Merry Christmas!

Hey sorry I wasn't very talkative yesterday. My head has just been killing me these past few days and I've just been really out of it. Like after I hung up, I could hardly remember anything about our call. I know that Devin is going to find out where he's being assigned soon, Shelby is fostering kids sometime, and like half way through the call dad got a puppy but that's like all I can remember. So ya other than that I can't remember what you showed me or talked with me about that much.

It was nice of the family to have you over and make pancakes and bacon for you! Are they ward missionaries leaders? Or do they just like to take care of the missionaries? How many are in their family?And nah they're just like a crazy nice family. The parents both served missions and then two of their kids served missions so they just really like to take care of missionaries. There's 5 of them in total. 2 parents, 28 yr old guy, 25yr girl, and a 14 yr old guy.

Were you reading or singing in the picture they sent?

I don't know what pic you're talking about but all I know is I'm fairly certain I wasn't singing in whatever pic you're talking about. For the rest of the day we just pretty much got fed by members and then had our baptismal service. We also went and visited a member in the hospital but kana ra. The baptism was good. There wasn't a ton of people there kay it was christmas day and they pretty much party like crazy here on the night of christmas on the 24th, so everyone is pretty exhausted on Christmas day itself. How we found him was kinda funny kay we were having one of the people we had been teaching interviewed and while we were sitting outside he kinda just walked up to us and started talking to us. We talked with him a little bit and shared a short message with him and then ya now he's baptized. But ya that was our last solid jud baptism that we had lined up so now we're going to really have to start focusing on finding again. And ya they partied hard for Christmas and apparently it's nothing compared to New Years so I guess they really go all out for new Years so we'll see what happens.

Ya my comp loved the gifts. Ya pretty much the only way we can actually keep ants out is if we put our food in the fridge but we'll see. I have a couple containers that keep ants out pretty well so hopefully this one will work gihapon. but yo in that box that's coming, does it have music by chance???

So ya i generally don't need extra money for anything. We get support every 15th and 30th of the month and we get it individually so I don't have to worry about budgeting with my companion. and yo when you send pics you should also send like a little desk calendar thing, that'd be super nice.

Sorry still a little scatter brained. Love ya! Merry Christmas!
Elder Shirley

ONE more week!! :)

My new companion is Elder Dumanjug, He just transfered over from City zone (maboala area) so he didn't really transfer that far. He hasn't been feeling to well this week so ya works been a slow but it's been alright. He's been on the mission for almost 9 months so he's my senior batch. He's from Mindanao so he's Bisaya daan so that's been helpful. Pero gwapo kaayo sya, I must say I'm definitely ready to transfer out of Sikatuna. 4.5 months in an area is plenty long... much less 6 months... But it's all good. I'll at least get to spend the holidays with the ward and have a couple more baptisms so that'll be cool. In fact we have a baptism this upcoming Saturday and then another one on Christmas day! And ya I don't know of anything different that my ward will be doing this sunday so I guess we'll see. Oh yo we had our ward Christmas party and that was awesome. We had like 4 inactive families show up so that was huge.

Ya we can probably just use Messenger, and I'll just look up your facebook account for them. So if you get a random friend request from a filipino with the last name Osumo, don't decline it. And ya that "buddha" is actually Lapu-Lapu, kadtong warrior dude that is credited to have killed Magellan.

pics: Last week when I didn't have a companion I was with the Capitol and Arlington Elders and we ate at this place called Lunchenette and it serves like American food that actually tastes like american food and dang it was soooo good. it's kinda mahal for missionaries though so I don't know if we'll really ever go back there again. And then the rest is just pics and stuff from the christmas party. My computer is spazzing out so some of my pics haven't loaded so I'll just send them next week.

But ya that's all for now! Can't wait to see you next week! Ya we'll be calling on the 25th here. I'll try to call sometime in the morning here so that you don't have to stay up late or anything. It'll probably be around 6-8pm your time, just depends.

Love ya!
Elder Shirley

So is the house alright? {we've had 2000+ aftershocks! some as big as 5.0}and ya pepper better hang on. darn cat. You should send me some caramels, I freaking love christmas caramels. I miss them so much.

Transfer calls!!! I'm staying in Sikatuna, not really a surprise. My new companion is Elder Dumanjug, he'll be my first senior. All I know is that he's filipino so ya I guess we'll still just have to wait and see. 

For the Light the World challenges we haven't been able to do a whole lot yet with transfers ending and everything. Hopefully we'll be able to get something in before Christmas though. 

This past weekend Ritchie got baptized!!! It was super awesome and we did it earlier in the day so you can actually see us. 

These past couple of days I didn't have a companion because missionaries going home actually finish their work on Monday so I've been working with the Capitol Elders, Elder Manu and his trainee Elder Lokotui. It was actually really cool and fun working with them. Ya sorry but there's really not a whole lot to write this week.

And nah my packages haven't come yet
Love ya! hope you're doing well and staying sane!
Elder Shirley

Alaska Earthquake ... nothing earth shattering here ...

Well don't let the house fall apart while I'm gone too. If I can't come back to see pepper, I'd at least would like a house to come back to. But dang she's just going to straight up and die now? That's ridiculous, I love that stupid cat. She'll keep kicking though, she's gone through all kinds of weird stuff. But ya I claim her in heaven btw. 

And nah I haven't gotten any packages yet, but that's a good thing kay filipinos have zero privacy so even if I told my companion I was waiting to open them on Christmas chances he would've waited until i was in the shower and then would have opened them. But ya so I don't have to deal with that yaaay. Hopefully they'll be here like next week or so kay the zone leaders will be going to Lahug for MLC at the beginning of next transfer so they can pick them up if that's the case. And I thought I did explain the pics, sorry. I'm going to appologize ahead of time if this email isn't super in depth or anything. I got a really old white guy next to me on a dating website and it's making me suuuper uncomfortable and I just want to leave so ya might not be super in depth today. 

There are plenty of businesses that are decorating for Christmas. I haven't really seen anything that special or unique here that they make. I'll keep my eyes out for stuff though. (see photo below)

Right now we've been struggling again to find new people. We just started teaching a part member though for the first time. She's like super devote catholic though so we'll see what happens. The problem here is that everyone is Christian so pretty much anyone will listen for a lesson or two, it's finding people that we can continue to visit that's hard. We haven't quite had an opportunity to do any kind of cool service thing or anything yet, but hopefully after transfers are over we can start doing stuff. And nah we haven't had an opportunity to watch the Christmas Devotional. 

This week was cool though. We baptized Kristin last Thursday so that was awesome. (see photo below) We got ambushed into eating lunch at a 1year old's birthday party. It was ridiculously nice. It felt like I was at a wedding. They had catered food and like photographers and dang it was weird.(see photo below) Oh and when Elder Clegg and I were on exchanges we found this area that literally feels like we're in the States and honestly it was really uncomfortable. There were giant snails though so that was cool.(see photo below) 

There's also like these cool makeshift mangers that people make so I snagged a couple pics of those as well.(see photo below) 

Oh we have another baptism this upcoming Saturday, his name is Ritch. I'll tell ya more about him next week. We also had Christmas con so that was cool. I forgot to take pics but Elder Stastny said he'd email some videos he took so hopefully I can send those next week. We went outside and released a bunch of balloons that had "Light the Word" on the them and tied our names/numbers to the end of them so ya maybe someone will find one and call. (see photo below)

Well that's all I can think of at the moment. Hope yall are doing good back home and are staying safe.
Don't let the house fall apart or let pepper die.
Love Y'all so much. Can't wait to see you in like 20 days.
Imong paborito,
Elder Shirley

November 28, 2018

Yo, you didn't tell me that pepper was dying. What's up with that? Now that I'm not there to give her attention all the time she's just giving up? You should send me a pic so I can see how she's doing.

But ya dang sounds like you're still doing a good job of keeping yourself ridiculously busy. Congrats!

Ya so this past week has been kinda annoying kay we only have a couple people that will Kuyog us so that we can visit sisters and kids (which is pretty much 90% of the people we visit) and they were all busy with exams and stuff so it's been hard trying to visit members. On the bright side since we've been punted from like everyone, we've had time to look for less active members on our ward list and we've already found like 5 or 6 so that's been cool. Still couldn't visit them (kay I swear everyone is a sister or a kid here) but ya at least we know where they live now and hopefully we can visit them with another member soon. 

We are doing the Light the World thing here as well. We're still coming up with ideas for what we can do each week but ya i'm sure it'll be fun. And nah we got little keyboard phones so we can't really show people videos or anything. 

For the Christmas skit thing we're doing like the life of a new missionary and he's meeting all the different kinds of missionaries in the field (the super touchy, the flirt, the whitehand book, the deep doctrine, etc) and then we have a few songs to go with it. Should be good. Haven't had a lot of practice with it though so we'll see what happens. 

This week I was reading in Helaman which is really just a book of chastisement so that was fun. It was kinda cool though kay when I read about Samuel the Lamanite, it shows that he even kinda was ready to quit and go home, but the Lord was there for him and told him to keep going. So ya I've been trying to follow that example. Any times I think of how hard the work is or any time I kinda start to have that thought of maybe going home, I remember Samuel and how willing he was to follow the Lord after everything he had just gone through and it makes me want to strive to do the same. So despite how hard times may seem at the moment I'm just going to keep pushing kay I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for me and that everything will be alright.

Pero kana ra. Oh jokes, there's more. We have a baptism tomorrow for Kristin Cabibil (Sister of the last person we baptized). She's super excited and is already thinking of going on a mission so ya she's been doing great. Oh and we also had our own little thanksgiving dinner with Lechon Manok and Kan-on so that was cool.

Love ya! can't wait to see ya in like what? 27 days? And ya we'll probably do it on Christmas day here. Oh and ya we can use skype for that btw. 

(And ya I bought a new bag kay the other one is medyo heavy so I only use it if it's going to rain kay it's more water resistant. And ya that girl speaks really good english kay her parents only speak to her in English. Right now it's kind of a generational thing to speak English. Like there's a number of people that are like 20ish here that can speak pretty good english. They're kinda going away from using Bisaya so that's kinda sad but ya it makes talking a whole lot easier.)

but ya Love ya! Don't let pepper die!
Elder Shirley