Sometimes I like to eat rice

Hello there my lovely mother! How's things? 

Here I sit again! Feeling rather frazzled, let me just say I live with 3 very wild Philippinos.

But! The weeks been good! We have a lot of work to do here in Portal and Rizal, I think it's great how missionaries have the time they do to stay in an area and watch it grow. This week at church a new bishop was sustained! The husband of sister Marie Reyes, she is a nut. This week when we were coming home from zone conference we stopped at a 7-11 and I bought her a Tolberone and wrapped it up in some New Era wrappings and gave it to her, she was very profusely grateful for non pinoy chocolate, there's some delicious candy bars here though! Anyways,

I sent the half of an email I got written last week and this week I'll upload my pictures and get them to you!


The Reyes family with the Rizal & Portal Elders

Me and rice! On a road this week, I saw some rice with goats walking around on it and partaking. Kinda yummy to think about.

This is rice! In Portal in an investigator's field.

This is me in rice!

Elder Calienga, Elder Pang, Elder Hill, Elder Labataio at a service project. Me in my element!
Elder Labataio, my companion -(from Cavite turns out "jay" in illacano (another filipino dialect) is "taga" or "from" so he would say "jay cavite" not jaycobite. I'm learning!)

I found out from the zone leader that it is against mission rules to do anything political-ness, so I didn't know at the time.

 This is me smashed in a trike! with some prayer bead ornamented rearview mirror dangely thing!

But yeah! The work is moving forward! And it is raining again. I dig the rain! So I had a question, how long does it take for letters to get from here to there? About a month?  (note from Bonnie:  it's actually about 9-10 days)

So the typhoon, (someone named Nayome is calling me on Skype.. these worldly computers are a bit different than those MTC ones) all that really happened here was I saw some branches fallen over, it didn't seem very big to me but yeah. That night, last Monday night, we got back to the appartment and it picked up a bit more and none of the elders in the appartment wanted to go work, we had heard it was both a signal 2 and a signal 3 from different people, but I would go outside and it didn't seem bad, anyways! My Elder Labataio (companion) wouldn't follow me.  We stayed in the house they were up pretty late the night before so they went to bed early and I studied and ate and did dishes, you'd be proud of me mom! thats what drives me: "would my mother be pleased with this?" haha yeah. Anyways, it's been a rocking week, and I'm learning a lot from Elder Labataio, he's a fun Elder and I love him.

How is fall? Any fun Halloween festivities going down? just on the way over here it was getting windy and a bunch of leaves were falling and flying around but they were still green. Oh, and last night I saw my first mango! I was real excited, I've been told December or January is when there is a lot of mangos, bounteous amounts in very deed!

I'm excited for the package! And I know Sister Marie (Reyes) is too, she asks me every time I see her if I have a package. This week at zone conference or after ZC, a zone leader came up to me and told me I had a package! I thought he was joking with me but sure enough he handed me a package of cookies from Charlotte Becker, everybody give it up for CBeck! They were really good I enjoyed some on the way home from zone conference while the other Pinoy Elders and tatay Biag were eating balut, butt yeah!

 Thanks for all the prayers and faith yall! Keep strong in it, and know I'm doing the same! I love the thought of being stretched out and made stronger from challenges, I read a quote today I had written in my PMG that said something to the effect of "as we pour out our hearts to the Lord they are thus made empty and able to be filled with his holy spirit, or love, I'm thinkin' both. I've felt the Lords love a lot this week through taos na pagdarasal (translation:  sincere prayer).

Love you mom dad & fam! Catch you next week!