day 285

well this week was ok..

pday wasnt as fun as i was hoping. we took longer to do things and didnt get a chance to play at all. hopefully next week will be better. also we postponed our baptism for next week cuz brother wasnt quite ready. they are soo good still, he just needs one more week. so im pretty sure that ths week will be the one. Other than that not much happened. 

on tuesday i got sick again... but this time it was different. This time was.........(dramatic effect).........kidney stones! now i have had everything!!!! holy smokes it sucked!!! so i went to tacloban with elder ostler and got an ultra sound. i have two stones. they gave me some pain killers and a bunch of meds to melt the stones. so hopefully they will be gone pretty soon. butete kam... hehehe dire kam makaintinde.. hehe :) muahahahaha. i called you puffer fishes ;)

well i love you all and im ok. dont worry. i love you all.

Christian

day 285 Questions and Answers

ana worried that she sent all the letters from everyone in her family to uvu and didn't send them to you?  did you JUST get the uvu letter? and no other letters from them?

i got all the letters from them. plus the uvu one.. what should i do with that one?

Ok...i have a couple questions about your pictures that sent last time.  

Why are you all wearing pink and orange ties?  And what  are you doing in the picture?  Is that your district?  I didn't realize that you have a ton of native people there.  You are fosho the minority eh? wow.

the sisters all decided to make matching ties for our zone. Im flexing my muscles. its my zone!! ya just a few of us whiteys!!! 

What are you playing?  what sport is that called?

we were just sweeping. that thing that hes holding is a broom.... he was just posing for the picture

Also in the hitler picture are you in your apartment?  Do you sleep on the floor kinda?  on a little mattress?

i have two 4 inch thick mattresses on a bunk bed that i sleep on.

And who is the family you are with?

that is the family i talked about last week. the amazing one!!

sheryl wants to know...How are you doing on the language? what all do you know now? 

well im pretty good. im confident, i can say basically anything i want, i can do everything pretty much. its not a barrier anymore. there are some words i dont know but i can use cebuano and they can get it.... its all pretty ok now. im not an expert by any means but i can handle my own.

day 278

Dear darla, errr... Mom...

so this week was pretty good. we contacted all our referrals, got a bunch more and planned the baptism this saturday. YES three people are being baptized on saturday. im so excited. they are soo amazingly prepared. We taught tithing this week and we were kinda scared cuz for lots of people here its super hard to pay their tithing cuz they are super poor. but this family didnt have a problem. they were willing to accept the commitment to pay tithing and were excited to do so. 

This week was good, as far as feelings go. i didnt have any relapses or other sick feelings. i have no idea still to this day how i got the thing... i havent had any water from members or any dirty food or anything of the such... Except for the pain and stuff, it really wasnt to bad. president came and visited me, the office elders bought me mckeedees?...and any other food i wanted. i was really supported. i went with one of my zone leaders to tacloban cuz he was peeing blood a couple days prier. so we both went and got checked up. he just had a uti. LBm means : loose bowel movement.

We had a service project on thursday. it was fun. we swept our first counselors backyard. it was huge and full of junk. Like random spoons, broken glass, shoes.. you name it.

The referrals are still raining in. still great. 

Now as far as visits to the gov and what not, the gov is never there, But we always get stopped by a few people saying: who are you? tell me about your church, then they always ask if they can come to church. so we get a few new potential investigators out of the trip. there are a few members as secretaries so we get VIP access to the high ups of the government. 

well we got new zone leaders.. Guess who my new one is???? Elder Ostler!! ya its cool!
(Elder Ostler played soccer with Jensen many years ago.  We're friends with the family)

this morning i started my laundry at 10am.. i finished at 2pm.. IT takes forever!!!!!!!!! hahah im so tired! it gets super duper clean though...

well i wish you all luck at the tournament. i miss being there....
well thats about it...
Love ya
Christian

day 278 Questions and Answers

What does LBM mean? I guess dad said later...lower bowel movement???

Loose bowel movement

Did you get a blessing?

yes i did. the night before i left for the hospital.

What did your companion do the whole time you were sick?

He worked with the other zone leader who was left.

In one of your past letters you mentioned that an elder had to come home because he got an amoeba...was yours different?  or why was he sent home?

im not sure what classes of amoebas there are, but his was super bad. he couldnt walk cuz the pain was soo bad. he couldnt function here. so even though he is home now, he still has a super hard time walking up stairs. he was my batch. 

You were so positive...what/how did you do that?

Theres no point in being negative with anything here. if i am negative about anything it makes me sick. like homesick. like: "back home it was better than this. so to prevent that, i have to be happy with everything.

Ana said..."so i guess since he was at the mission home, he got our package?"  And last week I didn't ask that question...

yupp i got it!! it was great!! send her a big happy hug and stuff. ALSO... there was a letter to the scholarship and financial aid dept. of UVU from J... what should i do with it??

Are you better this week?

yupp all good

Did you loose some weight too?

i think soo.... at the hospital they said i was 176..

Have you been able to meet with the governor and vice governor? 

not yet..

Find out about how much it would take to send your sd card home?  

   im just going to send it in a letter. but first im going to make a copy on a cd.

day 271

Helloooooo!!!!

well ill write a story for this week and last week. Just to let you know im ok now.
Ok, so last week, on tuesday we had our district meeting. it was super good. then we had a district dinner, well it was just with the sisters.so anyways, we had a huge pizza. it was really good. it was like huge, like my arms couldnt fit around the circumference of the pizza. so we went about our work like any other day. we returned home and then eventually went to bed. i woke up in the middle of the night with bad LBM. i went back to bed but couldnt sleep cuz i was having one of the worst pain in my stomach. i had no idea what it was. i thought it was from the pizza but no one else got sick... so the pain lasted all night. so that night i didnt get to much sleep. i would wake up almost screaming then it would go away. it would happen every 20 mins or so. so that night sucked. the next day i couldnt get out of bed. like physically, my body was dead. the pain continued all the day and into the night. All through this time i was pooping my guts out. it was bad. then wednesday night, i started throwing up. so every 20 mins i would have that pain and then go to the CR and puke and other stuff.. this happened until my body was completly empty of anything inside. my stomach felt like it was wringing itself out, just trying to get absolutley everything out. so when i got to the point of just dry heaving and the crazy bad stomach pain i called sister andaya(presidents wife) she told me to get to tacloban as soon as possible. so early on thursday i went to tacloban. i went to a doctor and he told me i needed to be admitted to the hospital right away. So i went to another hospital and got admitted. they hooked me up to an IV right away and tried to rehydrate me and they also dumped a ton of medicine in as well. they made me poop in a cup and do numerous other tests. they said it was from an amoeba. so they gave tons of medicine, like pills and lots of fluid meds that they put in the IV. so i stayed the night in the hospital.(first time in my life) the next day the doctor came back and did more poop related tests and other stuff like that. they told me that i needed to stay another night. so the next day was ok. the medicine was working, the pain in my stomach was getting smaller and less frequent. i wasnt throwing up, i was still pooping but not as frequent. so about sunday afternoon i was able to be released. so after that, they gave me a lot of medicine and told me to take it easy and if the pain and other symptoms to come back. so sunday and monday i stayed at the mission home we traveled back on monday night. As of right now, im pain free and not having any problems. i was able to get rid of the amoeba. ha. sorry i wasnt able to email. but i had a stressful day.(name that quote)

This week, was a great week. Holy cow, if i sold all the fruits that ive reaped from this last week i would be rich. It has been soooo great. so the ward was all concerned for me and told me not to work most of the week. but i hadnt worked really all last week. i needed to get back. so we worked super hard and with lots of members. it was soooo great. We have the best family ever! they are getting baptized on the 28th. holy cow. also yesterday alone, we received 9 referrals. HOLY COW! ALL professional people. so amazing. we are really having great work now. so about this family, they have 6 people in the fam. two are members(two daughters 13and16ish) and then the mom and dad and little boy are not members. this family is a soccer fam. i have coached some of their practices. they are great! sooo prepared. we taught about word of wisdom knowing that the dad had some problems with it so we were prepared for a hard time from him, BUT as we told him about this law, he told us that he knew it was true. He went to get is income from his boss, but his boss didnt have it. so they had now money. he was going to buy some alcohol and cigaretts to take a load off" but instead he didnt, he prayed. it was sooo cool to hear him testify about that. then he told us that after he prayed, his boss gave them his money and bought them rice. He related that blessing to not smoking and drinking. we testified that it was a sign from god that he shouldnt do that, and if he didnt he would be blessed. so we made a plan for him to quit and he accepted. Holy cow... he said, "its still a vice so i will need all the help i can but i will try." we told him that he can get help from us, the Lord ward members and especially his family. it was super spiritual. while we were teaching he went and laid down cuz he was Trancasol. which means you have headache, fever, cold, sore body, basically everything that sucks. so we told him about blessings and asked if he wanted one. He accepted and we blessed him then left. yesterday, sunday, his family was at church and they told us that literally minutes after we left, his sickness was gone. It was truly amazing to see the family witness that. im so excited for them. :) 

we are getting swamped with referrals. everyone loves us and wants to work and give us all their referrals. i love it. we are always busy. and meeting new people. we are working with some people who dont want us to speak waray, so we have our lessons in english. its really cool cuz i have a way bigger vocabulary to use. lots easier to teach. i think this area could be my favorite areas of my mission. ever though ive only had two, i think its going to be hard to beat this.

also... our visits to the Gov and Vice gov are pretty productive. both time we have visited them they are out of town, but we manage to get referrals from the secrataries. its cool beans. we also have an investigator who is the richest man in catarman. he is a millionaire. they are super cool to teach cuz they treat us as professionals.. its nice to feel respected like that. i wish people everywhere would treat representatives of Christ that way.

we had a zone activity today. it was bomb! we went to a white sand beach and played volleyball and beach soccer!!! it was a blast!!! holy fetch its hard to run on sand!!!!!!! haha i will send some pics..

well im really good now,(we found a place with the BEST hotdogs in the philippines. its soooo good.) really good.
I think thats all. haha :)
I love you all and im greatful for your love.

Love Christian

day 271 Questions and Answers

I think it's time to send home an sd card....how much do you think it'll cost and I'll put that money on your card.  Although I want it to be safe too...could you back it up on your thumb drive and then send the sd card?

I will find out and send it this week. 

We were wondering and never confirmed with you about you getting that thumb drive with all the songs/primary songs etc that dad sent months ago.  did you ever get it?

I did, but it had virus on it so it doesnt work. I would love it if you could sent my ipod. just like take off all the songs and just load it with MOTAB...(the touch screen one) that is my biggest need (or desire) at this point.

Since being in Catarman, is there anything you miss about Merida?

i think i miss being close with the members. i miss it and i dont. it involved drama, but if that was taken out, it would be the top thing miss.. we are close to the members here, but its different, i dont really know how to describe it.

day 257

well this week in news,


we had our zone conference on tuesday, it was good. we got a new focus from the area president. We are to focus on only the upper class and rich people in our areas. its kinda weird but ya... they think it will help with retention so why not give it a try. we have set up appointments with the govenor and vice gov. also a bunch of lawyers and basically all the rich ppl in our area. its quite exciting actually cuz for the most part, we can speak english to them. :) 


I didnt get any mail or nothin from zone conf. our supply and zls are droppin the ball big time. ha... oh well.. 


we had a stake priesthood meeting on saturday. we listened to the leaders here and then we had a huge bball tournament.i also found a guitar and jammed a bit. man i miss it. also i played chess. hahaha.
but other than that, nothing really exciting is going down in town. so i will answer your qs now


Love you sooo muchy
Christian

day 257 Questions and Answers

What was the best thing?

ummm....playing the guitar. for sure

How is the Waray Waray coming?

its ok.. not perfect yet but im goooood now :)

How is your companion? and you with him?

we are still good. a bit lazy but ok. no fights yet...

Did you get the package yet from Ana?

noo:( not yet....