Email December 1st, 2008

Hello to my family on the first day of December 2008. My birthday is in 29 days now and I will be 22 – that’s kind of old…especially when I consider that I will quickly be 23 after I come home to real life and continue on with wherever my life takes me. Today we found out about transfers again and I’m following Elder Winn’s theme these days – since his first companion he’s only been with any of them for six weeks and Sister Thompson is being transferred so my last companion was six weeks and so is this one. In some ways (meaning only in learning Tagalog) I guess it’s better but it makes time seem to go by even faster when we’re always going to transfers and getting new companions and new areas etc. One of my companions also went home today and next month two more will go home, crazy. Sister Mabalot was still really new to the mission when she trained me and now she’s going home! This week will be busy again with travel and I’ll have news about who my companion is on Monday. This week was productive, however. We didn’t have anything significant in the way of our teaching and so we got around to a lot of our areas and we ended up with a lot of people committing to baptism which was really exciting. As for the “family” mom keeps asking about there wasn’t one particular just that week we taught a bunch of full families and it was odd to me because I’d never taught a full family before. There is one family we continue to teach. They are catholic and active for the most part and we taught them the word of wisdom last time. It was funny because when we asked what they had problems with the mother pointed to her husband and said alcohol then he said coffee for his daughter and their children pointed to mom and said cigarettes and then they all pointed to their younger son and said “DRUGS” which was a joke, entirely…but it was funny because they were all pointing out each others vices. We committed them to make goals to stop and gave them a lesson about the power of Christ in our lives. We’ll see what happens with them. There is another woman we are teaching and some of her older and younger daughters. Classified her as older and younger because she’s about 38 I think and her oldest daughter who has daughters and a husband is 22 I think and then her youngest daughter is the same age as her daughters daughter…that is rather frequent here however. She came to church with her children and their neighbor who is 22. She said she used to have a very hard time remembering anything from the bible that she studied but she used to be catholic and then she was iglesia ni cristo but she doesn’t like any of them and disliked the gossip and attitudes etc. and she’s been praying to find the truth and one day she said “I’ve been remembering things better and I think you are the answer to my prayers.” There are two girls that are cousins and the first time we taught I asked the one what she felt about Joseph Smith’s story and she said “I’m just happy he has found the true church!” In our later visits we asked if they had prayed and read to know if it was true and they both very simply said that it was true and we taught about baptism and they both agreed to prepare for baptism…neither of them have come to church yet because it came so fast so the baptism is far in the future but it’s amazing how some people progress to that point so quickly and seek and find an answer immediately, they truly have the gift of the spirit to believe the truth that is within the testimony of others.As for money – I could attempt getting pearls if that’s really what you want but the couples that used to buy them went home this weekend, their mission is over. Sister Victorino might be able to for me once she goes home she said so I’ll see, andI had this one other thing I planned to try to get just for the family. As for me using my pearls, I just have them kept away because I wouldn’t wear them here. The problem is – it’s still really hard for me to get cash meaning impossible actually because the ATM doesn’t work and these are all things that require cash and I’m in an area where I can’t use my card frequently to buy my food like before and that way was kind of hard anyway and I don’t think always worked out evenly. If you could accomplish sending me even ten dollars at a time in cash in letters I don’t think anything would happen to it or in a package you could send some cash then that would help me pay for some of those things and I don’t know that I’ll be using my card that much more for a while – and it is good to have non mold shoes and hopefully they stay that way. My scripture cases and covers also have mold but I’m just getting new covers for them, sigh! Haha…all is well besides that. As for you not coming when I come home, that seems best to me for now also but I still think coming back in the summer will be hard and if we came back at all it would be best and most meaningful six months after I come home over Christmas break – but I won’t plan for anything at all at this point and that’s always best because we have no idea what will happen. I get the feeling all my money and any you want to help me with when I very first get home will go to school. All I would need help with at first was paying for an apartment before I started getting paid at whatever job I find and then I’ll start up full time classes once I have enough money or a good job but I’ll need an apartment and maybe will take one or two classes – like a religion class and a tagalong class. I still don’t know and have a few months before I need to be more serious about it though so that’s all for now.I did finally send a letter and so hopefully that will get to you and I did get one hand written letter from dad a little while ago and if I have more mail I will get it again on Friday because we go to transfer, hooray! I’m running out of time now and can’t remember everything I’ve written about or need to, email is kind of crazy like that sometimes. Thanks for all the letters and good luck with the travel. I bet I travel as much as dad does in a week because our area is so far and when we go to email, to shop, to district meeting, then to zone interviews, to transfers it’s a good couple of hours or more in vans, tricycles and on a boat! Haha – I love you all bye! Sister Landrum