I Can't Even Come Up With a Creative Title, But I Must Endure To the End

Dear Friends And Family,

 

Wow.  One week down, and it feels like it's been 6 already.  Seriously.  The first day I was de-wormed (given weird pills), a water bottle that will purify water throughout my mission (we're only allowed to drink water from the water fountains here, not from the tap), got my shots, and I have a companion (kasama.)  Her name is Sister Tilli and she's from Fiji.  My district is composed of two Sisters from New Zealand (one of Maori and one of Tongan descent), one Elder from China (Elder Zou - his mom was converted when she was outside the states and they had to have all their ordinances done in Hong Kong), one Elder from Utah, and two Sisters from Utah, two Sisters from Kiribas (an Island somewhere) and an Elder from Figi and another Elder from KIribas.  Yeah.  I am definitely in a minority here.  There's apparently about 40% Filipino missionaries, 40% "other" missionaries from various places around the Asia area, and about 20% Americans.  Our District is nice, I like them, and we've had some good experiences.  The food here is weird, - straight up, the first week was rice, some sort of mystery meat (I never asked what it was - generally for bfast it was some sort of weird sausage) and some weird vegetable side.  Needless to say, I doubt I'm going to gain weight in the MTC.  However, lately I think they've been trying to help us poor Americans who are getting super sick of rice cuz they served cereal one day (in metal containers - cereal is super expensive here) and hashbrowns this morning.  So, they're making a concerted effort to help us people who aren't so adjusted to this food yet, I think.

 

I'd say it's about 70% Elders here and 30% Sisters, too.  Our teacher, Elder Rondilla, is awesome.  However, we just got a new "evening teacher" yesterday.  Let me tell how this went down.

Saturday was the hardest day.  I was SUPER discouraged.  We flew in on Friday, had pretty full day, and then on Saturday when I was still severely jet lagged we were supposed to teach our first investigator.  Her name was Sister Gloria, and our teacher told us that we'd only need to speak about 15 percent Tagalog (because, after all, we'd only learned a few phrases anyway.)  My kasama and I planned our lesson in mostly English.  We walked in, and Sister Gloria did not understand ANY English.  Like, 5 words is what she understood.  There were several parts in the lesson where I just started to nervously laugh because I couldn't communicate ANYTHING to her and it seemed like a pretty hopeless situation, and so we were reading out of the Tagalog PMG without even knowing what we were saying.  It was bad.  That night, I went to bed super, super discouraged about ever being able to communicate or learn the language.  The next few lessons we taught her weren't much better, but at least a little better.  Tagalog is SO HARD.  If I was stateside, I could say just what I wanted to to the investigators.  Here... no.  I can barely even communicate "God loves you."  It's sad, because I can hardly even invite the Spirit because the language barrier is so prevalent.  Ah, ah.  The few things I do undertstna that she said were the spanish crossover words like "trabajo."  I keep wanting to speak Spanish to her, but I can't.  OUr first lesson I'm pretty sure I did start speaking Spanish to her.  There's aobut 20 moments in a day that I wish I was learning Spanish or speaking English, but I need to repent and accept that yes, one day, I will learn this.  Our wonderful smiley teacher (he's a filipino and he's the best) Elder Rondilla said that we can expect to be decently speaking the language in 6 months.  He also said that sometimes Filipinos don't even know how to speak their own language that well because there's like 20 different ways to say the exact same thing.  And I'm thinking... GREAAAAT. 

 

Two Filipinas in our room have told me they think I look like Anne Hathaway, and an Australian Elder said I look like some chick off of a Aussie TV show.  People are kind of fascinated by my whiteness over here, as could have been predicted.  Sister Tilley said one day, when I was acting super goofy and walking strangely on purpose that, "All the white people I've ever met are super boring and serious, but you're super crazy and funny!"  That made me feel good, hahah. 

 

Things are going better now.  Language is still saddening sometimes.  I think I'll havta send out pictures next week, cuz my time's almost up.  I'm going well.. the MTC is hard, and there's a lot of times I don't like it here, honestly - my favorite times of the day are showering and going to sleep (and the videos they show us of the district.)  I still always dread talking to my investigator.  But hopefully we will progress in time as a district and I personally will have a beter attitude.

 

Nagmamahal,

Sister Marinda Larsen