Week 69 - 5/19/2014

Hello family! Not super eventful week, the CRAZY heat pretty much knocked me out for the week (as in a slept everyday) but no worries, it was still fun! And I'm always shocked at how much I learn and how much happens despite being sick. 

Highlights:

Gave a talk in sacrament meeting. Remember how my first area I gave like 500 talks? Turns out that isn't normal at all and I haven't given one in any of my other areas (except the typical "I'm new to your branch" testimony) So that was fun. Everyone was AMAZED at my waray-waray... which still confuses me cause I only have 2 months left! and I talk to them all the time... but then I realized the biggest thing they were amazed at was it was waray-waray and not Tagalog. Of course you think, duh! You have never spoken straight up Tagalog so it would never actually slip into your vocabulary. But then I remember how many Filipinos have served here and there are even a lot of Americans who were assigned in other Tagalog missions and came back speaking Tagalog. And sometimes they don't even do it on purpose because they don't quite realize it's not waray-waray because no one reacts because everyone can all understand Tagalog anyway. But for Cebuano, you say a word and you can tell by the look of your face they have no idea what you just said so you ask the waray word, and change because you need to. This just gave me a testimony of why they want us to really study each and every local dialect even though you could really teach the Philippines the gospel all in Tagalog (with VERY few exceptions) but it really reaches their hearts when you go out of your way to learn that dialect of that city even though it will be of no personal value to you ever again. They were seriously SO happy. 

Also, yesterday after church, we were waiting for the elders to come to start missionary coordination meeting and they were talking forever and there were a billion little kids running around in the chapel so we decided to play the piano to quiet them down and get them more reverent! It worked- the power or music and we ended up playing tons of hymns, me on the right hand, Sister Brown playing the left, me singing the soprano and her singing  the alto/tenor/bass (whichever one she felt in the mood for that verse) and it was so fun! It took some extreme companionship unity but the members heard us and were all gathered round loving it and were giving song requests. It was so great! I love being around people who love music and are WAY better at it than I am so we can have fun with it. I have been very blessed with that on my mission.

And that's about it... It's been so hot at night despite having 2 fans on us full blast, I woke up sweating the other day... disgusting. I've never been this hot my whole mission. But our room is like an oven so I'm looking forward to the end of summer (in a few weeks). If we didn't have fans, we would probably die. But that about covers it! I love you all! Thanks for your emails!

Love, 

Sister Pike

District Lunch - inside joke..

Sister Brown checking out the window every five seconds to see if Sister Aban has put out her delicious treats yet (what I talked about in skype - the fried bananas and ice candy, she just has a little store connected to her house. VERY common here.)  It was hilarious.

One of the days I was sick, we were in our p-day clothes all day then we had to put a skirt for planning so we just threw it on top of our p-day clothes ha!

I decided to exercise with Sister Brown one night, instead of in the morning - so great kay so nice and cool and rainy and we're on our roof and we were helping each other pinoy squat. They can sit like that all the time! It's so hard but they were raised doing it. It's been my mission goal.

Decorations for our barangy's (like subdivision) fiesta - flags and little bags of colored water - super creative!

An example of the dirtiest city in the mission with open gutters. There have been a few missionaries that accidentally stepped into one and it's not pretty...

Basically explains our week.. haha I'm knocked out and Sister Brown is doing her thing :)