(*NOTE: I did NOT forget ...Spencer wrote early & I was stuck dealing with a moose...)
Basta. So this week was interesting and kinda fun. We have a couple new people that we're teaching so that's fun. The first one is Terry and she works at our favorite bread shop so she's seen us buy bread their a lot. But ya so since we're there like literally everyday she started talking with us one night and now we've started teaching her. It's also cool because anytime we walk by the shop she calls us over and gives us bread and soda for free so that's been cool. We also started teaching another person that we met through a referral. Her name is Mylang and she was one leg so that was interesting. We've only taught her one lesson so far but she really seemed to feel the spirit in our lesson and to really believe the things we were teaching her so that was cool too. On Saturday we went on Exchanges again and I worked in Arlington again. We got to work in the Bukid (literally translates to mountain but it's also like a reference to jungly mountain foresty stuff.... just look at the picture) so that was awesome. I've wanted to work in the Bukid ever since I've gotten to the Philippines so that was really fun. It's a lot of walking to say the least. It's the end of our transfer this week. Some missionaries from our zone already said their goodbyes last Monday during district council. We got transfer calls today, no change for us siempre (of course) cuz i'm still being trained. We do have some changes to our zone though. They just split the Zone Leader's area into 2 so now we have 2 new elders coming into that area. Yay our tiny zone got a little bigger! Today the new batch of missionaries come in and the missionaries from my batch that were visa waiting are coming in too! We also have a meeting thing in Lahug (where the temple/mission office is) so we might be able to see them today. Oh it's also Christmas time here so pretty much where ever we walk we hear Christmas music. Also one of the Barangays (township thingys) already started going all out with decorations, like with a tree and Christmas count down and everything. It's been great here. The typhoon that hit the Philippines had very very minimal affects on us. The storm mostly hit Luzon which is like northern Philippines so we were only getting the outskirts of the storm. It was actually nice, there was like a good breeze and it didn't actually rain like at all in our area. Oh last week I got worms so that was interesting. I pretty much figured it out after my stomach hadn't been feeling that well for a little while and when i went to the mission office and weighed myself I had lost weight even though I've been eating a ton. But ya that's over so all is good now.
Hope you're doing well, I still love you even though you didn't email me. Hope everything is going well at home. Since you're making so many changes to the house and everything I'm sure you were about to tell me about how you now have a movie theater kinda thing in dad's loft now so you'll have to tell me all about that.
Love you! gihigugma tika!
Elder Shirley
Bukid
A ton of cats, because there are a ton of cats and dogs here
Christmas at Barangay Day-as