Dear Friends and Family, Written Sept. 29, 2013
I'd like to introduce you to my new
companion in the picture. Her name is Sister Bearcat and even though she's a
lot smaller than me, I'm used that now since everyone's smaller than me. I feel
like she's pretty attached to me already, especially when she wraps her tail
around my neck (that's a strong tail!) She doesn't talk much but sometimes when
she's mad she hisses. That's taken some getting used to.
Joke-lang! This was at the crocodile
farm, and for the equivalent of a dollar, we got to let this adorable bear cat
crawl around on our shoulders! There's other good pictures of that, but
needless to say... I was in heaven. Bearcats are replacing my third favorite
animal, anteaters. Naturally first are cats and dogs, but there's just nothing
quite as sweet as an animal that's a cross between a bear, cat, and sloth. Maybe
a raccoon or something else too. They live here naturally, along with the
crocodiles. Haven't seen any in the wild, but maybe eventually... our areas are
probably still too populated for them to want to hang around. But yeah.
Like... sheer, unadulterated joy with that bear cat. I want to get really
really rich and then buy one as a semi-legal pet one day.
My real new companion is Sister
Bechachino! I don't have any good photos of us yet, but she's somewhat taller
than Sister Ordiz but I'm still a giant. She's already been well prepared, both
out of her own efforts and her previous trainer before me. She's helping me
with my Tagalog, and is a good example to me in many ways. I'm very happy to
have her as my companion now, and I know we're going to learn a lot from each
other. It's a little rough being Senior companion since I still don't speak
very good Tagalog... but the Lord is blessing me with the skills and talents I
need right now to communicate and make things run *mostly* smoothly. Before
now, I was too scared half the time to really speak much in general or speak
much Tagalog. Now that I have to... well, suddenly everyone is really surprised
(including myself) that the "gift of tongues" seems to be manifesting itself
suddenly. Not perfectly, as there's still a lot of times I don't know how to
say things, say it wrong and they can't understand me, or I can't understand
them. But when we worked with a bunch of members the other day, they all said,
"Sister Larsen! Filipina ka na!" (You're a Filipina already!)
I also learned one word of the local
dialect of Palawan, Cuyunin (that's probably not the right spelling.) I was
just out of curiosity asking Sister Jacqueline (our baptism last week) what some
of the words were in their language, and I asked her what the Cuyunin word for
"Bulaklak (flower)" is. She said, "Burrak!" It sounds like the Ferengie
language from Star Trek to me. So I repeated it really emphasizing the rolled
"r" BURRRRRRAK!!! It's kind of my favorite word now. We've had a lot of fun
times working with members, that's for sure.
One time, we were teaching a lesson this
week in a part of our area that's quite jungly. Towards the end of the lesson,
suddenly our investigator looked behind us into the garden she had behind her
house, her eyes wide. We turned around and she said "ahas!!!" (Snake!) There,
slithering towards us, was this long green snake. Her house was up on stilts so
we weren't scared, but as soon as the snake saw us he reared up then slithered
away quickly. She said, "It's Satan and he's scared of the word of God" joking
with us - we thought that was pretty funny.
I think that's really all I have this
week. I love you all and hope you have a great week! Also... letters are
greatly appreciated. It's nice to feel remembered sometimes through letters,
and you all have my address on Facebook if ya wanna write me. This is probably
the only time I'll say it, and props to Brooke for stickin' with it this whole
time as well as Rachelle :)
Love you all!
-Sister Larsen
We went to the crocodile farm and it was
awesome! They raise crocodiles there and there's some HUGE ones and some babies
and... yeah. But anyway, I figured when you have the chance to plank on a
plaster crocodile in Palawan, you might as well take the chance. More pictures
of the crocodile farm will probably follow later when I don't have different
pictures to send back home.. since we rarely are allowed to have our cameras
with us.
This was national Philippines family week so we had a lot of activities. one of
them was cleaning up a beach! I found cool shells there too while cleaning up.
It's like.. .mind blowingly gorgeous there. Also, I want everyone to admire my
calves. I don't know if you can tell, but because of jump roping every morning
my calves are now huge and muscley and stuff. I mean, they're certainly getting
there. Pretty proud of that, haha. I remember when my brother came back from
his mission and had huge muscled calves and for me, as a fourth grader back
then, I was really freaked out why his legs were deformed. Muscles, here I
come!!
This is a photo of myself and Sister Jacquiline at her baptism last week. She's already been out
working with us this week as our member present at our lessons! She's amazing,
and we're good friends. She's had a hard life in some ways, but she's
progressed SO MUCH just in the time we've taught her. She really has the light
of Christ in her life, and is a good example to me of changing to become closer
to God. I will definitely miss their family when I get transferred.
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