New Mission President

Akon hinigugma nga pamilya,

The Supreme Court did what???

The girls' play sounds so fun!! Wow. I miss acting. How crazy fun. 

On Thursday we got to meet our new mission president, President Barredo. He is a native of Bacolod. He talked to us about being celestial missionaries and turning to our Heavenly Father first with ALL of our concerns. He asked us to write in our journals about what we learned from the Spirit, not about what was said. The Spirit taught me that I need to self-evaluate often...and step up my language learning. I did both in the next day's personal study. 

The mission address is on my blog...I don't have it with me right now, but the address on my blog is correct. I got two letters this week, one from Gordon and the other from David. Another sister from America got a package from LBC, which I told you about last week, apparently it's in Utah too...? But she said they both usually take two weeks and LBC is more expensive, so best just go through the good ol' US postal service. 

But apparently mail sent from here to America is not so reliable since Natalie has still not received the letter I sent 3 months ago......So I'm thinking I'm going to wait until I transfer to send my other letters since maybe it's just the post office here? Ambot lang. But so far I've always received mail through the mission office. The office elders here are pretty good about getting it to us. Sister Black (I think that's her name?) from Beaver sent me a visiting teaching message a while back! It made me smile. That is some dedicated visiting teaching!! 

I think Lizzy is a bit young for a phone....I always remember how I was embarrassed that I didn't have a phone for the longest time. It wasn't until I was 17 and over my embarrassment that I got a phone. But yeah, it's fine if she uses my phone. No complaints there. It's just my clothes I mind.....just kidding, not really.

Have you heard from Stasia lately? Here past emails have been so fun to read. I love that she's in another country too!

You want to hear more about food and culture and landscape? Well the people here eat rice. The sud-an, or what they eat with the rice, really depends on what the families income/work is. Because if you work in the talumnun, or rice field, your income is often....rice. If you sell fish for a living, your sudan is fish. If you sell vegetables for a living, etc.... There are a lot of middle men here. The fishermen fish, sell to people on the shore, and then those people go to the market and sell the fish at a higher price. Same for vegetables, etc. 

There is also MSG in everything! I try not to eat anything with it, but if it's from a can, bag, or box it usually has MSG in it. That's how people cook. They have little packets of flavoring....the first ingredient sodium, the second MSG, of course. Not real cooking. It's a shame really.    

It has been raining like crazy here! We are always wet! Typhoon Ikay is the name of the bagio or storm. It is supposedly supposed to get worse. We don't have flooding in our house, but a lot of the houses here have water inside. It feels like a very wet Washington day in the Fall. 

I love you all so much!

 

Sister Marriott