Weekly Email.

Oh man , these will probably be so boring in a year. My week just doesn't really ever seem interesting , haha. First the things I wrote down during the week to remember.

1. Please email some coin tricks to me. Hahaha , that sounds really weird , but kids here love little magic tricks and all we've got is coins and stuff. I know like 4 but they're running out quickly , so please try and find some good ones that are simple and email to me.
2. In the next package (WHICH I HOPE WON'T BE FOR A WHILE BECAUSE THEY'RE EXPENSIVE) I really need like the whole box to be filled with clif bars and then something for teeth whitening. Not that my teeth are really that bad , but there's no teeth whitening stuff here , and a mission really is a time of habit forming , ha , so that's an easy one to start. Also the food here is just crazy bad for you , haha , so I'm trying to buy so healthy but that costs so much money. Not to mention they have no protein bars whatsoever. So please send a lot of clif bars (i know they're expensive , sorry)
3. Can you send me some nutritional facts on rice? I eat so much of it , I'd like to know what I'm eating , ha.

That's it for now.

Okay , this computer is crazy slow. I've wasted so much of my time just waiting for it to load. So my week wasn't really that interesting except for a few points , so I'll write about it.
Monday , P-Day at the SM then waited for about 2 hours for a bus back to the area. Got back finally , actually I was like hanging out the door the whole way home because it was crazy crazy packed. It was way fun though. So we get back and head to a Family Home Evening. Supposed to be there for one hour and we were there for almost two .. I was upset at my companion. Ha. Afterwards we tried a few houses , but things like shut down at 7 - so we ended up just getting one contact in afterwards. It was a bumma. Tuesday- district meeting , in which we still don't have cell phones. Taught a few lessons , contacted a referral who was this doctor that was waaay arrogant , ha. He like tried to tell us about our religion in english. It's slightly amusing , because they're under the impression they're fluent. I mean I obviously know I make mistakes left and right , but it's a different story when a full grown man tries to be condescending and is speaking a third language , that I really couldn't understand. It's hard to keep a straight face under those circumstances. Wednesday , more lessons. In which one was way funny. One of our investigators is this 11 year old boy that we have to teach for him to be baptized , and so his little sister saw me for the first time without glasses and noticed my eyes. Oh , obviously everyone here has like dark brown eyes. And so she was like AH! BLUE EYES! and I was like haha yeah, and she just goes on (tagalog of course which was so so funny) I've seen it in movies but I didn't believe it was true!. This little 7 year old girl. Adorable , haha.

Thursday , weekly planning which was good , more lessons , all pretty much the same. We have a few investigators with baptismal dates , but some are just reaally .. like not progressing. Like probably just said yes to be nice , but don't read , don't pray , don't go to church , ganoon. So at one I just tried to be as straightforward as I could with the guy in hopes of him actually picking one way or another and not just sitting on the fence as he is. We'll see what happens. Friday was good , MCM at 5 , and then a dinner appointment right next to it at 6 always. And what they cook is always soo good haha. Two weeks ago with had steak and onions and last friday was chicken adobo I think. But they're way good at cooking. Also they have a daughter in the states whose married to a former missionary here. This area was his first area... and last , haha. He met her , fell in love , she went to manila , he ran away for her , now they live in Arizona. Haha , supposedly very happy. But they're a super sweet family.

Saturday , got punted 10 times (which means appointments falling through) which was a bummer , especially when you're walking all day long so you're sweaty and tired haha and nothing to show for it. Got some good OYMs though and maybe some potentials. Sunday was church and we had a few investigators there , one with a baptismal date which was awesome to see. He's a stud , so cool , but been an investigator forever. He's read the BoM like 2 times and has a few favorite scriptures and gives awesome insights during lessons. But no one's ever been able to baptize him because he's always been busy or other things , hopefully we'll get him into the water! So I'm sitting down for about 5 minutes and the branch president approaches me and is like can you give a 15 minute talk on geneology work.... I was like uhhh , yeah I can try , haha. I know nothinggg about geneology work pretty much. But I tried. Just pulled every scripture I could think of and warped it into baptisms for the dead , haha , but it was okay. That's their style here - call on someone 10 minutes before the meeting starts to give a talk.

Later we worked with a missionary that got home from his mission last July. He was an AP (San Pablo Mission , Philippines) and is 26 .... suuuch a good missionary , haha. It was awesome to work with him and learned a lot of really good tips and styles and stuff. Hopefully we'll get to work with him again because it's awesome to have an AP to work with and learn from first hand.

Now it's Monday , and we're in our area. Woke up at 5:30 to play basketball and cleaned and wrote some letters and stuff. I'm jealous you guys get to head to utah for more family stuff , but I'll be back to that too soon. It's almost 6 months for me and that kind of freaks me out ... aha. I really don't like that. Hahah. Not that I won't be excited to come home , but it's just going by really fast. That's the slowest portion of the mission and it's already over. We're on week 4 of the transfer already! Geeze , transfers blow by and there's only 16 of them while you're in the field. Sorry some of this is scatter brained and not correct english , but I don't have like any time and my time is about to shut off on me I think , haha. Also maybe tagalog gets better when my english gets worse , we'll see. Speaking of that , it's coming along pretty well. I really like having a companion that never speaks in english. Constant use + daily study = learning a language very fast. I would love for us to come back here after I get home as a family and show off mah skillz , then again that's crazy expensive.

Okay I think that's all for this week. I love you all. Mom , go ahead and add that plan - I'll have a cell phone by the end of this week I'M ALMOST POSITIVE , and I'm sure we'll get info about the phone call from the pres in a week or two.

Love you all again ,
-Elder Austin White