Jordan's Journey for Jesukristo: Senior Companion District Leader

So Elder Rasputtensen, my companion, is our district leader. This means when we have problems in our district (5 companionships) people look to him to be an example and make decisions. I would always use this as an excuse that when I didn’t know what we should do in the work (For example I didn’t know who we should visit next and I didn’t want to decide) I would look at him and say, "Lead the way Senior companion, District leader." He wouldn’t always be too happy with that when I did that, but that was a joke that went between us a lot.

I think the karma fairy has paid a visit to Sapang Palay, because I just got called to be the district leader in Sapang Palay! I will be taking his spot tomorrow and continuing his legacy. Elder Rasmusen did not always want to be district leader, but he did his job. I have learned that it will probably be very stressful. The district leaders job is to empower the district to work to their full potential and give them someone that they can report problems too so the work continues on. I will also be interviewing baptismal candidates. That will be a very interesting thing that I will have to do.

With Elder Ranemosis leaving forever, I will have a new companion, his name is Elder Tagal. He was in my zone back in Malolos. I have worked with him a few times before and I think that we will get along quite well. He will be the hardest out of all my companions to communicate with – as he is not very fluent in English. This will help me progress in the Language and hopefully help him to learn a lot of English as well. I look forward to working with him in this area.

Elder Rashmussen will be transferring to Novaliches. He is pretty excited to get out of here. Missionaries tend to get really sick of an area after not too long – as we are so used to moving around. Elder Rsmsn has been here for around 6 months and that is a pretty long time in one area. He is ready to be somewhere else.

I am excited to see where the area goes in the future I am going to try to influence the people in my district to do good things and to always remember the purpose of helping their brothers and sisters in the Philippines. When we understand our divine potential and the relationship we have with others we become much better at teaching and have a greater desire to keep people going in the work; we also become more motivated ourselves.

Culture: Red: So the color Red here is seen as a happy color it is not a thing that you are really allowed to wear even a long while after someone has died in your family. People will point out that you are wearing red if something sad happened recently. Some people will purposefully wear the color red on major holidays to show happiness.

Tagalesson: Matagal: Matagal is an adjective that means "Taking a long time for late" it is a kind of weird word as there is not an exact translation in English for it, but because the root of the word is my new companion’s last name, I figure that it is pertinent. It is a very useful word.

If we couple the word gaanong and the prefix ka+ and attach it to the root of a word we have the equivalent of "How ____" in English.

For example

Gaanong katagal?: How long?/how late?

Now we can ask a question:

Gaano kayong katagal dito?: How long have you been here?

This trick can be used for almost any adjective, but is most often used by me to ask "How long" type questions.

If you can master how to make this prefix addition work for you then you will be well on your way to being good at Tagalog, trust me.

Pictures: We went on exchanges and these are some pictures with the zone leaders for our zone. Elder Sacay is the Filipino and Elder Nielsen is the American