Week 68 - 5/12/2014

Hello family! I just skyped (google chat to be politically correct) you! whoo! So fun. This week was a blast. Looking back, there was nothing in particular that was super great but I guess the most significant thing is that we made it great! So to start, last week after emailing, we had a zone activity at the beach! It was like the prettiest beach ever! If I ever come back ever again, that's where I'm headed. And we played volleyball, football, took jumping pictures, you know, the normal stuff. And that night we had an FHE (family home evening) at a member's house and the elders brought their investigators and we just had a blast. They get really into their FHE games... don't worry I'm writing them all done to play when we get home. My favorite thing about their games is the penalty if you lose, you have to do a talent! So Sister Brown and I got 3 strikes each so we did slide (the hand game that kids do) and they LOVED it! I've never thought to do that as a talent before, but it was perfect. We were told transfer announcements would be late this week but we were shocked when Sister Vea got the call Tuesday to transfer and train! It was pretty sad, especially at this point at my mission because I never know if I'll see these people ever again! And then we found out me and Sister Brown are staying!!! So fun. So before Sister Vea left, I got a recording of them singing some Tongan hymns, so beautiful! Basically my life goal to memorize those. Then we found out on Thursday Sister Pettijohn is new companions with Sister Clarin! (in our apartment) I lived with her in Balaquid! (my last area) So fun. 

And this will be a shock to all familiar to missionary work, probably the highlight of my week was weekly planning! We do it every week so it really shouldn't be too exciting but because Sister Brown and I stayed together, we sat down and made some pretty awesome transfer goals. Some fun, some necessary, it's been so great. 

1. Find a professional family that will be a blessing to our branch

2. Find a place to hard bind our PMG- it's basically a necessity as a missionary in the Philippines

3. English fast- that's right, she joined. I'm so excited! It's been going pretty well! Not quite 100% yet, but working on it

4. Exercise daily

5. Find more service opportunities

6. Read from PMG daily in comp. study- sometimes we run out of time...

7. Find best halo-halo in Catbalogan

8. Learn and cook more variety of meals- I want to be a master at pinoy food

9. Clean daily- that will be easier now that we have the rat problem fixed :)

10. This is my favorite and been the most fun thus far--> do something fun every day and take a picture. Basically it's our goal to remember to take pictures of the little fun things we do like spaghetti Sundays, dying in front of the fans for planning every night, splurging on Hershey’s candy bars to celebrate our 2nd transfer together-- that's right, they're expensive and fancy!, having the other sister's buy us Jollibee (the only fast food here) because we haven't gone outside all day cause I've been sick. So that explains those pictures this week...Take joy in the little things. So get ready for a more day-to-day look into the life of a bunch of goofy sister missionaries :)

Hope you all have a great week! I love you!

Sister Pike

Week 62 - 3/31/2014

Big news!!  Transferred, my first comp and probably to my last area!  Catbalogan 2nd branch, on Samar just a few hours away from my first area in Catarman and I'm back to waray-waray but now to the H version of the dialect.  Basically, a dream come true!  I loved waray and from being in Cebuano for over 7 months I had forgot it and it made me really sad that I couldn't even speak it anymore and what do you know, the gift of tongues is so real that within about 2 days, I was able to switch over most of my talking to a language I spoke so long ago and even had to change it.  And the best part of about it is...Sister Brown is my companion!!!!!  We are only the best of friends, survived the typhoon together, were in the same zone in Cebu mission and now we're COMPANIONS.  We literally have spent more time together on our missions than apart!  Super fun.  At least 5 times every day we say, "Hey guess what?  WE'RE COMPANIONS!”  She is probably the happiest person in the world and so fun to be around.  She's from Idaho and is the greatest singer ever.  I love being with great singers because they make me sound so much better!  We sang a musical number in branch conference and then in the choir and President and Sister Andaya and their family so it was really fun to get to know them.  They have 4 kids- the oldest 19, and the youngest 10 and they are so fun to talk to!  And the branch is so great.  Actually reminds me a lot of my first area because it's waray, the city is pretty similar, actually bigger and it's summer and hot season!!  Our house is so hot, I slept without a sheet for the first time in forever.  This morning we went on a really cool hike to a place you can see the whole city and it's so beautiful here!  It's known as one of the dirtiest cities in the mission but I love it so much already.  I don't have much time, I'll try to update more next week.  It's interesting because this area was not touched at all by the typhoon so apparently they didn't experience the humbling that other parts did but I'm still so happy to be here.  I love this work!  And I love all of you!  Thank you so much for your support!

Love, Sister Pike

Week 61 - 3/24/2014

Maayong Hapon Pamilya! 

I'm in Naval! And I'm actually working here! And transfers are this Thursday and I have a feeling I might transfer because I have technically been assigned here for 3...but only have worked here for 1 month. How crazy is that?!? It's nut's. Transfers are pretty different here from Cebu and other missions because you literally don't know ANYTHING until you are on your way! Where you're going, who your companion is, what language you're speaking... Even your companion you left behind has no idea, kinda crazy, but makes life interesting! So we'll be awaiting that call. But I'm ALWAYS wrong when it comes to transfers so who knows what will happen! But this week was excellent because we got to teach some less actives and they all came to church!! Success! So even though we had no investigators at church, that totally made up for it. And cool story, we went to this new place that I've never been to before in search of some referrals. One thing I LOVE about the Philippines is they know all their neighbors and if you ask them if they know them or where they live, they will drop everything to help you! Even go with you sometimes. There is no way we would find ANYONE if we didn't have other's help. But the cool thing was on our search for the referral (Golin family) we were pointed to their house. So we talked to them and they were supposed "golden investigators" that were dropped for reasons that we have no idea but as we were talking, we learned they weren't the Golin's we thought BUT they had been taught by the missionaries before and really wanted us to come back. And then we found the real Golin family and it was like the saddest thing ever because a husband and wife were all ready to be baptized but the husband dropped out at the last second because his word of wisdom problem. He had stopped for a month but he thought it was pointless because he just couldn't avoid it and the worst part was, he had no desire to stop, "It just not my time yet to stop. Someday I'll return, I can't give it up yet." It broke my heart! Especially since his wife backed out too only because he did. And we can't visit his wife because she works at the market all day, every day- that's another hard thing here is there are literally people who would be so good but literally cannot be taught ever. No days off or anything. But she's having a baby next month so maybe we can come back then. And then we went and taught the fake Golin family and they were amazing! Even all their kids were all involved and we had a great lesson. We would have never found them if we hadn't been looking for the real Golin family! Even though they didn't work out, it is definitely no coincidence:) And on Sunday too we made a whole lesson plan, but we ended up staying late for a meeting at church and it was too late to go where we had been planning so we decided to go to a DIFFERENT Golin family that lived in a way different part that was a referral given even before the storm that we never got to go back to. I promise Golin isn't a common name, it's just an incredibly small world. We taught them and they had 2 visitors that were not from there and they ended up being way more interested in the original referral! And one man asked us when our church was, told us he would visit and wanted us to teach his family. What?! That never happens. And once again, we wouldn't have found THOSE people if we hadn't taught the original people we were looking for. And they just happened to be there the day we visited. No coincidence! It's so cool when you do something led by the spirit, but you don't even know until you look back! I love being a missionary! And we've been praying in Tagalog all week, still super slow- I feel like a new missionary again! but coming slowly but surely. Words are even starting to replace my Cebuano which is so bizarre and the weirdest thing is we read the Book of Mormon in Tagalog to learn then we compare it to the Cebuano so we can learn what the words actually mean and it's like a relief when we can read it in Cebuano and actually understand it all! so nindot. It's actually 100x easier to learn Tagalog from Cebuano/Waray then from English- pretty crazy how that works:) I hope you all have a great week!

Love, Sister Pike