Pictures from the MTC:
I am glad to say
that missionary work lives up to its name. It is hard work, however I also get
to be a missionary and invite people to follow Christ. God has certainly
blessed me with a language that is like 10-25% English – depending on who you
are speaking to. This means a couple things for me:
1. Even tho I am 6
days in to the field I can share my thoughts pretty well, and people understand.
2. My talk given in
church on Sunday wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be.
3. I have to work
really hard to constantly speak in Tagalog because I know that people will
understand English and I know I can’t rely on it forever.
My first area is called Malolos. It is in the mountains very much outside
of the city. I am very grateful I didn't get assigned to the city my first
transfer because now I get a slower environment to teach in. Many people are
pretty receptive here. The area is beautiful with a ton of green all around. It
is, however, very hot. There isn’t a whole lot of shade. My trainer's name is
Elder Jucutan. He is Filipino and he knows the scriptures really well. He is
one of the most fluent English speaking Filipinos I know. It is easy to slip
into English, like I said earlier, and I have to be diligent in that aspect.
I got to meet my Mission president on Wednesday and he cares a lot about the
missionaries that he leads. We have a couple goals in our mission – which
include 55 lessons every week and baptizing people weekly. Obviously, we can’t
determine the number of people we baptize because it is their choice. But, I
think that those are realistic goals if I put in enough effort. I had my first
baptism this last Friday – my 3rd day in the field. Her name is
Sister Patricia and it is amazing to see the joy that she had that day, and
again on Sunday when she was confirmed. One thing that motivates us to get a
lot of lessons tho, is that people have fans. Really, we are either in the hot
sun all day or we are in peoples houses teaching with fans pointed at us –
which is a very nice change.
I also really like teaching people. It is a really cool experience:
bringing the restored gospel of Jesus Christ into peoples lives. This also
gives me motivation to talk to people; because Jesus loves them perfectly, and
as it says in Moroni 8:16 - “perfectlove casteth out all fear.”
Elder Jucutan says that there are 4 things I have to do to become a man. I won’t
list them here right now, but based on the place that I am in right now, I will
let you guess as to the nature of the things. The last thing on the list I have
to do is eat balut. I believe that that will probably happen pretty soon.
It was hard to teach the last couple days because we had curfews for New
Years. The amount of fireworks that went off at midnight was insane. I was sad
that it was so hard to teach people, because they were all preparing for New Years;
but I am optimistic that the coming weeks will be much better – and that we
will find many people to teach and talk to.
The Tagalesson for this week is on simple sentence structure. In English we generally go something like: Actor Verb Object Location For example "Steve reads the book to Alan." However in Tagalog, you normally order the sentence Verb Actor Object Location. This means in order to start your sentence, you have to figure out your conjugated verbs first. It usually comes out to something like "Read Steve the book to Alan" I say usually because, depending on the focus of the sentence, you can rearrange the sentence almost however you want – as long as you maintain the correct focusing words. You can even rearrange the sentence completely so that the location comes first if you really want. To do so, you put the word "Ay" between the focus of the sentence and the verb. So if you want to focus on the location, in this case "Alan" because the book is being read to him, you could say "Alan ay read Steve the book" and it translates a bit differently. Something to the effect of "Alan is being read the book by Steve." They do that all the time and it makes it really hard to follow along with what is going on, But I believe that I can do this.
The Tagalesson for this week is on simple sentence structure. In English we generally go something like: Actor Verb Object Location For example "Steve reads the book to Alan." However in Tagalog, you normally order the sentence Verb Actor Object Location. This means in order to start your sentence, you have to figure out your conjugated verbs first. It usually comes out to something like "Read Steve the book to Alan" I say usually because, depending on the focus of the sentence, you can rearrange the sentence almost however you want – as long as you maintain the correct focusing words. You can even rearrange the sentence completely so that the location comes first if you really want. To do so, you put the word "Ay" between the focus of the sentence and the verb. So if you want to focus on the location, in this case "Alan" because the book is being read to him, you could say "Alan ay read Steve the book" and it translates a bit differently. Something to the effect of "Alan is being read the book by Steve." They do that all the time and it makes it really hard to follow along with what is going on, But I believe that I can do this.
Christ Lives. Luke 24:5-6 seek Him among the living and you shall find. I love you all, I am having a great time out here and I know Christ changes people that come to Him. If things aren’t working in your life, take the approach of the person who has lived it all.
Love
Elder Faulkner
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