Last week was pretty awesome. For our district activity, we went to a member's house and watched "Despicable Me 2" on their 3-D TV (missionaries can get special permission to watch Disney type movies once every few months.) Movies are definitely cooler in 3-D, for the record.
That's a picture of our district with awesome 3-D glasses (I definitely have double glasses on right there.) Rather funnily, the whole movie was pretty much about love and dating life in a characterized version, but we all got a pretty good kick outta it anyway. It's also awesome because the minions in the movie, either on purpose or accidentally, say about 5 identifiable Tagalog words. Go figure; the minions are Filipino. The house we went to also has a massage chair (like, the ones that are recliners with a machine deal inside) set up in front of their TV, and we all took turns in it. I feel like all the buffness now because I realized how tight my muscles actually were and how many muscles I actually have now. Boss.
Other fun thing, if you have one of those types of cowlicks that are swirly here in the Philippines, people will tell you that you shouldn't ride on airplanes or boats because you'll crash the plane or sink the boat (like, you're a curse on the ship.) Apparently in the provinces if you have that they won't let you become a sailor. I don't have one of those but one of the ward missionaries has two and people tell her that all the time apparently.
One of my favorite things here in Paranaque... there's a jeepney here that I like to refer to as "the party jeepney." It has a ton of tiny lights on it all in the front that make it all glow-y and flashing and super cool. And its music is always really loud. If I could only take home one souvenir from my mission and if I could pick anything, I would pick that jeepney right there.
I ate pork liver flavored with ginger this week. That was an interesting experience... I don't think I'll make a regular habit of it but the flavor is pretty good; it's just strong.
I met a British man this week whose kid was married in the temple. Cool stuff. He didn't want us to teach him but was nice enough though.
This has been a truly miraculous week for Sister Dumayas and I. For probably the first time in my mission, I really felt "led" to a family by the Spirit to find them. We've set aside Thursdays as our "explore the area" day where we try to go to some of the roads or places where we've not found anyone yet and so we rarely go there (or never have before.) After a few hours in the sun, we were walking and looked ahead. I said, "We've never gone straight here before," and we both said "let's go!" because we felt we needed to. We walked about 15 steps down the road and saw an older man with his grandchild. We talked to him for about 20 seconds; his wife immediately let us in. They then told us that they'd been taught by missionaries 3 other times and their youngest daughter was actually named by an Elder back in 2000. They've just kept moving which has been an obstacle to their being baptized, but they've been in this house for 2 years now. They have a lot of extended family there too who also listened to the missionaries previously and went to church. One of my favorite parts - one of the daughters of the couple said that she had a feeling she'd see the missionaries again, "The Mormons just always have a way of finding us!" I'm grateful for the good experiences they had with previous missionaries so they're very willing and excited to listen again.
I realized this week that everything that brings me most happiness in my life is part of my life because of the Church. I realized just how many stupid decisions I would have made had I not been a member of the Church, and how sad I would have been. No offense Mom and Dad, but if only you two had been telling me not to do those things that I might have liked to and if I didn't have the doctrine behind it from the scriptures and teachings of Christ and a personal desire and faith in Christ (and confirmation through the Spirit that this was good and right for my life), I probably wouldn't have listened to you and woulda seriously messed up my life, or at least my self esteem and perception of the world. I really want others, everyone, to make those good decisions before it's too late and before there's a lot of damage already done. I want everyone to have hope and faith and see things clearly and not be side-tracked by the distractions and temptations that are out there. I realized this week just how free I am to be happy, and how grateful I am for the path I've been given to do so. If anyone ever thinks that I've been serving a mission because of obligation or duty or pressure, I hope that they'll understand that I really did this out of a desire to help people be happy - real, lasting happiness. Not just lasting, but forever. I truly testify that true happiness comes from living the Gospel as Christ taught, and all other ways of living life are... kulang, or to say, lacking. Something will be missing. I can say that when I live the Gospel with my heart and mind and strength and follow the commandments, my life feels in balance, and I feel happiness, joy, regardless of what happens or how many people refuse us or how long we walk in the hot sun without teaching people. It doesn't matter, as long as I'm doing my best and through Christ's Atonement really recognizing what's my best. My best to help others be happy. Sorry this is really preachy, but I'm just reaching that very sweet spot in my mission where it's all coming together now and the lessons Heavenly Father wants me to learn from my mission are coming together in a real, solid, and beautiful way.
Much Love,
Sister Larsen
The car of a daughter of one of our members. "Kitty Racing." The inside is all Hello Kitty too. Talk about super legit! They opened the car and let me sit inside too. I really miss non-mangy cats, you guys.
P.S.
We taught a lesson this week on the law of chastity to a bunch of 19 - 25 year old men. One of them we'd never taught before, and this was his first lesson - he was just sitting in listening to his friends' lesson. In Tagalog, "Chastity" (Batas ng Kalinisang Puri) translates more like "Law of pure cleanliness." So at the beginning of the lesson and end of the lesson I was talking about that being the name of this law we must follow, and I asked him if he would follow the law in his life (the new guy who we'd never taught before - I figured we might as well ask him.) He then said yes, he would live it, by cleaning his house and making sure to shower every day. I don't think he really got it, hahaha, since "Will you live the law of chastity" probably sounded more like "will you live the law of being clean" in Tagalog. That happened on exchanges with a former Sister Training Leader who is now training and is really a better missionary than I am... I don't really like going on exchanges with missionaries I feel like I have nothing to teach, other than I sure learned a lot from her and let her know so. We had a good laugh about the awkward Tagalog translation of "chastity."
We also taught a different lesson to a former Less Active member where it uses the tagalog word for "horn" which is pretty deep Tagalog. The word for that is something like "turotot" I think, and the member asked us what it meant while he was reading. I had English scriptures in front of me (skill acquired - reading my own scriptures in English and paraphrasing them back in Tagalog after listening to someone read it in Tagalog... something like that.) and I was trying to explain what turotot was but couldn't remember the Tagalog word. So I said, "Patutot means blah blah blah..." and then our ward missionary smacked me in the leg a bit and started laughing and said, "TUROTOT!!!" Then I remembered that "patutot" is another one of those words people don't know what it means sometimes and it sounds similar... but that word means prostitute. I don't think the member noticed but the ward missionary and I had a good laugh about it afterwards.
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