Pwede Po Bang Magsalita Sa Ingles?

The above statement pretty much summarizes my life over the last 6 days. If you haven't caught on it means "Can I speak English?" we are encouraged to ask that any time before we speak English and let me tell you that can be frustrating. 

           

I have learned a ton in the last few days. I have learned that I have to rely on God. There is no other way around that. I fasted the other day with my companion Elder Stephens. We were miserable all day, but we figured we would be blessed with greater understanding of the language and a better ability to communicate... Boy were we wrong! Instead, we learned a lot about how much we can do without God helping us out – which is basically zero. We have a recurring roleplay investigator, which basically means that every day we go into a room with someone who we have to teach. We can’t use English (they pretend to not understand us when we speak it) and we have to teach to the best of our ability. Usually this doesn't go so bad but the day we fasted was the day we received the lesson that it isn't US teaching at all. We just sat there in the room with blank looks on our faces. We got out of there after lots of quiet moments and not a whole lot said. We were humbled. Normally, our lessons with Sister Ruth (our roleplay investigator) go kinda well. But that one most certainly did not.

       

I have been called as district leader which means I have a few more responsibilities than I had previously expected.

There is actually a lot to say now that I think of it.

I speak an absolute ton of “taglish” (Tagalog/English). But every word in Tagalog is like twice as hard as its English counterpart. Our favorite example is “faith.” In Tagalog is "Pananampalataya" < You can now understand my struggles. 

       

I've had some good spiritual lessons here. We got to go to the temple today (luckily for me the service was in English). The first day I accidentally offered to take over a role play in front of our entire batch. My companion had to join me and he was ... ecstatic (but ya know not really).

     

I am appalled by the amount I still have to learn, but I am also impressed by what I have already learned through the help of God. I have learned to pray in Tagalog and most of my nightly prayers are not in English anymore, I can also tell what I know to be true for somethings.

Grammar is hard in this language.

I hope everyone is doing well, if you want a personal email then email me personally. Make sure to also send me any emails that I might not have so that everyone hears my crazy ramblings each week.

I love you all keep up the good work.

Elder Faulkner