Short Update and pictures

Real Good Food
This week has been pretty good. we have had a lot of good food. on
monday we went to a FHE and they had Real CAKE! haha it was really
good. we have also been making better food. we eat a lot of chicken
now. this morning we were also invited along with our whole zone to a
members house for lunch. She had so much food! it was super good too.
we had Sprite Float. it had sliced oranges, sprite, and vanila ice
cream in it.

Better Late Than Never
not too much has happened this week. because of all the
christmas activities and celebrations going on it has made it kind of
hard to teach our investigators because they are always gone. This
week our ward had a Christmas party. we invited alot of our
investigators to come. It was supposed to start at 3 on saturday. and
we had a lot of investigators there at 3:30 but almost none of the
members showed up until 5. ugh! haha the bishop tried to come up with
games to pass the time but all of our investigators were super board.
the Christmas party was actually really good when it got started. The
Single Adults, young women, primary, and Missionaries in our ward all
presented a dance or skit. haha for our skit we acted our the song.
Hardest thing Ive ever done. It is about missionaries. we only
practiced once so it was kind of bad!

Jake's Bathroom

here is a coconut we got. Elder Payne used his Machete to cut it open.
we made a shake out of it later. Haha

Fields

My trainer with a trainer

Ward Christmas Party

 

Short Update

Christmas Concert and Zone Conference
Anyway this week we had our Christmas Concert. All the missionaries in
the whole mission came to Laoag for a day. haha some missionaries had
to travel 6 hours on a bus to get to and from the conference. man i am
so glad that i am already in laoag. we had a ton of missionaries stay
in our apartment during the conference so it was always hectic and
hard to get ready in the morning. for the Conference we went to a
college with a huge field and we played sports(capture the flag,
rugby, ultimate frisbee, soccer, and basketball) I only played rugby
and ultimate frisbee. It was super fun but also super hot. After we
went back to the stake center in Laoag and all the zones did thier
skits and dances. haha it was pretty funny. 
 

Pictures

Everything surrounded in the green Highligter is our area. pobacion is
the City part of Laoag.

 

these kids came to our apartment and sang us christmas songs so Elder
Payne gave them little stuffed animals! haha

These are all the elders in our Zone

picture of our road

us walking through a jungle! haha just kidding i just took the picture
so it looked that way. haha

these are all the sisters in our Zone+ our dance teacher! haha

Life in the Phillipines

Reaching Goals By Faith and Works
This week was pretty good. We worked really hard because we set a goal
to teach 32 lessons this week. It is the standard that our mission
president has set for our mission. it is hard to get but we talked to
everyone we saw and we got our goal. we also got 33 new investigators
this week because most of our proselyting hours this week we just went
finding. this next week we are going to go back and try to teach all
the people we found this last week. hopefully they are all still
interested. haha.
The Philippines Through Elder Hickey's Eyes
The Philippines is actually exactly what i thought mexico or some
other poor latin america country would be like. I love talking to
people and seeing them progress and become closer to our savior. The
toughest thing about being a missionary here is just that so many
people don't follow our commitments. We have a Investigator (Janine
Maximo) who has a baptismal date on the 28 but she hardly ever comes
to church. All of our investigators are like that. we have 9 with
baptismal dates but none are going to be ready for their dates because
they don't follow through with the commitments we give them.
especially coming to church. Oh man there are so many things that i
realized that we have that many other people don't clean water, clean
environments, and we don't need to worry too much about the
cleanliness of our food in america, another big thing is health. So
many people here are sick, We see usually two crazy people, two or
three people with huge growths on their bodies, and maybe one person
missing a limb. usually a day. Everyone is too poor to get medical
treatment. I don't think they really have many traditions. they just
get to gether with thier families and set off fireworks.yeah we are
having a ward Chrismas party supposedly either me or my companion is
supposed to be santa! haha That might be bawal but i dont know. The
best thing that happened this week was that we had a inactive family
in our area come to church! we have been teaching them a lot. the
worst thing that happened this week is that we found out that one of
our investigators with a baptismal date basically can't get baptized.
because she is a live in ( people who don't get married but live
together.) and she cant get married because her " husband" is married
to someone else. and here in the Philippines it is next to impossible
to get divorced. It would be great if she just left the guy, but they
have lived together for five years, they just built a new house, and
they have a kid. Hopefully she will but it is going to be very hard
for her if she does.
A Priesthood Blessing Miracle
oh yeah! almost forgot. we had a really cool experience this week. We
were teaching Janine Maximo and her Grandma was their. And she was
really sick. So we offered to give her a blessing. She seemed really
happy that we asked. So we gaver her one. A couple days later we came
back and Taught Janine Maximo again and she told us that her lola
(grandma) felt completely better that night after we left.

Life in the Phillipines and Some Pictures

Sick Companion
Well this week was pretty good. My companion was still sick for a
couple days. Our mission president took us to the hospital to check if
he had Denge Fever, but we never went back to get the results so we don't
know. He is better now so we have been able to get out more this week.
I also went on splits with our district leader. I was with E. Bertiz
he is a really cool guy from the Philippines and he is super
short,  it was fun. 

Church

Church is good I don't have any callings/responsibilities. I spoke the first week I got here but it
was really just my testimony. It is very loud because the
parents don't control/take out their kids when they are crying or
screaming, but it is still good.

Thanksgiving and Teaching

My who zone went to KFC for
thanksgiving but everyone didn't have much money so we didn't eat
too much. We are teaching the same people but we also
did a lot of finding.  Dana Bona and Janine Maximo are
probably the ones who are progressing the most. It is frustrating though
because Dana's "Live in" is holding her back so much! For one, they
aren't married and he doesn't want her to go to church. ugh, men here
are so dumb sometimes, all they do is work, drink, and smoke.. But
Janine came to church this Sunday It was awesome because it is so
hard to get people to come to church 

Life in the Philippines

There is no hot water in our apartment,  we have a
bucket in our bathroom with water in it that we dump on ourselves when
we shower. Laundry takes so long! It seems like we are always
running out of clothes so sometimes we have to wash enough clothes for
the next day at night before we go to bed. 

 

Adjusting to the Phillipines

Hot!
This week was good.  It is soo hot here.  It is hot even at night, we sleep with our door open and our fans on full blast! and Im still hot! haha but its alright I think I am getting used to it.

Companion
My companion has been super sick for most of last week
so we stayed at our apartment more.
Language
Not knowing the language is the hardest thing right now becuase if
anyone speaks super fast (so all the Philippinos do) It is so
hard to understand and respond. Teaching is good.  I usually teach some of the lesson.  Most of the time I do not understand what they are exactly saying, but I usually get a gist of what is said.

Weird Foods
I ate at some member's houses this week and ate some interesting foods.We had a wierd Illicano desert where you dipped sour mango
slices into a spicy vinegar.  We ate frog at our Ward Missionaries
house. It looked kind of gross but it was actually really good.haha
they also have a desert called halohalo wich is basically ice cream
with anything they feel like putting in it (beans, bananas, funny gummy balls, and noodles). It tastes ok,  but  I dont like it because there are too many textures.

Our Blessed Lives
I was thinking a lot about how blessed we are this week-
how lucky we are that we live in America. Everyone here looks at
America like the richest place on earth and in many ways it is. In
America it is so easy to get by, here people literaly live day to day
on very little money. It is so sad! There are so many people who have
almost nothing and its all they have ever known.
Shopping
To answer your question.  We usually shop at a super market which is like Walmart.  Yes they have McDonalds and Seven eleven but that is it for American fast food.  Mostly they have a lot of local food chains. 

Missionary Fun
For Christmas all the missionaries in our mission are coming to Laoag
for a conference. Every zone needs to prepare a folk dance and a
skit! Our dance is really funny because it is really girly so
all the elders look so funny when they do it. It is called something
like the "graceful duck" or something haha! Our Zone practiced on
Monday and after we all took a jeepnee to some sanddunes that are
close to the sea and we sandboarded haha! it was super fun

Laoag, Tricies, and Sand Dunes

 

Second Interview With Elder Hickey

Hey Everyone! its good to hear that you are all doing well. here are
some answers to your questions.

So what do you normally eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
We usualy eat rice or noodles with ulam (anything you put on the
rice or noodles) sometimes we make curry, put hotdogs on the rice,
sometimes chicken, etc.
Do you know any Flipino missionaries who have family or
friends affected by the typhoon?
no there is a philippino missionary in our apartment but i dont think
he knows anyone that far south.

Have any missionaries from affected missions been transferred to your mission.
nope not that i know of.

What’s your daily schedule like?
Well we usually study from 8-1 then we proselyte or teach from 1-8.

What do you spend most of your time doing?
We usually spend most of our time trying to find our investigators
with baptismal dates. It stinks because everyone is so hard to
find. The sisters who were in our area before us didn't really write
down exactly where everyone lives.

What’s your companion like?
He is super patient. He is also really funny i like him.

How is your health?
I am doing really good i haven't gotten sick yet.but on monday everyone in our apartment ate balut and my companion was sick all the
next day, so we stayed in the apartment the whole day.

Is the Tagalog there similar to what you learned in the MTC?
yeah but they speak really fast, and they all have accents. so
sometimes its hard to hear or understand them.

How big is your area?
It is really big actually we have some areas in the city and a lot of
bukid (farm) areas. Our area goes out to the sea but we havent been to

that part of our area yet because it is so expensive to get to. Our
mission president told us to go out to that area only once a month.

What have you done since you have been there - contacting, member
work, less-active work, service, etc.? 

We havent done any service yet,but we are going to. we have been doing a lot of contacting, and
finding investigators.

What do you like most about the Phillipines and the people there?

Everyone is sooo nice! It is so wierd because we will walk up to a
group of rough and tough looking men and start talking to them and
they are super polite. People here will never tell us that they dont
want to hear our message they will just listen to be polite.

Another thing that is kind of funny about the Philippines is that they
really like Americans. It is wierd they all want light skin like us.
The mothers love us and try to feed us all the time  Also they
will often call us Joe because of GI Joe's and aparently they think it
is the most common American name haha.