Nagpasalamat ko kaninyo para sa mga dearelder ninyo!! Thank you so much for writing me this week! The mail room was closed on Monday and I thought I was going to miss the chance to reply to you all! I just barely got them in time. I apologize to you Mom, last week I didn't recieve your letter until after I had emailed everyone, so I waited until later today. If you send me the letters on Sunday, that should be enough time for me to get them. Feel free to send me little updates throughout the week as well. I LOVE getting paper mail, and I only have 6 weeks left of it! I'm just going to send this to you Mom, and can you make sure everyone else gets it? Thank you!
So this week was was a pretty crazy one, lots of cool things happened. We had an amazing 4th of July devotional, where we sang patriotic songs to celebrate our great God-given Nation (even yankee doodle) then some amazing speakers, and then, out of nowhere, we heard bagpipes, and a band marched in playing hymns followed by all the mission flags. I got some pictures, which I'll send. They aren't the best but they show a little bit. Then came the best part, the president stood up and told us that they were lifting the curfew for the night so we could stay up and watch the fireworks for the stadium of fire from the MTC lawn! It was pretty cool.
I also got to bear my testimony to everyone this past Sunday in Cebauno and it was really neat. Only 14 out of 2500 people understood me, but I loved it nonetheless. I'm truly loving my language and I am so grateful to the Lord for His help in my studies.
They other Cebuano district his heading off to Tacloban this Monday, which we are all very jealous about. I want to go so bad! This also means that the old Zone Leaders got released, and new ones got called. Elder Taracena and I are now the new ZLs and it has been crazy already. Being a zone leader means absolutely no free time on Sunday's, and much less throughout the week. This is interesting because Elder Taracena and I had been kind of at each other's throats for a bit, and he needed all the study time he could get because he was struggling in the language. But as soon as we called assigned to be Zone Leaders, he began picking up the language even without added study time, and we have been getting along great. We are really bonding over our service and I'm loving it.
I am recovering from a little cold right now that just about took me out yesterday. It's looking like a 48 hour bug though and I'm hoping I'll be better by tomorrow. All things said, this was a pretty great week. Time seems to be speeding up, and I'm getting along with everyone. I'm also seeing tons of familiar faces every day. So far I've met Calvin Fairbairn, 2 people from EFY, Connor Larson from AZ, Jeff (Holly Harris' Cousin), and a Sister from my mission prep class in VA! I also get random people who call out to me as I'm walking around, who I don't remember, and I talk to them until they're satisfied and leave. It's always quite interesting as I try to answer all their questions and comments about "back home" when I have no idea where "home" was. But it's pretty fun all the same.
One last thing I learned last week before I go. I asked my teacher how to say "pet" sa Cebuano, because I was thinking about CJ, and he said they didn't have a word for pet. Any animal the Philippinos own is considered food, so they don't raise dogs as pets, they raise them as livestalk. Pretty cool huh?
Nahigugma ko kaninyo!
Love,
Elder Garver
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