Hey Family!
First off, don't worry, I'm taking my vitamins. By the way, some lady in my ward asked me my blood type, and to be honest with you, I don't know what it is! So I promised her I'd ask. About the magic, thanks for sending me all those magic tricks, but I'm not sure if I will continue my magic days. This is why. The other day I always walk past these kids who ask me to do magic. Finally I gave in and I did this trick someone taught me at the MTC where you make it look like your tie inflates. Like you blow on the back string of your tie and the bigger part inflates, it's a cool nifty little trick. Anyway I did it and to my surprise all the kids clapped for me, there were like 6 of them. After that we returned to that area a couple days later and one of the girls I did that for saw me and said "Magic!" And then ran off. Next thing I know there were like 50 or 60 kids surrounding me all asking me to do magic. Let me tell you, I am not that comfortable at doing magic and it was just awkward for me! Because it's not like I have amazing talents! Anyway, so maybe I'll end my magic career now.
So this week was really hard for proselyting, because today is Baranggay Elections. So everyone is going around campaigning. It's kind of funny. People are like passing out candy and whatnot to people so they will vote for them and then they like are blasting their theme songs which are usually like popular american songs and they changed the words. So as we have been trying to do things peoples excuses have been, next week, we are busy with campaigns. So hopefully thats true and church will be really crowded this week. Anyway, again with the attention thing, one of the most awkward things that happened to me this week was like a parade of trucks, jeepneys, and tricycles, for the election. At the front was someone blasting their theme song. This guy actually had written it himself, it's actually pretty catchy, but I've heard the song like 5381 times, I wish I could hum it to you. Anyway, so we were on the side of the road when this parade went by. It was the opposite of most parades, just because like everyone sitting in the jeepneys or on a motorcycle or on a tricycle just turned and stared at me and were saying the usual, "Hey Joe! What's your name? What's up dude? Where are you going?" This went on for like 10 minutes and I asked Elder Tiamzon if we could go to our appointment already. Just the attention is weird for me. Plus everyone always asks me how old I am! when I say 19 most of them say, "I thought you were only 14." The most promising was someone said 16.
So since I told you about Nori. Here's the thing with him. We're still having a hard time visiting him every week, because he's always so busy with work. But you know Nanay DeFelipe, the member he "referred" us to? She is actually his Grandmother. We were talking to her and she told us Nori told us that he was going to be baptized. Which got me excited because that meant 2 things to me, that he was actually excited about his baptism enough to tell his family about it, and that he is serious about his commitment. So I'm excited for him.
So this week we also had a stake wide service project. We just like cleaned an elementary school, which was pretty cool. Anyway, while we were there I talked to this brother who is actually Bishop of Ward 3. He was telling me about his mission in Quezon City 20 years ago. He told me he had 16 american companions and only 1 Filipino. Anyway, he told me one of his companions was crazy and loved eating weird foods, like monkey brain or something. So that was cool. Anyway, what I wanted to get to was then Bro. Bermi came in and asked me if I had had Balut yet. So I told him I still hadn't. And he said, "Why not, it's very sweet!" I asked, "Oh, like a mango!?" He told me that was not the case, and that it actually tasted more like an apple. So I said, okay, I want to try it. The problem is you can only buy balut at night on the opposite side of town that we are on. Anyway, while we were talking one of the new sister missionaries in our district, Sister Ganta, from India, was there doing service too. Brother Bermi asked her if she wanted to try balut. She asked what it was, and he told her to ask her companion. She doesn't want to try it. But Brother Bermi said, "It's delicious! It's very spicy!" Once again, it was just funny the way he said it. He cracks me up. Anyway, I was able to get Balut because we had a baptism on Saturday night so I could buy it. I'll tell you this, it didn't really taste like an apple. Actually I kind of thought it tasted good. It was weird eating the gooey thing. It looked exactly like a chick! Anyway, so it wasn't too bad. Maybe I'll have it again another day. It wasn't really spicy either. Oh, by the way, I told Brother Bermi about what dad said about thanking him for taking care of me. He told me to tell my family, you all, that "we don't care about you!" I'm pretty sure he was joking. At least I hope so!
So since I mentioned about having a baptism, I better talk about it a little bit. The baptism was of Geezevey Bunda, who was just a 9 year old daughter in a Less-Active, part member family. Brother Toto and I actually found them while we were working together during Elder Tiamzon's training. Anyway, the cool thing is when we started teaching them they didn't miss a single week of church since. Hopefully now we can try to work on her mother who still isn't a member. But anyway, it was fun because my favorite part at the baptism was just after she was actually baptized Geezevey shared her testimony and how happy she was to be baptized. So it was cool. I really loved being about to teach that family. That's the family the sock incident happened and also the pangsot experience. Anyway, it was good times. Plus her older sister, Koka, who is 10, always helps me with my Ilonggo or Bisaya or whatever I'm learning, and I teach her some English words, because she asks. Anyway, I might have told you earlier that one of the letters hard for me to say is ng (yeah thats one letter). My trainer tried to teach me how to say it by saying, there is no g sound and no n sound. It's confusing. Anyway, I can say it now pretty good and naturally. But anyways, I finally found my revenge while teaching Koka the english word "Flip Flops." It was really funny the way they all tried to say it, "Slip slops, lick lock, plif pops.." Anyway, I just found out "f"s are really hard for them to say, so it was cute. Especially when Ricka Jane was saying it, she's 7 years old, she's cute.
So on Sunday I had the opportunity again to give a talk in church. I was excited because I feel we were kind of in a dry spot again. I kind of told me it was only because of the elections, but I know that's not really an excuse. If our investigators really understood how important it is to go to church each week, then they would make time to do the things they need to do. Anyway, we've been having trouble finding like progressing investigators. I really wanted the help of the ward with that because now I really have a testimony of how much the ward can help the missionaries. Because really, things would work out so much better if we could have members come to our lessons with us. The ward missionaries and really dilligent, and some members are always really helpful, but just if we got referrals and stuff and then in some areas we don't always have members to help us. Anyway, so I gave a talk. I actually used that story mom sent me from Woman's conference and translated it. Then I connected that to doing good in the world- being quick to help instead of quick to judge. Tapos, I connected that to missionary work and sharing the gospel with your friends. Anyway, it seemed pretty good and I hope it worked pretty well. I know it made sense at least because the Bishop's wife, actually complemented my story and said the ward was really attentive, so that was good. I hope we can get their help. In the Philippines, the hardest thing for the church here is retention. There is a rule that you have to attend church 4 weeks in a row, no WoW or LAC violations for a month, in order to be baptized. I'm actually really grateful for that because people really need to understand the commitments/covenants they make at baptism and be able to keep them. The membership in our ward is like 400. When I arrived here, I was told on average like 50 people came to sacrament every week. Last week there were 86. So it's improving. It's tough knowing that there are so many members and so little of them are coming to church every week. So along with finding new investigators we are working a lot of trying to bring these people back home too, we need them, and they need us. But I know it's the same with learning the language, little by little. Little by little, we'll help these people the best we can.
So I hope and pray that we can do that. I was reading the blessing I was given when I was set apart as a missionary that said like when we hit a dry spot, we need to redouble our efforts and press forward. So that is what I hope we can do.
Thanks again for all your prayers for me, my companion, and our investigators. I'm sure all the missionaries around the world appreciate that. I love you all!
Love,
Elder Burton.
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