So last Thursday night, we Skyped with another member who lives in the Philippines. He is actually a call-center employee, and speaks English for 8 hours every day. We spoke to him in Tagalog and he was super nice. His wife was also Skyping with some other missionaries that we know who are speaking Cebuano.
On Friday we had In-Field Orientation, which was basically an all-day event where we talked a lot about how it will be in the field, and how to work with members. It was alright. The people running it told some pretty funny stories about their missions.
On Saturday we practiced teaching in class with each other, and our teacher told us to first do it in English, and then Tagalog. It was actually really weird to teach in English. I didn't like it. I'm much more comfortable teaching in Tagalog now than English, which is cool. Then we did something that I wish we could've done more often. Brother Spencer just sat down and told us a funny story from his mission when he got dehydrated and was really sore. He spoke really fast and added in a Filipino accent, and after he was done, we had to summarize as much of it as we could.
For district meeting on Sunday, President and Sister Howard told us how to survive in the Philippines. They showed us a bunch of pictures of all our missions and San Pablo looks beautiful. For the devotional we got to hear Richard Heaton, the administrative director of the MTC, speak about the Holy Ghost. After that we watched a movie about John Tanner, a pioneer of the early Church, and then Music and the Spoken Word. I also read all of Matthew on Sunday
On Monday, we taught each of our "investigators" for the last time. Our lesson with "Francisco" went pretty well. Our lesson with "Delony" just had such a strong spirit. Afterward, Sister Brock came up to us and said that our lesson was beautiful and we didn't just teach "Delony," but we actually helped the real Sister Brock come closer to Christ. She told Elder Solis and I that we are definitely ready for the field. That was so awesome to hear. We also had Chik-fil-a for dinner. It was amazing, as usual.
On Tuesday, we cleaned bathrooms for service again. We then got haircuts, and printed off talks for the plane. Brother Spencer helped us with a bunch of little language things for our last class, and we also watched the "Because of Him" video. That video is awesome for me every time. We sang a good arrangement of "I Feel My Savior's Love" for choir. The speaker for the devotional was W. Christopher Waddell of the presiding bishopric. He had us read Matthew 25 before the devotional so we would be ready for his talk. He related every single one of the parables (the ten virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats) to missionary work. It was pretty incredible. I was excited because I loved his talk from General Conference.
Right now we're doing laundry, and then we get to go to the Philippines today!
Nagpapasalamat ako para kay Jesucristo at sa pagbabayad-sala Niya para sa atin. Mamumuhay tayo na muli dahil sa Kanya. https://www.lds.org/
--
Elder Justin Farish
Philippines San Pablo Mission
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