Jordan's Journey for Jesukristo: #Mother'sDayCalls

So this is a thing that happens twice a year. Yesterday I got to call my family. They are pretty cool people. If you don't know them, then you probably should. The two days missionaries can call home are Mother's day and Christmas. This means that we have quite a bit of time before the next call happens. It is a very interesting experience only being able to really talk to your family 4 times in the 2 years here. It was a good experience, and it always brings those feelings of how much you miss home and how much you want to be there. It leaves you feeling very strange afterward.

I got to see and talk to several different people yesterday. My mom and my Dad; My stepdad Craig; Lisa, my oldest sister, and her husband David; and Caroline, who needs no kind of introduction (amiritetho?). We had a bit of a hard time because of internet connection, but in the end I am very happy I had the chance to talk to them and to see them as well.

Mother's day is an interesting holiday here in the Philippines. It is not celebrated like in the US; it depends on the people and the family. Some families go all out and others have little to no celebration. All I know is that our neighbors celebrated and gave us cake. Our neighbors are chill. The Nanay (The older lady that lives there, and also our landlord) has been a member for a long time. Currently she has teenage girls that live with her. They are investigators of the other Elders (our roommates). It is really cool to see things like that happen. This also means that when they make a lot of food, or have extra cake, we reap the benefits.

The work is good. We are doing the work.

I felt like that last paragraph was needed. I don’t know why, but yeah. Elder Rasmussen is getting a lot better. The infection is pretty much gone. We had a really rough time last week. There was a decent amount of time where he couldn’t do work because it hurt too much.

Culture: Computer Shops. About every 30 feet, there is a computer shop. At these places you normally have around 10 – 30 computers all lined up. This is big in the culture because most people don’t have personal computers, but still have access to the internet. A lot of kids come into computer shops to play computer games and go on Facebook. Computer shops charge around 10 pesos an hour, unless it is a really nice one. That is around 20 cents for an hour of internet. We use the computer shops for emailing and the video calls to home.

Tagalesson: My family complained that I never include pronunciation in these things. Therefore, I will start trying to tell you how to pronounce all the words, even tho Google should do that for you. The best advice I have is to keep your mouth open and loose as much as you can when saying Tagalog words, it helps a lot. Most of the "A's" are pronounced with a longer sound. For example, in the word "Car" it is a longer A sound it is not cut off like in the word "Care". For example, you would say the word "tindahan" (the small stores around here) not with short "A" sounds it is like "Tin-Dah-Hahn" just like that – just like almost every a in the language. As long as you don’t let your mouth close too much, you wont mess it up.

Elder Santillian took selfies with my camera.