Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Monkey with a lollipop.





Dear Family-

How is life in Roy Utah?? Work in Calamba is still pulling a stone cut out of the mountain without hands and moving onwards with no obstacles. Yes yes, we all know the stories come first so this is what I will relate first…

This week will go down in history as one of the more difficult weeks in my mission. It was like I was marinated in problems this week haha but that is life. I am really weird about problems-I hate burdening other people with them, but I like solving other peoples problems…I don’t understand it either-that is just how I was made I suppose. Well, Friday night I had had enough and was like dude, De Leon I need to drop some stuff on you, I need advice. I dropped a lot of stuff on him and he told me that he actually was having the same problems that I was having (caused by different things, but, all in all, the same problems). De Leon and I are actually getting along better than I could have ever imagined. He is up there with my tatay (Banawan) and Duco. Today I actually asked the APs to give me one more transfer here in Calamba with him so we will see how that goes. Obviously, no matter how much we try, we cant change the will of the Lord. I guess the best way to explain this week would be to compare it to boogyboarding (cause I cant surf). You know when you are boogyboarding on top of a wave, having a good time, then you go too much forward and you get sucked under the wave and your face slammed into the ground? Haha that was this week! But, one week out of my 40 so far isnt that bad:D Now, onto some cooler stories.

Last Friday De Leon were about to visit a family that we found tracting that is having a hard time with in-activity. Do you see that first picture that I sent-the monkey with the lollipop? Ok, so let me tell you what happened. I was walking when I saw this monkey chained to a bamboo pole going, horizontally, from a shed to a tree. He had a lollipop so I decided to stop and take a picture of him…bad choice. I looked down to get my camera when I heard this rrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and I look up to see this monkey FLYING through the air towards me. So, in like half a second my body reacts with pulling a limbo type action and bending my back. Now, I kid you not, this monkey was coming full throttle at me claws out ready to rock my socks. He either wanted to do one of two things-1)feel my newly shaven face to see if the commercials are true and see if gillette really is the best a man can get, or 2)beat me down for threatening his lollipop. Either way he was not a happy camper-kind of like brady when he dropped his cow pie thing with the peach filling on the ground (haha love ya brady!). When he was like 2 inches from my face the chain pulled tight yanking him back leaving him hanging by his waist. Now, I hadnt come this far, having almost had my life taken from me, to leave empty handed. I took a picture real quick and ran. He tried to follow me…didn’t work too well (chains arent easilly broken). The lighter picture was taken when he wasn’t mad at me, and the dark picture was taken when he was about to jump and attack again…and that is why you NEVER ask a monkey how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pops…the jerk bit it anyways

Last Tuesday (I think) we had a baguio (pronounced bhag-yo) (meaning storm) (actually its also a place) (oh, and a mission too…baguio mission) which was a fun experience. The drainage system in Pilipinas is an epic failure, thus flash floods happen almost everyday. The picture that I sent was of one of the roads…as you can see the water level is like 2 inches above the curb…haha the ricers with their civics were blowing bubbles in the water with their exhausts:/

That picture with all the writing says “I want to become a trashman so when your boyfriend throws you out I can pick you up” I just though it was kind of funny because we had taught the family before and they are married…and the guy is a trashman…

Yesterday was kind of a special day. Two things happened that I am gonna remember for a long time. The first happened when we were at the house of an investigator. As we were right about to start teaching, two saksi (Jehovas’s witnessess-saksi is witness in Tagalog so we call them Saksi. Haha Elder De Leon calls then “Saksi ni Judas” or Judas’ witnesses hahahahaha) came up and hopped in like we were best friends. They were sisters so they had a humble countanence (is that the right word??) about them so the bible bashing was…kept to a minimum. They shared their beliefs, threw sacred doctrine that we don’t talk about often on the table, and insinuated a lot while we just shared our message (the restoration) quickly and quietly then they left. Our investigator looked at us and was like “you know elders, I have to be honest with you all I accept every religion that comes and tries to teach me…but every other religion is just me shaking my head-there is nothing in my heart telling me to listen intently. But, when you all teach me, there is something pushing me along telling me to listen. There is something that burns within telling me its true.” We gave a quick scriptural thought (because the saksi took up like an hour of our time) and went to the Javier family-right above our investigators house. We arrived to a quiet house-which is NOT normal-and were let in by lovely. She just looked at me with this “something is wrong look” and I was like oh gosh…what’s wrong. She was like Andrea is losing it. Minutes later Diwata came down with Andrea sceaming and flipping out. Something happened inside Andrea’s mouth and was causing her excrutiating pain. She was screaming at the top of her lungs-something I have never seen her do before ever. Diwata looked at me and was like “elder, can you give her a blessing?” Her voice was kind of frantic because she was doing everything she could to calm Andrea down and nothing was working. Funny how things happen at the worst possible times. Someone in my first area stole my vial of consecrated oil so I now have no consecrated oil. Elder De Leon had left his at the apartment so we were like Ate, its gonna have to be a blessing of comfort cause we have no oil. Diwata was like ok it doesn’t matter just do it. Everything was loud, everything was crazy, no one could think straight. We had Andrea sit down in the chair and decided that I was gonna give her a blessing. She sat down in the chair and I put my hands on her head…silence. Everything went quiet-Andrea, the world, my thoughts, everything. I gave her a blessing and closed it and she looked up at me, then to Diwata. Diwata’s mouth was wide open. She was like…uh…are you ok? Andrea was like yep:D Diwata was like your mouth…doesn’t hurt? Andrea was like no, everything is gone, there is no pain, nothing. Now, either my hands, being as big as her head, squeezed the hurt out of her, or the catalougue of events demonstrating the power of the priesthood gained yet another entry. What a blessing it is to have the gift of the priesthood and to be able to help those who are in need.

Today was p-day. Last zone conference I, after talking with president for like 20 minutes about it, got him to give us permission to watch a movie as a zone. So, today we went to pizza hut, got 10 pizzas (because we have hookups 10 pizza hut pizzas cost each of us 100 pesos…2 bucks.) and watched up. Up was a REALLY REALLY good movie and flooded my mind of images before my mission, and stuff im gonna do after my mission. Haha man that was one funny movie.

That is about it for this week. Nothing really amazing happened this week actually so sorry if my email was way boring. Thursday is zone conference so I get to see a whole bunch of people again. To answer your question, yea that was Hansen in that picture. By the way, you might want to send me my memory cards…cause my 2 gig has room for like 20 more pictures just waiting to be seen by you all. Oh, and mom, if you could send me that picture from my first area that I asked for a while back. I need to send it to the family of that girl that died. It is the one where the two young boys are in baptismal clothing and there is a mother, a father, and a young girl (16 years old). Oh, and also, could you send me more fusion razorheads in the mail? I am on my last…and I have steel wool for facial hair (thanks…DAD cause I know mom didn’t give me that one haha) I think that is all. Yea, this email was weak but hopefully this week will be cooler…

Hope you all are doing well and staying cool. Tell brady to stop growing and stop tanning. I love you all and hope you all don’t get trunky this Friday (14 months to go…time goes too fast)

Love,

Jake

Ps-elder De Leon blew up our iron…so we borrowed an extra iron from other elders…only it is stuck on setting 6/6. Who in their right mind uses the hottest setting on the iron? It has no purpose…except maybe to cook a stinkin’ egg…

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