Bocaue Bois

I talked a little bit about the floods here last week. I said that they were not that bad. Well, the day after that we had a giant rainstorm. Almost everything flooded. Just on the highway to the church for district meeting, the water was around waist high. It was a very interesting day.

     

Welp. This week we worked pretty hard. We are having a good time in this area and it is good to see the area progress because of that work and because of our effort. I have noticed here that I am becoming more of a tool in God's hands. I teach lessons – not to get the lesson taught, but to really apply it to the persons life. It is a lot harder, especially in a language that you don’t speak exceptionally fluently. It comes down to coming into someone’s house and assessing all of the possible problems that they could be facing in their lives at the time as fast as you can – while also listening to the spirit (which helps you out in this process). Then, once you kind of know what their problem might be, you teach them something that they can apply and learn something from. After that, you commit them to change their lives. It is really a different way of doing missionary work – I think sometimes people don’t understand.

      

I have learned so many things – I am not sure what is important to share anymore. I have started a book to help other people to learn Tagalog. It will have a ton of sections – specifically I want to help people gain a solid accent, pronunciations, words that people do and do not understand. I want to help those that struggle with the language and make them effective teachers and to really understand how to speak the language – no matter how hard it may seem.

      

Life in the city is quite different than life in the province. In the city, the people are a whole lot closer to one another – that is physically speaking, not mentally or emotionally. It is both easier and harder to find people to teach: there are more people in a smaller area, but not as many are as receptive to listening. SMOG, there is a lot of pollution in the air. Luckily, our area has a section that is more removed. If we need some fresh air, we can always work out there. Everything is a lot more flat here, making the walking easier. Back in Sapang Palay, we had a lot of hills and it was really hard to walk for long periods of time. Not here.

      

Culture: In the City people tend to live very close. This means that families tend to be found in only one or two streets and everyone in that street is related somehow. Families are very big here in the Philippines. We see a lot of people that when asked if they have family nearby, they just start pointing to houses to show us where they live. The families are close to each other, but not exceptionally. Oftentimes they are kind of separated when it comes to family ties – they do things together every once in a while, but for the most part are pretty separate.

Tagalesson: This week I am going to teach you about the word "Ba" this is really important because it is the word you put in in order to make a statement into a yes or no question. This is just inserted in there and people will now know that what you are saying is a question. It is very interesting that they have a word for this. It makes it a lot easier to understand speech when you know for sure that someone is asking you a direct question.

Welp, I am quickly running out of time here, I love you all and I trust you will have a good week, there are a lot of storms in the world so don’t forget to stay safe.

Love Elder Faulkner

Pictures Again finally:

1. I took a short nap

2. A kitten

3. That kitten when riled up

4. Zesto is a juice brand here, I bought all the different kinds of their juice and I am gonna mix them and drink it all at once.

Miracles in Bocaue

Alright, so as I said in my last email I transferred this week to Bocaue. My companion is Elder Torres; he is a great missionary and a skilled teacher. We get along very well, and we have set very high goals for our area and for our work. Elder Torres is basically a Filipino version of myself.

The area has a reputation of being a hard one, but I don’t particularly like reputations, so my plan is not let it affect anything that happens while I am here. We have already – just in this short week here – found several families that are very interested in what we have to teach. I have found that as I become a better missionary, and as I improve in the language – I have a much MUCH bigger impact on the areas that I am in.

       

There is a lot to talk about and I am pretty certain I won’t get to all of it. For the basics: this area in Bocaue is flooding right now. They aren’t crazy flash floods, but there is water a lot of places that we go. Sometimes, when we want to tract in certain areas – we need to be creative about how we make it through the flood water. Soon, we are gonna get some companionship boots so that we can go anywhere we want and focus on those progressing areas, even if they are flooded. A lot of houses here, when the floods are high, have water coming into them. When we want to go tracting, we need to go through the flood to get to the people that God has prepared for us. Sometimes during the low tides there are no obstructions and we can easily visit any house that we want, other times at hightide it can be a real struggle to get out and visit those people; we aren’t really scared of water so we press on.

     

I will have a lot to say about this area in the coming weeks and months. We will have many interesting experiences in Bocaue. I really enjoy it here. This is my first time in the city, up to this point it has been province. There are actual places to eat here – we have a McDonalds. We also have a big foodpark across the street called "The Ranch", but that will probably get its own email in the future.

     

Culture: Day to day living. This is so important. People have to do things that keep them subsisting one day at a time. Especially people who own Tindahans or tricycles; these people are getting money and then spending it almost immediately to buy food for that day only. When we tell people they need to set apart Sunday as a day for the Lord, that they cannot work and they cannot buy things, it takes a huge toll on them mentally. God will provide for their financial needs, if they are doing it in faith – but it takes an insane amount of faith to start on that path. A lot of things done in the Philippines are daily. Going to the market to buy food, getting paid at your job. It is like living paycheck to paycheck but a lot less consistent.

     

Tagalesson: Followup:

We gonna learn how to go to someones house and to see if they remember what you told them and if they read what you gave them.

"Nakapagbasa po ba kayo ng ibinigay namin sa inyo sa nakaraang?"-"Were you able to read that thing that we gave you last time?"

"Anong naalala mo tungkol sa last lesson namin?"-"what do you remember about our last lesson?"

“Pwede ba nating imbitahan ang buong pamiliya mo dito para makinig sa mensahe namin?"- Can we invite your whole family to listen to this message?"

If you get these sentences down you are good at followup, it is that simple.

Alrighty, for next week I will try to get things organized to talk about the area that I am now in.

As long I don’t die in a flood, I will be safe to email you next week.

Keep on keeping on

Love

Elder Faulkner

Fireworks Capital of the Philippines

Alrighty, so first thing is first as it tends to be in a list of things. Because if something else were first, obviously that thing would be first...

       

But anyways, I am moving. I am going to be moving to the city of Bucaue. As you probably don’t know, but may have guessed from the subject of this letter, Bucaue is the fireworks capital of the Philippines. I obviously don’t know how that is going to go yet; but I will be leaving tomorrow. I will move over there and my companion will be Elder Torres. I do not yet know him, so this will be a solidly fresh start with a new companion.

       

Google Map

Welp that is how life is going right about now. I will leave Elder Oronos – who is getting a new trainee. We aren’t yet sure who that is, but they will meet each other tomorrow. He will also become the district leader. I am very excited for him and to see what he can do with our district.

      

I will be a little bit sad to leave Sapang Palay but at the same time I am pretty ready to go. I have been here 6 months and have seen a whole lot of the area and met a lot of people. As a missionary in an area for 6 months, it starts to feel a little too long. You get tired of working in the same place, and you just want to move on. I am excited for my new area and I am ready to set out for newer pastures.

       

Culture: Pancit on your birthday. This is a pretty short thing, but you need to know it. Pancit means noodles. Every time anyone ever has a birthday – ever – they buy and cook pancit. There is a joke that goes along with this: because noodles are longer than rice, they will say that they eat pancit because it is longer and it will make your life longer; that is why they eat it on birthdays.

        

Tagalesson: Birthday: Kaarawan (no one uses this word)

Noodles: Pancit

Party: Party

Kailan ang birthday mo?: ""When is your birthday?"

Anong gagawin mo sa birthday mo?: "What are you doing on/for your birthday?"

Welp that is pretty much what you need to know about this topic.

We are going to talk about the language for a bit before we head out.

I feel that not many missionaries in this mission go home especially fluent. Even the older missionaries in our mission currently are not fluent. They can teach well, but they don’t reach the level of fluency that I have come to expect. I had a lot of thoughts about where I would be in the language at the end of my mission, and what level of fluency I would be at. It is a very interesting thing. Either way it is important to try your best. For me, I want to speak like a native when I come home. Now, that might not be super reasonable, but we can hope, can’t we? (We can also put in hours and hours of hard work and studying, but that is besides the point.)

Love you all

Elder Faulkner

Finding the Prepared Lost Sheep

Alrighty, so this week we are going to talk about something that is central to missionary work. It is true whether out here in the Philippines, or at home (even by simply inviting people to church). That thing is finding. The thing about finding is that it usually involves going far out of our comfort zone – we are normally talking to someone new about something unfamiliar to them. The thing about finding is it brings a better understanding of the potential of all people. Sometimes people are content with how their lives are. But, if you know more about their potential – you feel a responsibility to go over to their house, go to their gate, and yell "Tao Po" until they start listening to you and learning about what God's plan is for them.

      

As missionaries, it can be a lot easier for us to just keep visiting the same people, not looking for other people to teach. I have learned that the best way you can show your love for the people is to make it your goal to teach every single family in an area about their potential. If they all have heard it out of your mouth, then you did a good job. We often fall short of our potential because we don’t help others to realize their own. I don’t know if that was deep or not but you get the idea.

      

Finding in missionary work unlocks a door that we didn’t know was closed. It is our job to teach everyone we can, but not just that – we need to focus on the people that are ready to listen, change, and realize their own potential.

      

We found a lot of people this week, but when we came back to visit them again I noticed something. Some of the people were pretty much done listening to us. These are the people that are not ready to change. The other group of people had either started reading the Book of Mormon or had prayed about our message. These people immediately saw the blessings of this in their lives and were excited to see us again. It lets us fulfill something that we don’t always even know is there. We see people become better than they thought they could be. In turn we are lifted up in our own lives and we are able to reach a higher potential we didn’t know was possible.

Culture: There are many MANY spousal relationships here where the two people are only seeing each other once a week, sometimes it is even less than that. When this happens, all the responsibilities in a house fall on the mother because the Father is out working 6 days in a week. The problem can be that they aren’t really close and they grow farther apart when they never see each other. I know several families this happens to with not just the "Tatay" (or Father), but the "Nanay" (or mother) as well. In these cases all of the kids live together and get sent money to subsist. They might see their whole family in one place maybe once a month sometimes less than that.

Tagalesson: Para sa Tagalesson nito matetype lang ako, ito lang para sa inyo na mas matuto ng "grammar" at "sentence structure". aywan ko kung ano ang sasabihin ko ngayon, pero mahal ko kayo, kahit ano ang paghihirap sa inyong buhay mo ngayon, kayang ninyo. Naniniwala ako sa inyo. Gusto Kong sabihin sa aking kapatid na babae na si Caroline. "Happy Birthday”. magandang halimbawa siya para sa akin at kung hindi kayo nagsabi nayan sa kanya, sabihin niyo nga lang.

Kayang Kaya niyo.

Have a great week.

Mahal Ko Kayo.

Elder Faulkner

Another P-Day, Another Email

(Picture of Elder Solano, Elder Stephens, and Elder Faulkner) 

(courtesy of Elder Solano)

Alrighty here we are again, another Monday over here in the Philippines means another email that I send out to all of you. I trust that you are all doing well, wherever it may be that you are. Life is pretty good here in the Philippines, nothing much has changed – although I am learning to become a better teacher and teaching to what people need in their lives.

      

Today I will include something about our purpose as missionaries in this email. Our purpose reads "Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ, and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end." Now I am here to invite people. That means that through what I say, I should always be allowing people to make changes in their lives and inviting them to change themselves. Everything we do as missionaries is to magnify that calling. We become better teachers and learn the language, not to show off, but to allow people to understand the message and change themselves.

      

A true missionary understands that nothing they do makes the work successful. It is about the journey of the people that you teach. It is between them and God. We are here to show them how to communicate with God and how to get that relationship. But let it be made clear: all of my words are mostly useless for the people I teach.

       

Let’s think for a minute – because there are some questions that we should probably all answer in our lives. Keep in mind that the answers to these questions come from ourselves and for our own self betterment, so we shouldn’t really be shy in answering them:

• ·        Do I feel like anything lacks in my life?
• ·        How have I tried to fill that lack in the past?
• ·        Do I have a plan to fill that lack now?
• ·        Do I believe in God?
• ·        Why? Why not?
• ·        How close do I feel to God?

These are some of the things that I notice that a lot of people don’t know the answers to. Notice how all the answers come from yourself, it isn’t about finding answers somewhere else; it is about learning from ourselves. When we enable ourselves to think freely and take time to reflect – our entire outlook changes.

God's Grace is not about filling the gap in our lives, it is about filling us with an abundant life. Show me one person who doesn’t want an "abundant life".

These are the things that we search for here. If there is a higher purpose here on this earth, we better be searching for it – otherwise we probably won’t find anything, and that lack will always be there.

     

I have learned that questions like that are very important. In teaching, you have to lead the person to learn from their own words and thoughts.

Culture: Engilsh again. In the Filipino culture, people use English to show how educated they are. It can be a real problem. English is a big source of pride here. Being good at English shows that you are pretty educated. Out of fear of offending people, we seldom use English – even among close friends

    

Tagalesson: Taglish is acceptable in most circumstances, as long as the word is well known by people. Okay Taglish:

Handa: Prepare

Inihahanda- preparing

Ipiniprepare-preparing

Conjugate the word the same way, but you use the English word instead of the Tagalog root. You can conjugate a whole lot of English words like this!

Keep on keeping on. Keep up the good work and keep on learning Tagalog so that when I go home I will have some people to talk to. It will be sad if I have no one to speak with when I get to America.

Don’t forget to self evaluate, it is an important thing to do in life.

Thanks muchly for your support and your emails. I hope you are doing well.

Love

Elder Faulkner

The Gospel of Jesus Christ blesses Families.

Yesterday Elder Oronos and I dedicated the entire day to finding people. From 2 o'clock (when district meeting ended) until 9 o'clock at night we would have no set appointments, we would only be looking for new people to teach. This isn’t too normal, especially because the normal amount of time we find each day is 1 or 2 hours. But either way, we started out on a street that I had never been down before and started knocking on every door (or yelling "tao po" as is the culture here). We had a couple people that didn’t seem interested at all and sent us away pretty quickly. But as we continued, we came across a couple that were in their 40's. We came to know that they have 3 children. They quickly let us inside to share with them. It is rare that the first time you share with someone, especially a family, that they seem to understand how important what your sharing is to them. They all listened intently and seemed to get the importance of it all. As we explained how our message would bless their family, they listened. We told them about the restoration of the gospel and promised them blessings if they asked God about the truth. This was basically the first time I sat in front of a full family and they understood (at least a little bit) of the gravity of the words that I was saying.

There were a lot of things that led up to this experience, a lot of things that we included in the lesson that were important for them to hear – and they took it all in. When God prepares people for the gospel, they recognize it right away. The teachings of Jesus Christ and his unfathomable power have the ability to mend families. The power to right all wrongs and to fix all broken hearts, no matter the offence, is on earth today. That is the message that we attempt to teach people. Even we as missionaries don’t really get it. No one on earth really gets it. We don’t even begin to understand what kind of power God has to forgive, to atone, or to act as a perfect mediator. This is the foundation of why the Gospel of Jesus Christ blesses our families, because as we accept this into our lives. All those stupid little problems fall out of our lives. When we realize that a God already suffered and atoned for the sins and shortcomings of those around us, we start worrying more about ourselves and searching for the forgiveness of others. There is a whole side to the atonement that tends to go over our heads: that Jesus Christ's atonement applies to everyone; not just you as an individual, but when you go to blame someone for something – that sin they committed has already been suffered for. This means you have nothing you can blame them for, you have only the right to forgive them and ask for forgiveness yourself.

       

We didn’t end up finding all day. After we found about 10 new people for our teaching pool, we stopped finding and went to visit some less active members. We will still have to plan a day where we just find. Just know that when you plan for everything and start doing the work, God consecrates that effort and you have time for other things as well. We are blessed to be able to accomplish our righteous purposes.

     

Culture: English. English is a culture thing here for a lot of different reasons. Firstly, English is the most widely understood language in the Philippines; a lot of the people in the far reaches of this country will not understand even Tagalog. English is more universal here. That being said, almost every place has their own language – English and Tagalog are their base languages, but not everyone understands those very well. Basically, if you are going to the Philippines – depending on where you are going – it may be better just to use English. Tagalog might not get you super far.

     

Tagalesson: Now that you know the basics about English in the Philippines, the English here is quite different than in America. Certain words are pronounced differently and more especially with letters.

Generally, when you are speaking with English words, you have to pronounce them as a Filipino would or you will not be understood. These are the problem letters:

D=R (only sometimes, just make sure you roll your r's))

F=P

V=B

Example: if you want to say that you have “five pesos”, it probably should come out more along the lines of “pibe pisos”.

I have learned that speaking English in a Filipino accent helps your Tagalog accent a lot.

Those are the best tips that I can give you to be understood here.

There isn’t much more to say here. Thanks for the emails that you sent me. Thanks for all the support. Also remember that if you have problems in your family. Forgive first. Then start working on what you can do to improve. You will be amazed by the changes you see in other people.

Thanks people

Love

Elder Faulkner

The pictures in this blog are from one of Elder Faulkner's batch mates - Elder Solano. He is very gracious to allow me to post them here.

Trio No More

Alright, first things first: Elder Dingal moved into the house and is now companions with Elder Stephens. Now Elder Oronos and I are companions for real and there is no more super weird teaching situations in a trio. Teaching in a trio can be very difficult because you are never sure when to switch, who is teaching, or who needs to share what piece of the lesson. Now that we are back to the normal two by two, we can focus on how we teach and who gets to share what – without a third person to factor in. Elder Oronos is a very good missionary. I am learning a lot about doing missionary work from him and I think that we have a very strong unity going right now. This allows us to better teach and explain. Sometimes our teaching wanders a bit and gets a bit too deep for the people we are teaching; but we are good at bringing it back to their understanding, usually...

      

I am still in Sapang Palay and I won’t be moving until at least September 6^th. This is a fun ward and a fun area. Most missionaries will tell you that being in one area for more than 4 months can be a little bit too much stress mentally; you feel like you have visited and gone everywhere and it is hard to keep up a good attitude sometimes. Fortunately, having had 3 different companions – it really hasn’t gotten old. I still like the area and look forward to working here more.

     

We had many good experiences this week. We got to take part in service on a house that had been partially destroyed by a storm. We also had a good Fast and Testimony meeting in church.

      

Missionary work is a very interesting thing: you become very concerned with the people around you and stop worrying much about yourself. One of my friends back home brought up an interesting point: when people return from their missions, they lack in the drive they felt while they were out. Their study is not as effective because they don’t have other people to worry about; they forget to study for their own personal benefits. We can learn a lot from studying the scriptures, but when we lack purpose – our study tends to take a big toll as well.

Culture: Pamasahe: This word is the equivalent of the word "Fare" in Tagalog. It describes the amount you pay for your travels. Most people here do not have cars, which leads to everyone taking public transit to get around. The public transit here is very organized. When budgeting, people need to plan for pamasahe as well. They need to plan how much it takes them to get to work and back or to school – every day. Because public transit is so big here, pamasahe tends to be a big culture thing; if people don’t have money for pamasahe, they also don’t have the money to get to their job.

Tagalesson: Words about traveling,

Biyahe: Travel

Pamasahe: Fare

Sakay: transportation (like the actual vehicle)

Sakayan: terminal like for loading buses or jeeps

Those 4 words will get you pretty far here

Welp anyways I hope that your week wasn’t too stressful. I am learning to deal with stress a lot better and the stress isn’t as overwhelming right now as it was last transfer. I have learned a lot and I am really grateful for all of your support.

Thank you muchly,

Love

Elder Faulkner