Week 54: Pizza and the Day of the Dead

AJ: Musta na! Ano ang ginagawa nyo? (roughly translated as “Hi you! What is going on?”)

(30 minutes later)

DAD: You still on? I kinda fell asleep in my chair out on the living room.

AJ: Yea, still on here. I just found out we can buy from the LDS website. It's sweet – they have mesh garments and stuff. How ya doing?

DAD: Great. Sorry I'm late! How about you? Everything OK. Pizza looks good.
AJ: Great as well. That's funny. Elder Wooden falls asleep in his chair all the time – haha. What time is it in Utah? By the way, I took out a bunch of money. I am sending the package and I might be able to get a member to buy me some shoes in Manila.

DAD: It is 11:17 p.m. right now. Looks like you wrapped that package up tight. Hope it makes it without being hijacked. We are looking forward to getting it. How long do they say it should take?
DAD: Gotta have good shoes. Are your Hush-puppies wearing out already?

AJ: They are doing all right, but the Philippines is terror on shoes. We walk on crappy roads and mud and gravel every day. They're getting beat pretty good – they've got a while still, but I figured I better start looking now. I don't want you to have to send them. It's way too expensive.

DAD: What would you send the package through? Do they even have mail or is UPS there in the big cities or what? What time is it there?
AJ: It's 2:30 in the afternoon here.

DAD: Glad u got the little package. Those mags represent a lot of work on my end. All the writers are pretty young and raw. I had to do a lot of re-writing and editing. It's hard to believe we have put out four issues and are working on our fifth. Yes, get some shoes going now! Gotta find some before it gets to a critical point. It's too bad no one sells any your size, bigfoot. I dunno where you got your big feet! BTW, what did you write in Tagalog on your first email?

AJ: I don't know how long. Probably a long time. Hopefully it makes it before Christmas. I said. “How's it going? What are you all doing? Yeah, your magazine is awesome. Me and Elder Wooden love it. It looks like a ton of work. Do you give those out or do they sell those magazines?

DAD: They cost five bucks each, but when the schools sell them, we let them keep half. We usually print a batch of 2,500 and most of them get sold.

AJ: That's good. You can just get the schools to sell them. I hate selling stuff.

DAD: Where did you get that pizza? Looks good. Didn't see any pepperoni or much tomato sauce.

AJ: At "Greenwich Pizza." They have one in Tuguegarao, Solono and Santiago. The thing is, it's super expensive and not too terribly great. That's only the second time I've had pizza my whole mission. It was pretty good. It was ham and cheese. The hosers put onions on it, though. But they were big and easy to get off.

DAD: How much was the pizza? 10 bucks? Ah well, it's only money ;-)

AJ: It was 349 for that pizza – like 7 or 8 dollars. And that is exactly what I said earlier. It's only money! I love that saying!

DAD: Your mother gets mad at me when I say that! I think you are very frugal, just like her. Unless mission life is loosening you up.
AJ: Yeah, whenever I screw up and spend too much money, then I just say, oh well, it's only money! It's true. Ya cant take it with ya to heaven. It won't buy a loaf of celestial bread. Did you get the irony on the lottery picture?

DAD: Not sure on the irony ... tryce driver buying lotto tickets ... or something with the ladder ... I dunno.

AJ: You have to walk under a ladder to buy a Lotto ticket – haha!

DAD: Ah, I get it. Bad luck when you're trying for good luck. That's a pretty pink tryce, too. Guess he's trying to give rides to women, eh?

AJ: I don't know, man, about the tryce.

DAD: Your letter is here – must mean you're leaving soon. Love you!

AJ: Love ya too, PEACE!

WEEKLY LETTER

Dear Family,

Another great week here in the Philippines. We had a good week teaching and then it was disappointing when only 1 of our investigators came to church. At least teaching is going really great. Every day we have almost more appointments than we can handle and we have tons of people that are really praying and reading the Book of Mormon.

Cool Experience: We walked by one of our investigator's house (Claudio family) a few hours before our appointment with them. We were headed to another appointment on the same street and looked in their window and they were reading the BOM! Yea! They didn't even see us either. Later, when we went to their house, we asked how their reading was going and he said something to the effect that he was loving it and it was almost like watching a movie. Cool!

Tuesday and Wednesday were holidays here in the Philippines. It's like “Araw ng patay,” or "Day of the Dead." It's like Memorial Day in America, except the cemetery pretty much turns into a carnival party thing. Yeah. So Tuesday, instead of district meeting, we all hit the cemetery with the Plan of Salvation pamphlets. It was interesting. We met this one guy who's 3-year old daughter had died a few years back and we taught the Plan of Salvation and how his daughter was definitely in heaven and that he could live with her forever through the gospel.

Sometimes, during a particular day or week, we will teach a certain principle a bunch of times, totally not on purpose. For instance, this one day almost all our lesson were focused on the doctrine of a living prophet in Thomas S. Monson on the earth today. It wasn't planned like that, but every time we were going to teach that day, we just felt like we needed to teach about the prophet.

For this whole week, it kind of seems like we have been teaching and preaching the blessing of eternal families and going to the temple. That is such an awesome blessing and I know that families can be together forever and that's what I want badly for each and every one of our investigators. This gospel is so perfectly beautiful and so perfectly true. I know that in my heart and in mind.

Sorry my letter is short this week. We have been teaching a ton of people and tons of them are progressing. Just the hardest part is getting them to church. I know that through small and simple things, great things will come to pass!

I love you family and miss you. I pray for you every day and feel your prayers for us and this great work. The church is true!

Love ya!
AJ