to the Typhoon, our internet and ability to download pictures has been difficult at best.  Thank you for your patience!

We are so grateful for the wonderful young man you have sent us and want you to know how much we love him!

Sincerely,
President and Sister Peterson
*Please do not respond to this email address - it is unattended.

Laoag: First Days

So basically, this email is just to give you an update and tell you that I am alive. We flew from Manila to Laoag and got here at about 1:00 or something I'd say. It's way more rural here than Manila which is preferable. Anyways, I'm alive. There was some debris and stuff from the typhoon and they said it hit this area really hard. Because of that, there isn't a lot of electricity or internet in a lot of areas. That being said, I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to email again. It is highly dependent on the area I get called I guess. Anyways, we got here to Laoag, rode with some AP's to the church, ate lunch with the mission president and the AP's, I rode a tricee (the trike things they pronounce it tri-see so I'm not exactly sure how to spell it) to the mission home which was kind of fun, we then had orientation and a little training, and some time today we'll be getting our new companions and heading off to our areas. I'm not exactly sure what's going on for sure, but I'm safe and everything is alright. Also this is just a funny side note, but apparently there is a militant group called the New Peoples Army that got an area closed or something which is kind of funny. I'm supposed to keep this email short, and it was just intended to be to family I guess, just a check up. Anyways, I'm doing good and love all of you.

Post from Mom

I may have been accused of being a stalker recently. Someone seems to think I stalk my missionaries. I think I have just become a super sleuth when it comes to my kiddos. I feel I had every right to follow and stalk Brodie this past week.

To start the week off  Brodie left the USA for the Philippines, and I have never had so much distance between me and my children. He was to leave Provo Monday morning. However, before he even left I noticed as I was checking flights that his flight out of LAX had been cancelled. I was just curious what would happen with all 72 missionaries that had no place to go. However, arrangements were made and they would be staying at the LA La Quinta. I wish I could have been in LA, but that was not the case. However, it worked out nicely we were able to spend the evening talking to Brodie, and we even ordered pizza for him and the other missionaries to enjoy.  I even received a picture from relatives that happened to visit him and the other missionaries at the hotel. His companion for the night was the travel leader and he didn't even know the flight plans. All they knew was that they were to leave the hotel at 9:00 the next morning and head to the airport.

When they got to the airport they learned their flight plan, which was to leave LAX on a direct flight to Manila later that afternoon. The 72 missionaries had another 20 missionaries that had been visa waiting join them on the flight. I would have loved to have seen that flight of 92 missionaries.I knew God had a little chunk of his army on that flight and that they would all be okay.

I also knew that there was a typhoon headed to the Philippines shortly after Brodie's arrival. So OF course I needed to do more research and learn all I could about this storm. It turns out it was not just a typhoon, but a SUPER Typhoon (category 5, one of the strongest in history to hit the Philippines). Brodie's mission was a direct hit of the typhoon. I was very grateful that he was in Manila and only had to worry about tropical storm weather.

Through all my caring research I came across a few bonus pictures of Brodie. I also learned that all the missionaries in the Philippines were safe and accounted for. They will have a lot of service to do over the next few weeks.

My missionary is toward the back on the right side.

This is the second picture I have of him from searching the background. This one I think he was photo bombing.

Close up

This one is from a video that was filmed the night all 92 missionaries arrived.

Manila MTC

The schedule and everything runs a little different here at the Manila MTC. Because of this, I probably won't have this email formatted exactly the same as the previous ones because I don't have the planner I used for the last few days at the Provo MTC. I'll just give a summary of the trip going to LA, staying a hotel, and then flying to Manila and my first impressions and stuff here.

Monday (from Provo) - 

So on Monday, we woke up and by 10:15 we were heading to the travel office to leave the MTC. Right before we left, we were informed that instead of having an 8 hour layover in L.A. we would be staying the night there because our flight to Manila was delayed. After being informed of such, we then proceeded to leave the MTC. It felt weird to get out into the "real world" with all kinds of stuff going on. We hopped on a bus that drove us down to the Frontrunner, then we rode that for a while then hopped on Trax. We were dropped off right at the airport. We then made our way onto our flight at L.A. On the flight I was in the middle of two people which wasn't super enjoyable, but it was only little over an hour long so it wasn't so bad. I was sitting by one other elder named Elder Hall and then some guy who immediately put on headphones when he sat down.

Once we made it to L.A. we then continued on our way out of the airport. We waited a very long time for a shuttle to the La Quinta hotel that the church had booked for us. It took forever and it was strange to not have perfectly structured and scheduled supervision. Eventually, we got to the hotel at about 5:00. We stayed the night there and I was roomed with Elder Burton. I talked to my family on the phone most of the night and my family also ordered us Domino's and had it sent to our room. It was nice to have to go in a hotel rather than sit in the airport for an 8 hour layover. Having the delayed flight turned out to be more of a blessing than a fault.

Tuesday and Wednesday (because of time change) -

We woke up at like 6:00 in L.A. and showered and ate breakfast. We left the hotel at about 7:30 and hopped back on a shuttle to the airport. We got there and went right to the Philippine Airlines terminal. As you can imagine there were a lot of Filipino people there and it was kind of cool to hear some of the Tagalog that we'd been learning in real use. It took a while but we got through security and everything with a decent amount of time left to eat and sit down by all 72 other missionaries going on the same flight to Manila. That gave us enough time to eat and stuff before the 16 hour plane ride. There weren't many options and we ended up eating Panda Express. The last American meal we had was just Americanized Asian food haha. Anyways, after that we got shuttled out to our airplane and took our seats. I was placed in between two people again... I can't imagine a 16 hour flight is enjoyable anyways, but I'm sure that it was even less enjoyable when you're stuck between people. I sat between an older white guy, and then a Filipino lady from Cebu. She could speak English but not Tagalog so I couldn't practice Tagalog on her unfortunately. I talked to her a bit though in English and she seemed really nice. She asked my name and stuff and I told her Elder Hunsaker and it kind of got us on the topic of the church and stuff so I talked to her a little bit about my mission and stuff. She had no idea who or what we were so that was nice. Anyways, the flight consisted of lots of scripture reading and attempts at sleeping. Also, since we had screens, there were lots of movies and stuff that I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to watch, but I did see missionaries all over watching all kinds of things, some that I wouldn't imagine you'd even want to watch when  you're not on a mission. There was also a Tetris game that you could play and I looked on it and it had a list of high scores of people and stuff. There were tons of names that were of Elders and Sisters I know. I tried to sleep on the flight and it was super painful and difficult. I regret this, but I eventually watched a movie.... oof.. It wasn't anything crazy, it was only Disney and was Monsters University. I justified this to myself because my dads mission president back in the day allowed them to listen to church and Disney music. You see it would be so easy for me to not mention watching the movie in the email, but I figure that I'm gonna try and keep the history as accurate as I can.

Anyways, after a long period of time... lots of attempted sleeping, reading, and watching one Disney movie, we landed in Manila at 6:00 here. Our whole flight was just in sunlight. While we were getting off, we all had several Filipino passengers warn us to keep our hands on our pockets and stuff. We got out, went through customs and stuff and then finally started to wait for our baggage. It took FOREVER. Eventually, we got it and went outside where there were several buses waiting for us. Our MTC President Carlos was there too. It was cool because we rarely saw president Martino in the Provo MTC but here, we see our MTC president frequently. 

The drive to the MTC took a couple of hours even though in reality they said it should have taken like 30 minutes. The driving here is crazy. There are lines on the road, but I'm not even sure why they bother to paint them because no one even pays attention to them. All the cars got really close to bumping into each other and mopeds were swerving in and out of traffic. It's pretty insane. By this point, it was pretty dark though, so we couldn't see much other than the streets. After we arrived at the MTC we were given a packet of stuff and told who our new companions were. They said they tried to switch most peoples companions, but I just ended up with elder Witt again.

The rooms at this MTC seem nicer. The floors are all tile and the beds are way more comfortable. We also have our own toilet and shower in our rooms instead of a community one. I think I prefer the community one just because it allows for faster morning prep, but other than that, it was pretty cool. Anyways, we basically wrote in our journals and went right to sleep. It was the best night sleep I've had so far.

Thursday (today for me) -

This morning we woke up at 5:50 (because our schedule here is 6:00-10:00 not 6:30-10:30 like Provo) and went and ate breakfast. This meal consisted of rice, egg, hotdogs, slightly off colored milk that tasted like water, and finally some toast with strawberry jam. Nice. After that, we went to the temple across the street to schedule for an endowment session at 3:00 later today. Once we got our session scheduled, we then continued to go through some meetings and orientation and things. We also met our new district (which just consists of people going to Laoag) and our new teacher.. I don't remember his name, but he's sitting like two feet away from me right now and I don't want to awkwardly ask what his name is right now... Anyways, we also had a MTC campus tour thing. It's way smaller over course... Also it's crazy humid here as you'd imagine. You go outside and within a minute you're sticky.. so that's awesome. 

Pictures - 

These pictures consist of lots of different airport pictures, my meal, the buses and stuff we were on and just a bunch of overall travel stuff, also a picture of the temple and stuff we took quickly. There's also a whole bunch of different pictures that I'm sure you can figure out what they are. Normally, I would spend a little more time throwing this email together, but at this MTC, we're on a way tighter weird schedule.

There were 92 missionaries on his flight from LA to the Phillipines

Manila traffic on the night he arrived

His first breakfast in the Philippines

His last meal in the USA

Final Week in the Provo MTC

So our time in the Provo MTC seems to be coming to an end. Personally, I'm super excited to head off to the Manila MTC on Monday though. It's been an enjoyable time here so far and I've became pretty good friends with all the members of my district but, I'm ready to get out of here. I'm just glad I only had to be here for about 6 weeks unlike some people who actually have to be here for like 12. I've maxed it out. If I were to be here much longer I might go a tiny bit crazy. I can't say I know Tagalog super well, especially every day lingo (because we only seem to know Gospel related stuff) but I'm sure being more fully immersed in the language will help for sure. This week hasn't been unusually crazy or anything, but I think my district and I can finally claim the title of MTC Veterans. We know how it goes here undoubtedly. 

Friday - 

So last Friday I basically said everything that happened in the last email except for our Skype TRC with a real Filipino person. So we basically had planned to give a lesson on better recognizing the spirit and it seemed all good until we started the TRC. The main problem was the connection with the man we talked to. He would be talking and the poor connection would break up what he was saying. Maybe if it were in english we'd be able to make out what was being said, but considering it's a language we barely know, and it's choppy sounding, we could barely understand what was being said. We struggled with it, but everyone else in our district said their's went really well. We think ours might have been worse because the guy we were talking to was using his phone the whole time and stuff while everyone else used computers, we're not sure though. 

Saturday - 

So our first class period was a pretty basic good one. After doing our typical Book of Mormon insight sharing thing outside, we then did a mural walk activity in the T3 building. All the murals in this building are of Christ unlike the other buildings that have a mix of Biblical and Book of Mormon story murals and stuff. We did this mural study thing for around 15 minutes I'd imagine and we didn't talk to anyone the whole time. We stayed completely silent the whole time. You could really feel the spirit and it was pretty awesome.

 Also near the end of our class Period our teacher Sister Atkinson told us that for our last week here at the MTC she wouldn't be teaching us because she got reassigned districts because of her BYU class schedule or something. It was kinda sad cause it had just started getting fun with her. The first few weeks she was actually kind of intimidating but these last few have been super fun. We've all got to know one another pretty well so it has been fun to kind of joke around a little. Everything became a little more laid back and enjoyable.

After all our classes on Saturday we had a whole bunch of free time like a typical Saturday night, but since the next day was fast Sunday, we didn't have to prepare any of our lessons or talks. This gave us a lot of time to do other weird stuff. So basically, we did this thing where after we ate our lunch, we then went into the sack lunch line (where they let you grab any 4 items of your choice) and we all just grabbed four sodas each. I think we got around 40 sodas. We then tried to figure out how to keep all of them cold so we could drink them later. We ended up putting all of them in an unused garbage can. We then filled it with cold water and set our fan in our room to blow on it. It kept them surprisingly cold for a little while. Later that night we had a "Spiritual Get-together" (not a party because those aren't allowed) and we just sat outside on some rocks with our district. We just talked, drank our sodas, and ate junk food that everyone's families had sent. For the record we were actually very well mannered and didn't get loud or rowdy at all. It was an enjoyable time. We decided to do it before the other 4 members of our district left to the Manila MTC (because they were going early for some reason).

Sunday - 

So this was fast Sunday. It's funny because it's basically a forced fast here at the MTC since they don't serve meals all day anyways. This Sunday was pretty good overall though. It started with priesthood, then district council, then the sacrament. Testimony meeting was pretty good and it was nice to listen to a lot of the people leaving early give their testimonies and stuff.

After that, we had Mission Conference instead of lunch. It was an alright meeting. All the Members of the Mission presidency and stuff gave some short talks. One of them was about the 3 kinds of motivation: fear, reward, and love. It was a pretty good talk in my opinion and it talked about how your spiritual motivation changes over time. Usually it starts with fear (fear of consequences), then moves to reward (or the blessings you get from doing certain things), and then finally love (you do things out of pure love of God and of Jesus Christ and others). 

Following mission conference we had more learning or something... I don't exactly remember, then we had Choir practice and lunch. After all of that we had our Sunday devotional. As if sitting in the awful uncomfortable gym chairs once for our mission conference wasn't enough, we were again blessed with the opportunity for our devotional. The person who gave the talk was Kelly Mills, the Administrative Director of MTCs or something. His talk mostly consisted of showing us a bunch of pictures and stories from all the MTCs in the world. It was pretty cool to see pictures of the Manila MTC, especially before we leave to go there.. and that's mostly what I got out of the devotional.

Monday - 

So on Monday, the 4 of our district elders left to the Manila MTC. They're supposed to be there for 2 weeks so we hope that we get to see them again before we all leave the Manila MTC, but we've also heard rumors that the last group of missionaries that went to the Manila MTC for "two weeks" actually only ended up staying for around 5 days. So it could go either way I imagine. 

During our first class we basically studied the whole time while other companionships did their role plays with our teacher. We didn't have to do it cause we completed ours on Saturday. This meant we just studied and stuff the entire time almost. During our second class with Brother Roberts we learned more about some grammar which was pretty nice.. because we seem to know a lot of words but don't structure them together as sentences very well. ALSO, he told us about all of the "Bakla" in the Philippines. So.. apparently in the Philippines you are either straight, or you completely dress up like a girl. To be gay in the Philippines means you go all out. So basically, he told us about how "mga Bakla" are all over (at least in his mission in Manila) and how one kissed his neck once and said "Papi!" and how he and his companion had to run out of there. It made all of us elders a little concerned and made the sisters laugh. He said a lot of the time they look legitimately like girls until you hear their voices. He said his Filipino companions were a lot better at distinguishing them. It's too bad that our 4 elders that left early didn't get this warning. They might be in for a huge surprise out in the field.

Tuesday - 

This Tuesday, we finally got our new teacher that is replacing Sister Atkinson. She is named Sister Jeppson. She seems nice and all, but we're not all super care free and laid back like we were with Sister Atkinson, but I guess this will only go on for a few more days, so it's really no big deal. 

Later we had our final Tuesday night devotional before we're gone. It was Elder Kyle S. McKay of the Seventy. He talked about a lot of things, but I would say that the main idea was that "if we don't teach by the spirit, it's not of God." It was a pretty good talk, and I feel like something that I definitely need to keep in mind. I can't just teach by my knowledge of the gospel alone, but need to rely on the spirit to guide me. He also talked a little bit about the different gifts of the spirit which was also cool. Afterword, I also had to conduct a district council about the devotional and stuff and it went pretty well I guess.

Wednesday - 

This day was pretty much nothing I guess. I didn't write anything down in my planner of the events because I really don't think much happened. Apparently, during the first class we seemingly studied the whole time while other groups did role plays with our teacher, and then in our second class my companion and I did a role play with Brother Roberts. He also told us that he wouldn't be in class for Thursday, or Friday because he is running a marathon. Our last class with him will be on Saturday, which is really sad because he's the best teacher. Even people from other districts love him.. and we're the first class he's ever taught.

Thursday - 

This day was kind of weird because it was a pretty basic day but we didn't have either of our normal teachers. We had Sister Jeppson in the morning and a new guy named Brother Warner at night. Also I got another package from my family which was nice. I also read some of the Book of Mormon in Tagalog which is always interesting especially with different translations of things. It's funny because when it tells the story of the Tree of Life, it calls the "iron rod" a "guide rod" in direct translation so it's kind of a different way to think about it I guess. 

After we got back to a residence hall at like 9:25 we started messing around with the phones all our families had sent us. Now when I say mess around, I mean basically, they were turned off and we were acting like we were talking to fictional people. Elder Willis and I did this for a while and passed the phone back and forth to each other a couple of times. Then we burst our laughing at our foolishness. We are so deprived to entertainment, that we resorted to playing with our phones like children. That was the most fun we had in a while haha. Typically, I find joy in reading weird stories that I've never heard in the Bible, but the whole phone thing was pretty good too.

Friday - 

Today we've done all the typical stuff. We did our laundry, went to the temple and then we'll have class tonight. We also have another Skype TRC with a different Filipino person. Hopefully the internet won't be as messed up this time so that we can actually see if we can communicate.

Pictures - 

The first two images are of our make-shift  "refrigerator". The next picture is of all our sodas.. this picture was taken after a few were already gone though. Oh also there's one of Elder Etcheverry just looking like a fool with a shoelace or something.  Then there's some Filipino Melon cake. It really just tasted like crumbly cardboard with a little melon flavor, masarap. Also a toilet paper mummy we made out of Elder Stoddard from the other district because we're leaving soon and we have a bunch of excess toilet paper from the other building we did service in. The last one is a picture of me.. because I didn't have much to send really.. and I'm sure everyone just wants to see me of course. Also there are a few that need to be sent via Google Drive link.. which I think means I have to give permission.. so yeah.. Kita kits!