I absolutely love it here. I know for sure now that the Philippines Missions are by far the greatest missions. We leave Wednesday for the field and I can't wait.
Oh and funny story about our jet lag. We got here and they had pushed up our evening devotional so that it'd be done at 4 and then we could go back to our rooms, unpack, and then go to dinner at five and the unpack some more, and then finally go to bed early... We all got in our room and then laid down on our bed and just passed out. We missed dinner but we got to sleep for 14 hours straight so it was worth it. But ya needless to say we have definitely adjusted our sleep schedule after that.
So this MTC is like 12897123847x nicer than the Provo MTC. It has been semi-recently refurbished so it is awesome. It's actually a beautiful MTC and we can literally see the temple across the road so it's amazing. It's been really fun because some of the Filipinos in the MTC speak cebuano so we've been talking with them and it's awesome. Filipinos are literally the greatest. They are so much fun to be around.
It is SOOO HOT here. The first day we got here it had rained all morning and then the sun came out so it was super humid for the first day. Every meal we've had has been some kind of filipino dish and yes we are also served rice for Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The Manila Temple is closed but they let us do a little temple walk around the outside of it so we got a whole bunch of pics of that. I have a new companion for our short stay here at the MTC, it's Elder Stastny from my district at the provo mtc. He's from Nampa, Idaho and is probably one of my favorite missionaries that I've met so far. He's great, he's really fun to be around. The districts here are made up by our missions so now everyone in my mission is going to serve in the Cebu Mission. I got assigned as District Leader for the like 5 days that we're here so I literally don't have to do anything so that's awesome. It is a little problematic because everyone in my district assumes I know everything when in reality I am just as lost as they are, but it's fine, I just talk to the MTC president for everything. President Carlos and Sister Carlos are literally the greatest. They're super nice and friendly.
The day after we got here we got to go proselyting with the Quezon City missionaries and it was actually amazing. The Quezon City mission is a Tagalog speaking mission so we didn't really understand anything since we have only been studying Cebuano. It was nice though because we didn't have to worry about not knowing the language so it made everything less stressful. I went out with an Elder Maez who has been in the field for 22 months now. He was pretty cool and could speak like perfect Tagalog. We walked and taught lessons for like 4-5 hours and I loved every part of it and I know I'll love it even more when I get to Cebu and I can actually communicate with people.
OH when i was waiting in the provo mtc for forever, waiting for it to be 3:45 so we could actually leave, we were saying hi to all the new missionaries that were coming in and I saw Lincoln Miller from our Stake and I saw Elder Williams from Boerne, Texas so that was fun.
The sister from Bethel is Sister Martins. And ya I think I talked with a sister from las vegas before but i would need a name to be sure.
There's a limited number of computers here so we actually only get like 30 minutes to email at a time so this'll have to be it for now. I'll maybe be able to email more later.
Gihigugma tika! pinakanindot ang Pilipinas!!!
Elder Shirley
The sister from Bethel is Sister Martins. And ya I think I talked with a sister from las vegas before but i would need a name to be sure.
There's a limited number of computers here so we actually only get like 30 minutes to email at a time so this'll have to be it for now. I'll maybe be able to email more later.
Gihigugma tika! pinakanindot ang Pilipinas!!!
Elder Shirley
