Hey family how are you all!!! I’m doing great. This past week went by so fast it felt like yesterday at church I was just there and yet it was a whole different week! I’m really starting to like the mission. The first couple weeks here I was struggling to figure out what I was doing here! I started focusing more on my purpose and just trying to figure everything out. Figure out how I can be more effective as someone who doesn’t understand and can’t speak. I’m still trying to figure that out but during personal study of the Book of Mormon and Preach My Gospel I’m figuring it out more and more slowly. Any RM's have some advice of what they did? (Mark, Dad, Kenny, Shauna, Nat) sorry Skye.... I would ask you but you didn’t learn a language. If you have any insights though I’m open to hear them. You always have good insight and goals. But speaking of Skye.... Happy Birthday Jayda. It sounds like she had a good birthday and you had some fun celebrations. Who's is next Kaleb? Feb 8th right?? When is the baptism? We have a baptism finally for a 9 year old named Herold on Feb 29th. His parents are less active so we basically asked if we could teach the family again and baptize the kid. Hopefully we can use this kid to bringing his family back so maybe he can come to church more often with his parents! We have a few investagators but whenever we go by their house they aren’t there or they are at work. So we are trying to ask people when’s a good time to stop by but they don’t even know their own schedule so it’s hard. The people in my area are just real poor and they work all day so it’s hard to plan when they could have work one day and not the next or idk it’s just very different. But it’s good! It’s been raining all week so I haven’t taken my camera out so I don’t have pictures this week unless Elder Leng has some. I took a couple pictures at family home evening but they all came out blurry. So I’ll promise I’ll take some this week and send them next week!! pesensya (sorry)!

So to answer some of your questions...

I sleep fine. For some reason I wake up every night to go to the bath room even when I go at night right before and I’ll go in the morning. It’s kinda annoying cause I never used to wake up to go to the bathroom! But it doesn’t stop me from sleeping well. The chickens start crowing at like 430-5 so I have to sleep through that but it’s all good!

We never eat with members. Sometimes they'll feed us but that’s only if they have extra after they eat. Our Stake presidents wife runs a bakery so she's always making food and they'll feed us at least once a week whether its fresh bread(which is the best part about the Philippines) or if they have left over dinner! And it’s always so good! Usually rice. Manjo-orange juice or pineapple juice and some type of meat.

Wash is fine. It takes forever but my clothes stay clean. Elder Leng pays ladies in the ward who want to do it so sometimes I’ll throw a pant in there cause our pants just get hammered with mud! It’s a daily occurence!

Church buliding is small. Maybe 100 by 50 feet. It’s way small. It’s just a branch. We have like 70 active members on average but like 360 in the ward. It’s hard for people to get to church cause our area covers a lot and it’s expensive to ride the buses cause most people can’t afford to ride the bus with their whole family.

My living conditions are nice. We have all the necesities. Bed, running water, fridge, stove top with propane. So we have no A/C but its like perfect weather. It’s probably like 75 degress average during the day and at night maybe high 60's so I sleep cool.

Just a couple things I have to write home about now. So dad got an iphone??? I notice that all his emails say sent from my iphone. Pablo "classy guy"! haha

Yesterday at church I was supposed to give a talk but we ran out of Sacrament bread so someone had to run next store to a bakery and buy some bread then we ran out of water and the Stake Relief Society prez was there and she went 20 min overtime. So I just bore my testimony and sat down! haha. Then the branch president got up and spoke for 5 min so our Sacrament meeting went for like 30 minutes over time! haha. That just sums up how people live here!

And last but not least the bread here is so good! I can spend like 20 pesos which is like 15 cents and I can get like 10-15 pieces of fresh bread.. it is so good!!

Well family! Sorry if my typing is terrible. I’m not used to this keyboard yet. haha I’m trying my best!

I hope all is well back home. It sounds like everythings is going good! I’m so glad that all is well back home and friends and family are doing good! I haven’t got the package yet but hopefully I will soon. Elder leng has been waiting still for his Christmas package. All the elders said that if you tape pictures of the Virgin Mary on the outside of the box people won’t go through it cause they are Catholic. So maybe do that next package! haha.

Well all is good here in the Philippines. Of course the language is still a factor but I’m understanding more.. slowy but surely. Just depends on how fast the person is talking. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to be here and now how much it is blessing my life for ever already. I wish everyone knew how important our message is and I wish if they don’t...they would try to figure it out! I know Christ lives and that we as families can live forever together again in heaven. It’s such a great blessing and we know through the gospel how to obtain eternal life! I’m so thankful for everyones support back home and wish you the best in all you do! It’s hard to express my feelings over email but know that I love all of you and miss all of you! I’m going to be honest though... the more the weeks go on I find myself missing milk more than anything! haha! I know that’s bad but it’s kinda true! I hope everyone has a great week! Next week is the 1/8 mark of my mission so we have something to look forward to!

Love and miss you all family and friends!! (and milk)

Love,

Elder Sargent!