Baptism

So supposedly there's a big storm that's suppose to hit Cebu but it was actually supposed to hit yesterday and it hasn't really been raining much today so ya walay bagio. So that's been lame. 

But ya this week Shawn got baptized! Yaaaaaaay! And ya right now it's looking like his sister will be baptized next week so that's super cool too. But ya his baptism was really good. A new investigator of ours actually came so that was cool. He's accepted a baptismal date already and if he keeps up with everything then we might be having a white christmas (baptism on christmas day). And ya we baptize in our church house so no ocean pics. And ya so our church meetings are like 70% english, 30% bisaya, kay my area has a lot of people that move in and out of the ward for work or school or whatever so they try to speak in english as much as possible because it's more of a universal language for the philippines. 

So ya that's been nice. My lessons with elder clegg have been good, the person we're teaching is progressing and we got him a baptismal date as well so ya he's doing awesome. Oh and a cool thing that happened this week. We went to a Barangay Hall (it's like a township thingy) to talk with some people kay we're trying to clear up our member list/ find less actives kay our member list says there's 596 members in our ward but I've never seen more than 100 at sacrament meeting. So ya we went to this barangay hall to see if they had any way of telling us if some people had moved out and the barangay captain saw us and immediately invited us into his office. Turns out he works for the church on like different projects like managing/overseeing the construction of church buildings and temples. so like ya that was super cool. He was super friendly and helpful and we might be able to find a bunch of service opportunities now to help the community. So ya that was awesome.

 And ya I do know Quinton, you should tell me where he's going once he opens it. Nah I haven't gotten an email from devin but ya I saw the pic of allie and ya dang. When is she due again? Like december di ba? And pastilan what's going on with fires in the states. Second coming must be close. Ya know I keep asking people about their christmas traditions and it seems like none of them really have anything special. I'm also in the ghetto though so for a lot of people they can't necessarily afford to do anything for Christmas :/  I've seen that you can order nativites in the mission office so maybe I'll do that before I leave kay I don't want to move it around for the next 1.5 years.

But ya, kana ra (that's all) for now.
Elder Shirley

Oh and we did a family home evening kind of thing with the Ward Missionaries at a member's house and also there was a Toko (a bigger tiki lizard that makes a "to-ko" kind of sound) at the zone leader's house so there's a pic of that as well.

Pics: Baptism pics, the girls at the baptism are Shawn's sisters. We also had that giant centipede thing in our house for like the 5th time. and then ya i took some pics of Mikay (bisaya for Kitty-kat) and a members dog and then also I let a member's kid run around with my camera so there's a bunch of pics of random stuff as well....

Three Little Birdies

Hey you should email me sometime soonish if you want to ask questions or anything. But ya for now I'll just type up my week.

So this past week was a little chaotic kay we just had a lot going on. So Elder Clegg and I are assigned to teach this one person so pretty much every wednesday after Pday we are doing exchanges so that we can teach him together so that's kinda cool. Right after exchanges with him, we had interviews with President. President likes to hint at what he kinda has planned for you the next transfer and he talked a whole lot about training sooo I guess we'll see what happens.... The one sure thing is that I'm staying in Sikatuna for at least one more transfer so I'll be there for like at least 6 months. Then the next day there was a District Leader Council (DLC) so I did mini exchanges with Elder Hugo (a brand new trainee) while Elder Guiuo and Elder Garcia went to DLC. Then just yesterday I did exchanges with the Capital Elders and I worked with Elder Manu in Capital. It was pretty fun, we did a lot of searching for people kay he whitewashed the area (both of the elder's are new to the area) so he's been searching a lot for less active members.

But ya this week has been pretty good. We have a baptism this Saturday for Shawn Cabibil. He's 13 and he's probably one of the most receptive people to the gospel I've ever met. So ya I'm really excited for that this weekend. But ya that's pretty much it for this week.

I've noticed that often times when I've prayed and asked for comfort or support that I start to remember song lyrics and it's honestly been pretty comforting. Like just when thinking of this week and everything that I'm going to have to face the song three little birds came to mind and like just as it goes I realized that "every little thing, is gonna be alright." I don't know that's medyo cheesy but like hey whatever keeps me going I'll take it.

I hope you're doing well and everything, love ya! Miss ya!
Elder Shirley

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well since I already sent you the other email I'll just directly answer your questions here....

In your last email with elder Clegg still there you said you had a bunch of new contacts- any of those working out? Still on track for a baptism this Saturday?
I can't remember what those new contacts were but ya right now Shawn will be baptized this saturday and his family is making progress so that's been awesome

What new things have you done for p-day? does your new comp know how to make the mango floats the right way? Has he taught you how to cook anything Filipino?
Last Pday we just played basketball kay we had to work out exchanges and all that, this Pday we are meeting up as a zone to work on our skits and stuff for Christmas Conference, which is like a zone con but all the different zones have a skit that they perform so it'll be interesting to say the least. And I think he might know so I'll talk with him about it and see what he says. And ya we don't really cook that often so not really.

What are the families like there? small? lots of kids? do grandparents live with families?
They're all pretty different but it's not that uncommon for people to have really big families. and ya sometimes grandparents live with families, I guess it kinda just depends.

What kind of jobs do the people in your area have? How long do kids go to school for? is college even a thing for most of them? Are there trade schools?
Um a lot of people in my area work at call centers for like phone companies, then there's also construction, teaching, breadshops, sari-sari stores, just kinda pretty much anything. The school system here is kinda set up different so people can graduate high school at like 16 and be done with college at like 20ish so that's cool. Here no one takes out lones for like college so if you go to college you have to have the money to pay for the semester up front.

have you been able to do any service for the members or people in your area? How often do you get to go to the temple?
The one time we tried doing service for a member they told us they wanted us to work at their place at 5am and then they were asleep when we showed up so ya haven't really done any service. And all the missionaries on the island of Cebu get an opportunity to go to the temple quarterly, but that's only if you're on Cebu, if you're on Negros or Sigijor then you're just out of luck.


E Clegg and a jug that has chicks in it from a member's house


Exchanges with E Hugo

FHE at institute that E Guiuo and I taught

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Three Little Birdies Lyrics:

Rise up this morning, smiled with the rising sun
Three little birds, by my doorstep
Singing sweet songs, of melodies pure and sure
Saying, "this is my message to you"

Singing: "Don't worry about a thing, oh-oh
Cause every little thing is gonna be alright, yeah yeah
But don't worry about a thing
Cause every little thing is gonna be alright", yeah

November 6, 2018

So last week Elder Clegg and I celebrated finishing my training/12 weeks with drinking a little sparkling juice and burning my 12 weeks pamphlet so that was fun. 

I got my new companion, Elder Guiuo, this last Thursday. He is from Quezon City, Philippines so he's a filipino but he originally only spoke Tagalog so he had to learn Cebuano here as well. He's in his last transfer right now so he'll go home in December. It's only been a few days since I've started working with him but we're still progressing the area. It's been nice kay since he's been in the mission so long he really knows Bisaya so he's been helping learn a lot of new words and phrases and stuff. 

Right now we're working really hard to finish the lessons with one of the people we are teaching so that they can be baptized on Nov 17. He's doing really good and there's only a few lessons left for us to teach so it looks like he'll be getting baptized on that date! 

Sorry I don't have a lot of pics or stories from this last week. Hopefully I'll have more to share next week, but that's all for now.

(I asked about a video on Spencer's google drive that had Elder Clegg hoping on a broom)Ya elder clegg was trying to make one of those videos where it looks like you're riding a broomstick but ya he failed jud. Hahaha.  

Oh and ya thanks for all the pics of everything, I love seeing pics of y'all/home and what not.  And it's good to know I can look forward to a trip somewhere after I graduate ;)

(google hangouts for Christmas call?)
I'm pretty sure google hangouts is bawaled (forbidden) for us so I don't think that'll be how I call y'all. I'll still be here for christmas and I already know where I'll be facetiming you so I'll talk to them some time and ask. Or you can add them on facebook or something, they're like super nice and friendly and are kinda like family for all the missionaries that serve in Sikatuna. Their last name is Osumo but I'm not a 100% sure what the mom's first name is.

Love ya! Thanks for all the support and everything!
Elder Shirley

Oh and I got to play basketball with the district this morning so that was fun. It's cool kay a new batch of missionaries came in so there's a new elder in my district so I'm not the youngest in the district anymore! Yay! It feels really nice actually, hahaha

Ward Members in the area


Celebrating completion of 12 week training!

ps my companion is the one in a grey shirt and yellow shorts in the basketball pics

October 30, 2018

Sooooo we just got transfer calls! Like literally this morning. Elder Clegg will be transferring to San Nicolas and he'll be Zone Leader for Central Zone (Our current zone) so ya he didn't make it very far. I'll be followed up by Elder Guiuo, he's a filipino that's in his last transfer of his mission so that means I'll most likely be in Sikatuna for the next 2 transfers.... so I'll be here for a while...

But ya finished 12 weeks and all that so that's been awesome. This last week we actually went around looking for a new place to live because our landlord was going to raise our rent so we couldn't afford to live there, but thankfully they decided they're going to not raise the rent so we'll be able to live in our same balay. Yesterday we had to pay our water bill which we can normally do in a 7-11 but we went to like 8 of them and none of them were working so we had to go all the way to the bottom of our area to the actual water maintanance building to pay the bill. It was like a DMV on steroids... it was so bad. OH and a member wanted us to come do service at her house at 5am so we woke up at 4am to get there at 5am and then we got punted. She was asleep jud. We were soooo tired.

This past week was actually really good though. One of the member's in our ward and his sister/friends staying in his apartment for a few days while they were coming back from a vacation and Elder Clegg and I got an opportunity to teach them. It was cool because they actually preferred to be taught in English so we taught everything in English and then they were actually all really religious so they were really intrigued by our message. That's the thing here, like everyone is actually really religious here so we actually find people that are really interested in what we have to say. It's awesome. OH and a former investigator of ours like out of the blue contacted us and now we are teaching her again. It's been really good.

If you want to try what I've eaten a lot you'll have to look for "giniling" (cebuano) or it's also called "sigsig" (Tagalog). You could also just get Lechon Manok, that's another good one. But ya just make sure you eat a ton of rice with it or it's not filipino. And ya if the typhoon hits Luzon then it doesn't effect us at all so all these typhoons that have been happening have had zero effects on my area.

Alright that's pretty much it for this week, my computer is kinda spazzing out so I can't really send pics right now.

But ya I love you! Hope you're doing well and having a fun time with dad in Hawaii!
Elder Shirley