The!

Email!

This is what I'm watching.

http://mormon.org/me/13G1

I just talked to you all! About a couple of hours ago. I'm glad you all enjoyed the gifts. I'll try and get back up to Baguio , but we're not allowed to leave our "zone" without permission from the Mission President , and then on top of that you need a good reason. But I will need to get more contact solution , so hopefully that'll pass and we'll be able to head up in a couple weeks. The sumpit [blow dart]'s are about 100 - 150 pesos each , but I'll haggle it down and try and send home a bunch more. I hope they're won't be any customs fees on them though. If I send home like 10 of the same thing they might think it's for profit ... hopefully not though. That's a pretty small item.
How was everyone's Christmas? I'll try and explain in more detail my Christmas here. Saturday after we hung up me and Elder Jacinto headed to the church and proceeded to meet a bunch of members. I was blown away by how many kids there are. It's ridiculous. This area has had a spree of children baptisms [by missionaries that just go for the numbers] and so it really is silly how little priesthood there is. By the way , Mom , I completely understood that you don't care about the numbers - that wasn't my concern. I just don't even like thinking about it , and you really caught me off guard by asking , ha. It's a sensitive subject for any missionary and it feels weird saying. So , I'm sure you understand. I've talked about every one of them in my emails during my mission , so they're all there I promise. But this isn't exactly The Other Side of Heaven ... haha. Anyways , so this area has had so many children baptisms that shouldn't have been allowed because their parents are still inactive. But that's our work. Bringing EVERYONE back to church. We've identified the familes and we're working hard to get them back.
There's many different reasons as to why people go inactive in the church in the Philippines , but most often it's offense. No money for transportation and other issues are big , but not big enough if they want to go to church. They have to lose that desire or have it be offended out of them. That's the common theme of our visits. So and so said this ... so and so did this ... he and she stopped coming to visit me ... and so forth. It usually consists of us listening , apologizing , and straightforwardly telling them to come back. In a loving way , of course. In Baguio it sometimes worked on the first visit alone , but sometimes we had to chastise. Here , we've seen some good things happening already. We visited the Casabuena Family for the first time last week on a Wed or Thurs. Shared memories from their conversion , the missionaries who found and taught them , all that stuff. It helps them remember the feelings they had. Then we taught a short message and invited them back. They live about 4 KMs away. Which I think is about 2.5 miles. As we got to church on Sunday , we waited about 25 minutes for anyone to show up. One by one they come in , we shake their hands , and as we look up - there they are. It's been a very long time since they last came to church , but all they needed was an invitation and motivation. We're not sure how they got there , seeing as they have very very little money ... but they were there.
So that's been the new focus in the Philippines , and it's really enjoyable.

Btw this is what I'm watching right now:
https://lds.org/youth/video/a-work-in-progress?lang=eng
[fellow filipino!] quezon city mission
So yeah. Back to Christmas Eve. After the Christmas Party [which was incredibly silly , ha , we went to a really really poor family out in the bukid who we found on accident that used to be investigators. We shared a message with them and tried to brighten their Christmas Eve a little bit , as they literally had nothing. I won't say the picture that I took - seeing as you probably won't be happy with it , haha - but it was their Christmas Eve Dinner. After that we headed home [curfew on christmas eve , day , new years eve , day is 6pm] and were invited over to dinner by our neighbor who is the landlord. It was a really good dinner. Then wrote our talks and went to bed. [and I opened up the pajamas! I did save them for christmas eve]
Christmas Day we woke up , got ready [cold bucket showers are actually nakakamiss ... meaning I missed them] and went to church. Gave our talks , and after sacrament meeting [that was all the church for the day] went out to work. Found 3 of our focus families and invited them back. After that we headed to our Branch Presidents house and ate dinner with a few other members , then headed home. Read a little then went to bed. It was actually a really good Christmas. Really quiet , but really good. I missed you all , obviously , but I'll only get one of these in my life - so I was glad how it was spent. Helping others and thinking about Christ.

Other than that I'm doing pretty good! It's hot here , but I love it. There's a lot of work , and a lot of time left to do it! Don't talk to me about coming home! Haha I'm not sure if I ever will. But I did think about you guys coming here after we hung up and I'll think about it in 9 months. My mind might change. I'd be released by my mission president here ... but again we'll think about that in 9 months.

I love you all , MERRY CHRISTMAS! Thanks for everything , and I'll talk to you next week.

... I can't believe how fast that phone call came and how fast the next will be as well. crazy.

INGAT KAYO LAGI!