Our New President

I have been through a decent amount of new presidents in the last year. First my country elected Trump to lead; I left as soon as I could after that happened. When I arrived here, I discovered I had two presidents to deal with: President Duterte (the president of the Philippines) and the MTC president, President Trask. One of those is very strict and the other is not at all. When I entered the mission field, I met the person who would be my Mission President for the next 6 months. His name was President Bertin. Now that President Bertin’s time is up, I have a new president (as of 2 weeks ago) – President Hughes.

     

I am starting to think that none of these Presidents have first names.

          

Anyways, I have been through a lot of people that are expected to be my leader. They are here to teach us and lead us, that is what presidents do (hopefully). I had my first interview with President Hughes on Friday. He is a very insightful man who had a lot of things to say that were helpful in the work. I look forward to working with him. I don't, however, look forward to coming back to be led by the first president I mentioned at the top of this page.

     

Leadership is always an interesting thing. We often expect the leaders in our lives to do everything for us. We elect a president and hope that he deals with the debt problems, and the wars, and the welfare. Oftentimes our expectations are kind of ridiculous. I think what we miss in the expectations of our leaders is their need to be an example for us. If our leaders don’t even follow the rules, then we cant really expect them to be what they need to be as a leader to us.

      

Jesus was the best leader that ever lived because he discerned what people needed and helped them individually. The creator of the world obviously knows what needs to happen for the people that live in it. He knows people individually and I find that as leaders aim to teach and encourage people individually, their leadership skills change dramatically.

      

I don’t have a ton to say this week, my camera is still out of commission I am gonna maybe buy batteries for the other camera that I have over here and start using that. This last week we had a district activity: we went down to a mall and did bowling. We bowled at SM Fairview which is quite large. They have a dairy queen. I got to eat dairy queen. I have also not really gotten any better at bowling.

      

Culture: Voice: Don’t talk loud. All my life I have had a problem controlling the volume of my voice – even if I am talking to just one person. Don’t let your voice get too loud here. It makes it seem like you are very mad. The volume of your voice depicts how mad you are, it can sometimes depict other emotions like humor and what not. But in general, if you talk loud – you do not sound very nice here. It is something I have noticed. I am trying very hard right now to speak Tagalog quieter, especially with teaching. When teaching, you focus your words very carefully and deliver them quietly as you can so that they still hear you.

      

Tagalesson: Colors and numbers:

For colors, you can use almost anything to describe a color, as long as that thing is always the same color. Example: Kulay-Dagat "Color of the sea". They do this more than using the colors as they normally exist in Tagalog. Most of the time they will use the English color. The other times, they will use the word “kulay” (Color) then an object that is the color they want to describe.

     

Numbers I will not go through numbers in Tagalog because they are a pain and basically never get used. I will however explain shortly what language they use for which numbers.

1-19: Tagalog, English, Spanish

20,30,40,50: English and Spanish

20-50: English (sometimes Spanish but mostly English)

51+: English, with few exceptions

Welp now (assuming you know Spanish numbers) you can pretty much say any number that you want.

This week was pretty good.

Love,

Elder Faulkner