Jordan's Journey for Jesukristo: Transfers and Training

A lot happened this week. The biggest thing is that transfers happened again. I am not moving out of Bocaue, but Elder Torres is. I am getting a new companion whose name is Elder Eccles. He is an American who is only about 6 weeks in the field. For all of you that don’t know: when a missionary arrives in the mission field there is a period of 2 transfers (or twelve weeks) where they are trained. In that time, it is very rare that they will have two different companions. Most of the time, they will have one trainer that stays with them for the entire 12 weeks. A trainer shows them how to be an effective missionary. However, Elder Eccles' normal training ended a little early and I will be taking over the rest of his training. This means that we will study missionary skills and the tools every day. My job will be to help better prepare him to be a missionary, but his last trainer was doing a pretty good job – so we shouldn’t have any problems.

Obviously working with someone who speaks very little of the language will put a lot of responsibility on me. Hopefully I will be able to do that. I am not too stressed right now, but we will see if that changes in the coming weeks.

As for the area and the ward – I think we are seeing good improvement in the attitude of the members; and we are able to see the success that comes from strengthening the ward. I am sad that Elder Torres will not be able to stay to see how it plays out because I am really excited for the coming weeks and what we will be able to accomplish with the members.

I really like my zone right now. One of my best friends in the mission is my Zone leader. It is really fun to work with him and make plans for different areas to see what we can accomplish in the mission. His name is Elder Nelson. We met in the MTC; he is my batch. We have the same way of thinking – oftentimes, we will have the same exact thoughts about specific things. It is really crazy to problem solve with him because our brains just become one and the thoughts flow super clearly. We come up with some really good ideas for the zone and what we need to do to help missionaries progress.

Culture: So houses in the Philippines are divided into two kinds of neighborhoods: Barangays and subdivisions. Barangays are where the poorer people live. These are houses that are extremely close together and the people do not have much going for them financially. A lot of the people live in very small houses that are found in alleyways. Some barangays are higherclass than others and some even have fairly normal classes but the norm is as explained above.

Subdivisions: these are the richer neighborhoods the houses are more spread apart, almost every house has a gate to it and the houses tend to be very expensive in these areas. These subdivisions are also varied in size and social classes. From the solid middle class up to the multi billionaires.

Tagalesson: Some good words to know: Baka, yata, and siguro.

All of these words mean "maybe" but are used in different ways.

Siguro: this is just standard "maybe" it can be used pretty much anywhere in the sentence and is useful. It can also stand alone as an answer to a question.

Baka: this only goes at the beginning of a sentence and it basically translates to "might" for example: "They might show up" = "Baka darating sila"

Yata: this mostly only goes in the middle or at the end and is like saying "I think so" for example

"He is over there, I think." = "Nang doon yata siya."

Now you know how to be completely unsure in Tagalog – which is good, because you probably aren’t fluent yet.

Welp I really got to head out now Thanks for reading.

Love Elder Faulkner

Pictures:

Our area is super flooded.