This past week we had Zone Meeting. Sister Roncal and I were invited to teach about OYMs and what we do in our OYMing, because right now we are leading our zone in OYMs. No one was paying attention to us. We asked a question and didn't get any response and one of the elders was like, "They're not listening." and I was like, "Yeah, I know." I was a little frustrated, because Sister Roncal and I had prepared the night before and talked about how nervous Sis. Roncal was. Elder Miller and Lien showed up late because they were in Cauayan. Elder Lein was having some kind of health problem. The moment I saw them, my day brightened. I love them so much.
On Thursday we went to Santiago, about an hour and a half away, to attend Mission Possible--an activity that the couple missionaries put on for us, about preparedness and health and budgeting. It was fun. Before the activity though, I had the most culturally exotic experiences I have ever had in my life. Elder Bates had been to Santiago before and knew of an Indian temple that fed people for free. So we all decided to go. A fat Indian man greeted us as the front and we asked him in Tagalog if we could eat. He told us that if we came in and did everything he told us to do, we could eat for free. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, at this point I was kind of like...is this okay? But Elder Bates was like...it's fine we've done this before a million times. Well, we went inside and they had us take our shoes off and wear yellow handkerchiefs on our heads. We went up some stairs to this room where we washed our feet, then he led us into this other room with a long blue carpet and a long red one side by side. At the end of the blue carpet there was a shrine/gazebo type thing surrounded with fake brightly colored flowers and behind an alter was a long-bearded Indian man, singing from a book. The escort got on his knees and bowed and prayed and all of us missionaries just stood there awkwardly like...uhhh, what do we doooo....and of course, being your daughter I was like, "if we dont pray, are they going to cut our heads off?" But then I remembered that I am a servant of the Lord. The man got up from his prayer and we asked him, "Anong gagawin namin?" He didn't answer and just walked away to grab a plastic bag from the other side of the room and from the bag, handed each of us a mango. Um, I secretly couldn't stop laughing, because we were SO STUPID for going in there and we looked really stupid too. All for free food. Anyway, the man told us we didn't need to do anything, that we could just go downstairs and eat. The room was tiled in marble and we sat on a long red carpet, criss-crossed and side by side. ( I sat by Elder Miller and we laughed so much about what had just happened. :) ) We ate off of metal trays--eggplant/curry/potato stuff that we put on these corn bread tortilla things, some kind of runny sour cream, and rice pudding. And of course our holy mangoes. It was delicious, actually. I will send pictures next time. Then we went to Mission Possible.
What else what else. There's so much. Uhhh, we had a one-day mission on Saturday. A lot of youth came and Sister Roncal and I went on splits to go teach less-active members in the ward. There were about 21 companioships and we reached a lot of less-active members.
Our investigator, Perla Cadabona, came to church AGAIN this week--dressed in a lovely floral dress. She lives so far and I beam with smiles whenever I see her walking up the cobblestone walkway of the church. She has a baptismal date now for July 2.
Anyway, Momma. I'm out of time. But I love you so much. Thank you for your beautiful letter. I love you all. I LOVE YOU GRANDMA! Thank you all for being such a great support to me and my mission. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PoPpA!! I Love you!
Your beebee,
Aly
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