Fiesta on our street

This week we had a Fiesta. Now this isn’t a super rare occurrence in the Philippines – but it took place right on our street. There were about a million activities, that we did not participate in, but it was all very loud. People really like to give you food when there is a Fiesta. We got fed a decent amount.

       

Life is going pretty decent here. Transfer announcements just happened and not a single person got transferred out of my zone. That means Elder Rasmussen is going to be my companion for at least 6 more weeks. I think that is for the best. It is hard to progress in the language when the person you are speaking to also doesn’t know it fluently.     

I want to talk a little bit about one of our investigators. I haven’t really done that up until this point. We found this family (The Bello Family) while they were playing the song “7 years”. I started talking to them about music – I relate to people well through music. After talking to them for a good 20 minutes, we began to teach them. They seemed pretty solid. Later on we found out that they were very doubtful, but they let us come back because we told them it is their choice to continue learning and growing spiritually.

     

Oftentimes people don’t understand that we are here to help them based on the help that they want to receive; it really is dependent on the person’s ability to search for knowledge from God. We all need to be constantly searching and asking questions to enlarge our understanding. This is how God teaches us. Now, a couple weeks later, Sister Bello is excitedly reading all of the reading assignments that we leave with them, and they are eager to learn more. We challenged them to baptism and they said that as their knowledge grows they will happily keep that commitment. I am excited to see how they go and how they grow as a family. They have had many struggles and they have opened up to us a lot.     

Culture: Fiesta. When you have a fiesta, everyone knows that it exists but not everyone really knows the reason for it. In essence, it is just partying for the sake of partying. I love it! Fiestas happen every once in a while and often have to do with historical events – unless people decide they want to have one.

     

Tagalesson: Accent. Some parts of the language are hard, not because it is a difficult language, but it can be hard to constantly understand the Filipino accent. This can be a big problem when you think are saying something correctly, but people misunderstand based on your accent. With this we will cover the Ng sound. There are many words that have this "ng" in them. The most prominent in two words that don’t really have exact translations (They are linkers between words.). Those words are "Ng" and "Ang". Ng can mean "of", "a", "the", or several other words. “Ang” is the same deal but it cannot mean "of". Just sit on this knowledge for a week and I will get you more about these words next week.

         

I love you all keep up the good work, thank you all for the support that you have given me.

Elder Faulkner