Dear friends and family,
So, here I'll give a brief overview of
the many adventures this week. First, I was one morning taking out a muffin
from the cupboard where all of us store our food. Suddenly... everything came
crashing down around me. Literally. The bottom half of the cupboard dropped
out and half of the food spilled around me. I escaped mostly unscathed except
for oil spilled down my front. That certainly woke me up that morning, hahah.
That's what the picture is of - myself and Sister Mechum who is the other
American (from Utah) in our apartment.
Here, children view spiders as toys.
They put them in matchboxes and play with them and blow on them and let them
crawl around on their hands. They take huuuge ones, put them on sticks, and
make them fight each other. When they found out I was afraid of them, they
thought it would be funny to try and blow them towards me; fortunately that
didn't carry on too long. I explained that in the U.S., there are some that
bite you and kill you within an hour or so. They "don't have spiders like that
here," supposedly, haha.
There are two national pastimes here -
karaoke of old songs from the 90's or Tagalog songs that sound like they're from
the 80's, and doing laundry. It takes me about 1.5 to 2 hours to do my laundry
by hand, and I don't even have enough clothes to get me through a full week.
I've also heard many songs that remind me of when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade.
Good memories of Britney Spears, good old "classics," haha.
I realized that the bats I saw previously
were NOT the biggest kind here. One day I looked up at dusk and thought I saw a
pelican up above. Whatever it was, it was the size of a pelican very clearly.
Then I saw its wings - bat. HUGE BAT. They're amazing. I feel like it
wouldn't make a good pet, but I want one, haha.
One day, I was standing underneath the
edge of a member's home, and we were talking to him while he was inside. I had
noted previously that these members seemed to have some sort of bird that lived
on top of their house, even though I had never seen it. As I stood there, I
suddenly heard a spurting noise and then something warm trickling down my back.
I didn't say anything until after we left (we were only there for a few
minutes) and then asked Sister Ordiz to take a look for me. "It smells bad..."
was her answer. Pretty sure I got peed on by a bird this week :)
On Friday we went to a "tree planting
activity" with the branch members. Now, in my head, we were gonna go with the
10 people there and go plant some trees just us. Turns out, it's a huge
festival in the middle of the jungle. We hiked into the middle of the jungle,
up into some of the mountains-ish with some little trees, dug in the dirt with
our hands and planted trees. That was pretty legitimate. Then we walked back
down to the main area (still in the middle of the jungle, but they had a stage
set up and such) and they had the festival going on in full swing. As I stood
there watching, a group of news reporters came up and asked me in English, "Can we
interview you about your thoughts on the festival?" Naturally, I totally
represent the population of people there, so it makes sense they would interview
me. Or maybe it's because I was the most pale person they'd ever seen. Either
way, I was *almost* famous, but since I'm a missionary we had to turn them down
on that offer since we're not supposed to "sponsor events."
Then they had this really really awesome
cultural dance they did. I liked that a loooot. You know how in "Fiddler On
the Roof" they have the dance where the men have bottles balanced? They did
something similar to that, the guy and girl dancers, and I was pretty impressed.
Then they did this crazy dance where they had poles on the ground that they'd
clap together in a rhythm. The dancers danced in between the poles, and if they
messed up their feet would have gotten crushed. Talk about high stakes dancing!
That probably has some symbolism relating to the crocodiles that live
here.
Final fun thing - one day we were
teaching about the Word of Wisdom. I was on splits with one of the Sister
Training leaders (I was scared stiff since I still don't speak the language
well, but it was okay since she did even though she's American) and there were
two members there teaching with us. Then one of them asked in Tagalog, "Isn't
MSG against the word of wisdom?" I had a hard time not laughing at that
one.
Yeah... that's all I've got for now.
Apparently chances are very high I'll be training right after my training. I'm
still not okay with that, but hopefully by the end of my training I will be.
I'm growing in humility and faith, that's for sure.
Love you all!
Sister Larsen
[Photos From the Airport when Marinda left.]
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