04/05/2010 -- Burgos Area

k well I’m in Burgos its like the ghetto of the mission. It’s all flat no mountains and its rice fields forever and everyone is super super poor. but I went on 3 exchanges this week I went to roxas which is a bigger city it has like a small mall and stuff Burgos has one tiny place to buy fresh food like vegetables and stuff. It’s actually someone’s house that has like 3 tables in front of it. its bad though cause they just throw like chicken and a bunch of fish on the table and then they will put it on the scale without a bag or anything then vegetables on the scale right after so it’s definitely not sanitary the whole Philippines could use a lesson on sanitation haha but seriously also there is one little restaurant and here they don’t have restaurants that you can sit down and order what you want. they cook everything in the morning and then put it in a glass case and you choose what you want out of the case and they serve it up. There are always flies and ants in the case also so it looks gross. We just bless it and hope for the best. ya but in Roxas they have a Jollibee’s and its like a McDonalds or Wendy’s but they only have like 2 hamburgers and then like a bunch of Philipino dishes. It’s good though cause you can order it and it comes out hot.

But anyways I don’t know about the pmg. My friend, Elder Harman, has it. I just know he got it sent to him in the mtc so I have no idea but it’s small and light and identical to the other ones. i don’t care if its not approved.

but anyways so my mission president is way way cool. He’s so relaxed like he doesn’t have special rules that aren’t in the handbook he has never sent a missionary home either that anyone knows about. He doesn’t have rules like no eating dog or balut or the blood stuff and he doesn’t have rules against transportation stuff either so it’s pretty sweet.

Sounds like England was a blast. we could use some rain here everything is way dryer than usual and its not that green here cause of the drought and its harvest season so it looks kinda dry. Everyone says it usually is way pretty and it’s never been this dry ever so we’ll see I guess. they all are scared cause they say when its this dry for a long time the floods come so they’re all just waiting for it.

but i found out some new stuff to buy -- a huge mansion here it cost about 90,000 dollars and that’s for the land and house so its pretty cheap here for everything. This week we got 1 investigator to church is all but we have 4 people with baptismal dates. So the baptisms are coming shortly.

Ya i can teach a lesson on my own its just not grammatically correct but they can understand me. the good thing is the national language here is English so they sorta understand some english so they talk in Tagalog and they plug in English words everywhere so i can usually understand what the subject of the conversation is but i cant really catch any detail. i understand white missionaries though that speak Tagalog really well cause its easier to understand but here they really speak illakano so alot of the time they mix in illakano words that i have no idea what it is but everyone can understand and talk Tagalog and they don’t speak illakano at school so they’re good at it to but one good thing is when i teach I’ll talk and when i don’t know the word in tagalog i just say the English word and keep going cause thats what they do and it makes it much easier. but the language is coming pretty fast and everyone says that our class out of the mtc was way more advanced than their class. everyone says we’re the fresh stud batch cause its like we have been here already a while cause are tagalog is good. the good thing is in the US if someone cant understand you they get frustrated and angry here they think its the ultimate compliment that your trying to learn their language so everyone always says thank you for learning our language or thank you for taking the time to learn our customs and stuff so that’s cool. I wonder if it’s like that in South America. o and everyone eats here with their hands so we eat with our hands at members house unless they’re more wealthy but the restaurants give you silverware.

no it hasn’t rained here forever. i did get to help dry the tobacco leaves that was cool! I have a bunch of pictures I’ll send you later. but they say the tobacco is to make soap not cigarettes haha i don’t believe that one bit haha. But here they’ve got to do whatever they can to survive and make some money.

We are not supposed to pay anyone to do our laundry for a while cause it is helping us become self reliant but I guess it’s only for a while just so we can do it ourselves for a bit but laundry sucks like seriously its the most terrible thing. I have just been pouring a bottle of bleach in a bucket with water and letting it soak for a while but the rest you have to sit there and scrub all day seriously it takes about 2 hours. I’m usually the quickest cause well like you said i don’t care that much how clean I look. haha just enough to get the sweat soaked out. haha

I have spoken in church twice now -- my first week and last week. so ya i get lots of Tagalog practice. conference is this week Saturday and Sunday cause they have to wait a week to get it translated. We’re about an hour bus ride from the mission home. it takes awhile to get packages. but anyways I got to get going and no i haven’t gotten the package yet give it a couple of weeks but anyways i will talk to you later! have a good week!
love ya
Jason
and almost forgot … send me another black watch like the one i got at walmart the cheap one and then like a watch on a carabineer like Matt’s that I can put in my backpack and also can I use my green debit card at atms and stuff here to pull out pesos. figure out how that works k! talk to you later

Letter to Andrea:

Off course i ate the dog are you kidding! I’m becoming a filipino nagiging ako ang philipino haha but anyways my comp has never eaten dog before and he has never been outside the Philippines either so its like a delicacy -- just joking. It’s cause he is from Manila and they can’t eat the dogs there cause they are really really dirty and have worms but here they are ok so they say....

but anyways i found out that the area I’m in right now is the ghetto of the area I’m in the flat lands and its covered in rice fields and everyone is super poor we have a nice church and usually about 40 people show up to church. there is only about 5 people in the ward that hold the priesthood the 3 branch presidency members and then 2 of their sons who are like Eric’s age haha so ya we have to bless the sacrament every week. relief society here is big though all the males are always working so they don’t really have priesthood class here they just have ward council every Sunday this week though they had all the people in one room except the kids and they talked about this great plan. They’re going to help the members become self reliant the branch is going to give each family 1 male chicken and 2 females and then a bunch of different kinds of seeds. it was so funny listening to them talk about it … they keep joking about it and were like what if i get hungry and eat the male right away and then the president was like then you won’t have any chicks to eat later. it was pretty funny!

It’s hard though cause here everyone actually speaks illakano but they understand tagalog and can speak it and their national language is English so you have like 3 languages in sacrament and every where else that they’re trying to speak. its hard to figure it out I’ll hear an english word that they pronounce weird and I’ll ask them what the word is in English and they will say that it is English and I’m just like o i see. It’s crazy! It’s still hot as crap here and we have some rats, cockroaches and giant spiders living with us and the power usually goes out once every other day for 5 or 6 hours. if it goes out at night I’m done for cause I’ll just pour sweat its rough. but anyways i don’t mind dark purple … but i got the coolest backpack ever its green and blue and it has jrw cauayan on it. It is so awesome it cost 9 dollars

but anyway its pretty cool here or i mean its pretty awesome here its definitely never been cool. haha but ya hopefully the kids are good and you guys had fun
love ya talk to you next week jason