Mahal kong friends and family, Nov. 25, 2013
-"Taglish" is the language of Manila, in
reality. The more middle class people are, the more English they're likely to
speak. People understand English, but they don't speak it that often, for the
most part. Our Bishop is pretty good at English, but Tagalog is his first
language. As far as gospel terms, people tend to use English words a lot.
Anyway... once at an FHE where we had invited Bishop, he was talking to the
family we were teaching and used the english word "act." He paused, because the
family we were teaching didn't understand English that well. He turned to the
room full of people and asked, "What's the Tagalog word for 'act?'" There was a
three second pause and I responded, "kilos." Out of a room with about 12
Filipinos who speak good English and Tagalog, I was the one who gave him the
word. Hahahaha.
-This week, at a district meeting, I was
speaking in front of our district about a spiritual experience we had last week.
In Tagalog, there's not words for "he" or "she." Only the unisex "siya."
So...when I was sharing my experience, I was talking about one of our
investigators and her brother. I said, "Yeah, so, she was sharing with us.
Then her brother, she also shared..." I paused, and realized that in true
Filipino form, I had just mixed up the noun markers. Most Filipinos do the same
thing when they speak English, interchanging "she" and "he" since it's not part
of their language. I'm not going to be able to speak English normally when I
get back; it is actually starting to be somewhat difficult to speak straight
English and not Taglish. By the end of a year and a half I can only imagine
what my English will sound like, haha. This week marked 6 months in the mission
for me.
-One of our members saw us walking around
and saw that I had some tinapay, or bakery bread. It was late and we were
headed home, and he said, in English, "You have bread so you won't get hangry!"
Sister Cooper and I decided that "hangry" is a great cross between hungry and
angry that happens when missionaries don't have dinner appointments with
members. Haha, joke.
Unfortunately though, there's not
Thanksgiving here in the Philippines. I'll get over it, though. We have
mission tour with the area Presidency on Thursday, so hopefully we'll maybe get
fed turkey at that meeting :D
I have a story about "not procrastinating
the day of your repentance." We have one Elder in our district now who was sent
here to Manila from Tacloban mission, because the typhoon destroyed the entire
mission. He said that the week before the storm hit, some missionaries had
people who were planning to be baptized that weekend but then had relatives come
so they said, "Let's push the baptisms back to next week." They did... and now
missionaries are pulled out of that mission for who knows how long, and those
people will have to potentially wait a long time to be baptized if they're even
still there at all. There's definitely some lessons to be learned there about
not just waiting to do important, eternal things just for the sake of
waiting.
Speaking of eternal important things...
TODAY'S OUR TEMPLE DAY!!! I haven't been to the temple in 5 months (no temple on
Palawan) and I'm so excited! That's why our Pday is on Tuesday this week.
Like... today's the best day ever. I'm so excited and happy right now.
I love you all and I hope that patuloy
kayo na umunlad and tumatanggap marami mga biyaya. I hope you continue to
progress and receive many blessings.
Stay strong always!
-Sister Larsen
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