This week we watched the Joseph Smith movie "The Restoration" with tatay Caliaga (2nd Councelor in the Portal branch presidency), and there weren't any batteries for the remote control, so we started it in English until they could find some batteries. It was so nuts to hear the western accents on that movie. I'm pretty down with hickish things but anyways! That Restoration movie rocks. I remember how horrifying it was hearing the fast spoken tagalog on it while we were in the MTC, but now I'm starting to understand most of it, so thats cool for me.
Tatay Caliaga is a rocking dude, he had kareokee all set up when we went to their house this week and we told him to find a church song, kind of jokingly and he ended up finding "Amazing Grace"! and nanay sang it for us. I always think of Em's kareokee machine and how I will enjoy that when I get back home.
But anyways! Christmas was real awesome here! I remember eating a lot! Lots of buko salad, my favorite food in the world. We started out in Portal branch and then as Christmas night grew on, we went into town to bishop's house to eat and there was quite an array of food. Fruit salad, pancit, and some barby-Q meat sticks. This is where the Christmas night gets interesting. After we ate, their little girl Sheyla started crying and crying and saying her stomach hurt so they went out the door with her to the doctor and we ended up being invited to go with them to the doctors office.
We ended up at a little house and we all went in and the doctor lady who was 80 or so took Sheyla and did acupuncture on her! Which didn't calm the little girl down any but must've worked iwan ko. Then we walked home after that and that was about all we did on Christmas besides the phone calls and Christmas messages to members. It was fun! Then we got home and Elder Daquipil cooked a giant pot of spaghetti! I was busog so I didn't eat again, but we ended up eating that spaghetti for 3 days. It was good.
It has been interesting experiencing the "leaving an area phase" and saying good-bye to people. One member in Portal branch was really nice and I gave her one of the nut cracker ornaments (from Bonnie: we sent him a miniature Christmas tree, some battery operated lights, and a few packages of tiny ornaments to hang on the tree) and she was telling me how she put it right next to her scriptures and won't let her grand kids play with it. She has this piece of wood on the front of her house, she writes the names of all the Elders on, nanay Apanay.
Today has been good too, we took off to San Jose this morning and had our ddm, then transfer announcments and the zone leaders were all tricky about how they did it and arranged us on sides to confuse us. pero! I'm being transferred! To somewhere in the Philippines.. Tomorrow morning, Elder Daquipil and I need to be in Cabanatuan by 6:30 am where I will get my new companion, and he (E. Daquipil) is most likely continuing on to Angeles to get a new trainee for our area! We're leaving the house tomorrow at 4 a.m., so it's going to be a wild day bukas! I'm excited to continue on and keep having wild experiences!
People ask me where I want to go and I tell them to a malaking bayan! (great people) But whatever comes my way I'm rearing to get there.
I'm going to get some pictures going here,
Second one is perhaps me at the ward Christmas party, eating some delicious pancit!
Then there is one more picture of another sign in San Jose, in front of a restraunt place I ate at once when I was on splits with the zl. And it was the same place where I taught at my first week on splits. The Kubo bar. I just thought it was kind of funny how they say "ladie".
But hey! Life is rrrockin' on! How's that Bugo doing? (our parrot) It's good to hear Christmas traditions are continuing on! Even the new ones and it's also fun to hear new ones are starting! 3 months to April conference! I'll look forward to e-mailing you with new happenin's this Monday and write some good stories down to relate to yall!
Mahal din kita!
Elder Hill
Posts
Fun to hear about his great Christmas!
ReplyDeleteLove the pictures!