Welcome to the Philippines 8/24/2011

I'm guessing this is where Andrew lives.  He doesn't label things yet. :)

Elder Garver, pondering his new surroundings.

The kitchen?

Christine, who was baptized on Andrew's first day there, with the branch members.

The beautiful landscape

First Week!

So my life so far is pretty much right out of The Best Two Years.  1.  This is NOT the language they taught me in the MTC  2.  We teach maybe 1 lesson a day, and maybe get a contact or two.  The latter isn't so much my companions fault though.  I don't think.  I have been assigned to the PIlar, Bohol Mission.  We are the most secluded area in my whole mission.  It is a 2 hour bus ride anytime we need to buy anything besides basic food staples, and at least an hour walk to the nearest investigator (of which we have a total of 1) and any tracting we can possibly do is a 30 minute bus ride each way, so we have no time at all for anything here.  I admit that because of all this, this week has been extremely difficult for me, especially when combined with the huge culture shock.  I see some hope though.  I'm working with my companion (a Philipino, Elder Santia) to teach him to plan better so we can use all of the little time we have effectively, and I just sent a letter to the President petitioning him for bikes.  Pray for me will you?  We had a zone conference this morning which was amazing.  I really felt the inspiration flowing and it gave me tons more hope for myself.  The language is crazy difficult here, but I think it is slowly coming along.  I can understand now about 1% of what is going on!  Maybe.  But yeah, those are my feelings so far.

Oh!  I got to baptize a little 9 year old girl my 1st day here!  It was pretty neat!  Her name is Cristine Dela Pena Orapa.  I love the kids here so much.

As to the actual place,  It's so different!  It is very pretty though.  I'll try to figure out how to upload pictures.    I don't know if I'm ever going to get used to cold bucket showers, and I'm very quickly growing tired of rice.  But no worries!  I hear my cheeks are going to be super chubby when I get back because of the rice, I'm scared...

1 quick funny story this week.  My companion starts freaking out one night because we forgot someone at the church.  From what I could gather from his broken english, we had forgotten someone named Manwell at the church and had locked him inside the gates.  So we ran over there at 9:30 at night, unlocked the gates, and ran in to get him.  He wasn't there, but a Gospel Doctrines MANUAL was.  They call it a manwel here.  Sheesh.

One more thing!  I need you to send me something!  Remember how Dad told me I didn't need a power converter that changes the Voltage?  Well I do.  Otherwise my ipod and shaver will explode.  can you see if you can send me that other one from walmart that limits the amount of voltage?  Thanks!  IMPORTANT: you need to send it in a priority mail, international envelope!  Otherwise it will go through customs and I will be forced to pay around $100 to pick it up.  The envelope should be about 15 bucks.  Thanks!

I love you all so much!  Thanks so much for everything.  Hopefully I'll have tons of good news next week!

Love,
Elder Garver

I made it!!!!!

I made it!  It's freaking awesome here!!!  I'm so, so excited to begin proselyting.  Plane trips were great, Cebu is crazy, I'm passing out.

 

P-day is Wednesday!  I'll email you then with a bunch of pictures!

 

Good nightishmorningthing...

 

Love,

Elder Garver

Almost There!

Well I made it through my long flight!  I'm in Hong Kong now, and it's pretty crazy here.  We don't have any yen so we can't buy anything to eat, but luckily they fed us very well on the plane.  I slept for like 10 hours on the flight but I'm still exhausted. It's only 8am here!  We are sitting next to some Philippinos here while we wait for our flight to get in, and I can understand a tiny bit of what they are saying!  It's awesome!  But I now feel a lot less confident in my language...  But it's still awesome!  So yeah, my flight was not bad at all, I didn't even watch any movies, even though they had Thor, Kung Fu Panda 2, and a bunch of others.  Just 3 hours more and I'll be in the Philippines!  I love you all!

 

Elder Garver

1 Week!!!!

1 Week!!! I assume you haven´t gotten my letter home yet since there are many questions answered in them that you asked.  But anyway.  I got my flight plans!!!  It´s all real now!  I´m actually going to be on a plane in just 7 days heading to the Philippines.  I´m so excited!  I´ll be leaving the MTC around 4:30pm on Tue.  The 16th.  My flight from SLC leaves at 8:30pm  I'm going to buy a calling card from the book store tomorrow so I can give you a call.  Expect my call inbetween 6 and 7 (Mtn. Time).  If you want I can also call you again from San Francisco.  I have a 4 hour layover there before flying to Hong Kong, but that would probably be around 1am your time, so i understand if you want sleep!  But if I , for some reason can't call at SLC, I'm waking you up around 1 whether you like it or not.  I'll keep it short if you need me to though.

 

Sadly, visiters at the airport are prohibited.  Nuna, and Papa, I love you, but unfortunately I have to be left alone at the airport.

 

So yeah!  Exciting times here at the MTC!  I've learned so much here but it's now time for me to get on with my mission life, and start applying what I know, and learning so much more in the field.  I hope Dad is right, and I don't get too sick right away when I get to Cebu.  I'm definitely going to be culture shocked though.  The USA is all I've ever really known.  I don't think they could possibly prepare us enough here, for there.  I'm just going to roll with the punches when I get there, and soak it all up.  I'm so excited, I'm phlipping out! <-- pretty funny huh?  I just thought of that.  All by myself!  Yeah, I need to get out of here...

 

Basta...  Thank you all for all your support and love while i've been here.  I have literally been living the same day over and over again for 56 days, and your letters and packages have been what's thrown a wrench in the cycle and made me realize that time exists.  Thank you for helping me survive the MTC!  I love you all and I can't wait to tell you all about the Philippines soon!

 

Nahigugma ko kaninyo!

 

Gugma,

Elder Garver

 

P.S. Family, tell Scott I mailed him back with the address that was on his dear elder.  He should just start to email me now.  Thanks!

Wooo Hoooo! Good News Inside!

I got my FLIGHT PLANS!!  Woo hoo!!!  I'm actually leaving for the field soon!  I leave on the 16th, at 8:15 p.m. and arrive in Cebu at 11:30 a.m. on the 18th.  :)  So be ready for my phone call before 8:15 p.m. on the 16th, hopefully around 6:00 p.m.  I'm excited to talk to you! Excited kaayo ko!  I don't know if this, or my email will reach you first, but I had to let you know ASAP.

Also...an update:  Apparently, my companion here has a mental disorder.  He first isolates those close to him (me), and then turns those close to me against me through insults and degrading comments.  This explains a lot.  I have now received a new companion, Elder Fluckiger, the very tall elder in my district.  Elder Taracena is receiving psych evaluations and people are trying to get him the help he needs.  I received a blessing from my district president a couple days ago and my life here has totally turned around.  I'm happy all the time, and I have no more worries.  With Elder Terecena somewhat out of things, my district all likes me again!  We laugh and joke and have fun.  They still don't study language much, and we still have different opinions on things, but we are all friends now!  Two days ago, the elders in my zone told me they noticed that I was smiling a lot more lately, and they liked it.  A sister missionary told me I looked "guapo" when I smiled and I should keep it up.  Everyone says I'll still be "their zone leader" and I feel super loved.  I love it here now!  I'm still super excited to go, but now I can enjoy the last two weeks here too.

I love you all so much!  I can't wait to TALK to you on the 16th!

Love,
Elder Garver

Almost There!

Hey everyone!

 

Not too much to say this week.  I'm ready to leave for the field.  I've been trying super hard to SYL all the time still but it's become super difficult.  We got the new Cebuano districts in this week, and they are really cool, but it made everyone in my district completely forget about speaking cebuano, myself included.  But it's really hard to start again because nobody else is doing it.  Ok.  Right now.  Wala'y Engles.  So yeah, things are alright.  I don't know if I mentioned this last week, but we had an Elder get sent home, so that has had a weird effect on our district as well.  Appearantly there were things that hadn't been taken care of before he came so he needed to go home and fix whatever it was.

 

On a happier note, I got a letter from Elder Parker this week, which was awesome!  I thought he had forgotten about me with all the Lord's work he was doing.  So it was great to hear from him.  And as always, I really appreciate all your mail.  I really love it.

 

Dad, I don't know how much I need.  Nobody told me exactly how much I needed for customs, they just told me to be prepared to pay.  Just put whatever you think I'll need and then send me a DearElder with how much I have on it so I can know.  Thank you a whole lot!  Also with the tie thing last time,  I asked again, and my ties will last me a while in the Philippines so that's good.  They will get ruined after a while but I can buy new ones for cheap when I need to.

 

I don't know if you can tell, but I am really, really ready to get to the field.  13 days left!  But who's counting?

 

Love,

Elder Garver