Hello hello hello hello hello!

So I past my three month mark last Wednesday. Very strange feeling. And I've been away from the MTC for one month today.. it definitely does not feel like that. It felt like I had been in the MTC for about 2 years by the time I left , so a month having already gone by is pretty mind blowing. Mom- I'm gonna answer your questions first , then write. So that way I don't repeat anything , ha.

1. I think I'll send home my planners after a little bit , not sure yet , maybe I'll just keep amassing them. But it's fun to keep your planners because it fills up after one transfer. But a regular day.. I'll try and map it out because everyday is different. Wake up at 6:30 , exercise or just breakfast until 7:15ish , shower , get dressed , at the desk by 8. Personal Study from 8 - 9 , Companion Study from 9 - 10 , Language Study from 10 - 11. Lunch at about 11:30 , then usually try and be out the door at noon. Now that's a day with no meetings or anything else , and that is SO rare. This next week we only have one of those days , and that's Friday. But then from Noon until 9 it's scheduled appointments , OYMs (just random talking to people) , following up on past commitments with people , so just dropping by their house , and whatever else we need to do. We try and work from noon until 9 , come home at 9 , plan until 930 , then dinner until 10, then asleep by 1030. You're exhausted by 9 because you're walking alllll day long and our area is big.. by foot at least. So that's a regular day! Well.. regular as in without meetings and stuff. It's hard to describe what it's like with meetings but for this week , today we have Pday until 6, tomorrow is district meeting which takes up half the day because of travel and then the meeting, wednesday we have baptism interviews to do in bayambang- so that's a half day, thursday we have to do weekly planning which takes up 3 hours after lunch, and saturday we have a ward reactivation thing and a baptism in bayambang.. so another 1/4 or 1/2 day. and sunday is church and meetings so work doesn't start till 3... It seriously is so annoying. It takes a lot of patience because meetings cut out half your week and it kills you because you just want to work because your numbers look so pathetic. So you just kill yourself during the time you do have to work.

2. Companion's name is Elder Lefler- as you know- and he's from Washington but his family moved to Orem, UT this past August. He's really nice and we get along really easily. He goes home at the end of this transfer, which we're starting week 4 right now and a transfer is 6 weeks long. So he has about 2 weeks left in the mission.. crazy. He works hard in the field and when we push each other we get really good numbers and do some really good work. So it's been going really well.

3. I'll be in Malimpec for at least another transfer, probably two more. So a total of 3 or 4 1/2 months. I'm pretty excited about that , because when I came in I really couldn't understand anything or say anything. And now I still can't say much but I can understood most everything... so it'll be way exciting to leave the area having a decent ability to speak the language. And for the most part the people are awesome. There's a few families that are so so awesome and the rest love us too. Also this area is so beautiful. Sunsets are ridiculous and just the surrounding is so so cool. I've described it for you a bit , but it's hard to say what it's like. I'm just in the boonies , ha. A long dirt road , lots of trees and dirt , lots of really really really really poor houses and just super humble people. It's pretty incredible. Like I think about our house and our area back home , and honestly after two years that is going to be so so so hard to adjust to. Much more difficult I know that it was coming here. ha.

4. Yeah , me and Tanner usually say something every time we email so we still keep in touch. And yeah , he's family so I'm allowed to email him.

5. Just tell her I sent her a letter last week , and they said it takes 10 days to get to the states. So tell her to expect it , probably a week from today!

6. People are good for the most part. A good number think they're really funny and yell 'Hey Joe!' at you , which is the most obnoxious thing in the world. It's supposed to be like demeaning or something , it's just teenage stuff.. but adults do it a lot too.. so.... It's fine though , and it just gives you an opportunity to walk up and talk to them and they're shocked when you do.. ha. But for the most part the people are really sweet. So poor , ha , but incredibly humble. The members too. There's a couple that I don't particularly care for, but as my understanding of Tagalog has gotten better there's not much they can find anymore to be annoying about. The bishop is a really nice guy but he expects us to spend such a ridiculous amount of time rescuing less actives , so I asked my companion if I can have a talk with him tonight or some time about my time here in the area.... Kindly explaining that I wasn't set apart to just go do the ward's job. So that should be good because I would like the bishop to have a good image of me, seeing as I'll be here for a while , and he says he respects good missionaries. So , I'm taking his word for it. The ward is so so funny , though! It's funny because the meetings are just like back home... but so different. That's what's amazing about this church is that you can go anywhere in the world and get the exact same doctrine , opinions , meetings , as anywhere else. It's not one guy preaching his human opinion on doctrine he's spinning.... It's so so hot during church though.. ha. Fans don't do anything. But the meetings are similar to back home just with a pinch of chaos. I love it.

7. No! I have not lost weight, haha. I've put on weight. Tinapay is death. Tinapay means bread in Tagalog. Kindly inform 30 Rock that bread DIRECTLY translates into Tagalog as Tina Fey. Because they have no F's in the Tagalog alphabet so they replace them with P's. Hysterical. But it is so so so so so so good here. I can't describe it. But it costs about 20 pesos to get so much bread, which is less than 50 cents , and it's delicious. I need to ween myself off it , but as soon as I start running in the mornings again I'll get back down to what I was... ha.

8. Money from back home? Not at all. That's for you guys! Ha , I didn't work all summer to pay for my mission by using it on stuff in my mission.

9. I might be able to print off the emails, but I don't think so. But maybe. haha.

10. Oh yeah- we all have filters in our homes and I have a filtered water bottle. The Church invested a lot of money into research for these filters so I think they're patented by the church. I'll take a picture of it , it's these three (maybe 18" tall) towers that sit next to the sink , and it filters the water through the 3 filters before coming out. So it tastes just fine- but you've gotta replace the filters every so often.


TIME TO TALK ABOUT MY WEEK!

Not too interesting , but some highlights were awesome. So last week was suuuuch a bummer. Our numbers were so low because all of our investigators were gone. So I've made us OYM (Open Your Mouth) every day so much and just ask for referrals from everyone and so they came in a plenty. So this past week we got a ton of lessons and new investigators , and that's an amazing feeling. Last Tuesday an AP worked with us , and so that was really cool. He just worked with us when we got back from Zone Interviews (Pres. Jensen comes to each zone about once a transfer or every two transfers and interviews all the missionaries to see how they're doing) <--- and that's one of the meetings I'm talking about. We have to leave in the morning to get to Bayambang and didn't get home till 5. So only 4 hours to work that day. So that was a cool experience. Wednesday........ oh , regular day. Regular lessons and stuff - nothing too exciting. Thursday we had weekly planning we had to do which took until 2 , but worked for about 6 hours after that and got some good lessons in. We had to leave at 8 though because we had to head to San Carlos and sleep there for the night. I had to catch a van at 6:30 that next morning from San Carlos for Baguio. So that next morning me, Elder Solesbee , and Elder Jolongbayan all got up and caught a van to Baguio to finish our New Missionary Training. In this mission Pres. Jensen likes having the missionaries come back up after 3 weeks to ask questions and explain more stuff. That way we're a bit knowledgeable about what the mission is like and have other questions from what we've experienced. So it was so so fun to see my batch again and be up in Baguio. IT WAS FREEZING. So cold. Compared to the low lands at least (where we are). It's called that because Baguios on this huge hill , so everywhere else in the mission is referred to as the lowlands. But we got some great food too , and were back on the road at 3 to come back. Got back to San Carlos at 8:30 so had to spend another night in San Carlos. Came home that next morning and worked like crazy until 9:30 to make up for lost time the past few days and had our best day in the mission so far. Such good numbers (I keep saying numbers not because the lessons or stuff are numbers to us AT ALL , but because it shows really how hard you work. The more urgent you are with your work the faster you work and the more you can get done in one day. As opposed to being lazy and taking a lot of breaks and just sitting at members houses and stuff.) So that was an awesome day. Yesterday was church and a couple lessons afterwards, but nothing exciting. EXCEPT! We got an IBD yesterday. We baptized bother Tulagan the first weekend this transfer , and his wife was sometimes present. But over the past couple weeks she has started to love having us over and we've turned out attention to her since he was baptized. So we've taught her now a bunch of times and asked her to be baptized yesterday and she said yesssss. So stoked.

That was my week! I apologize but I'm all out of time! I'll answer more questions next week and try and have more time then! The snow looks ridiculous and I'm so jealous. Tell Brandon I still see no news on Apple's stuff, and that's not gonna fly.

I miss you all a lot , but this mission is so much better than being home, ha! Honestly though , so much better. It's going to be hard to come home in 21 months , but I think I'll be ready at the same time. If I keep working at this pace I'll be ready to drop dead by then, ha. Love you all and I'll talk to you next week!

Oh Mom- for what you said about sacrifice.. funny you said that. Helaman 12: 1 - 3 . Just read that the other day.

Love you again,

-Elder White!