Email January 26th, 2009

Magandang hapon po!
Mga pag-iisip ni Sister Landrum dito galing sa Pilipinas! :)

Well, my thoughts are full of Amanda and my unfinished letter to her so I'm sorry about that :)
After my many weeks of no letters -- 20 came! Haha...two were from dad and one from the family for my birthday, all with the money :) Whew, the postal workers are safe...except did Dad send three envelopes of his own plus the birthday card cuz I only got two...but two is better than none right? Carin sent me three, she's trying to make up I think...I'll write her later today and hope she got my last one which I think I sent before she sent hers but she clearly had yet to receive. My most mind consuming letter, however, was from Amanda. A "Dear Elder" letter which had a letter from Andrea attatched also which really confused me at first becuase Ithought it was still Amanda and yet it seemed so Andrea! Nice to hear they are alive and the holidays went well for my married friends and their married siblings and my other married friends who hosted parties and talking about all these married people -- well Amanda is joining them and she couldn't even wait six months for me to get home! I guess that's how it goes and March 21st (now isn't that when some other important people in my life got married or am I off? I could be off...) all of my closest of friends from Jr. High will be paired off. We could add this multiple ways, I now have double the amount of close friends or I have a subtraction of "close" friends :) haha. For now I'm on neutral ground and nothing can be calculated :) That's why missionary life is wonderful, eh? Sometime when I return I figure things will go about how they always do in life and the couples will hang out with the couples and the singles withe the singles -- hopefully one of them will have a baby and I can be their babysitter :)

Zone interviews are coming up, I'm thinking about asking Pres. if I can extend six months -- the Elder's get two years maybe i have a chance (my companion does not agree, she say they're shipping me off and there is nothing I can do about it -- she however has yet to realize my fabulous words of persuasion, I must not be as persuasive in Tagalog :) Okay, so I feel mostly like I'm being silly and babbly in this email. Thanks for all the emails -- I enjoyed each and every one of your individual words and I hope Maddie and Olivia -- Garyn too, are adjusting better to school and enjoying all the new people they get to meet, I know how hard it can be to fit yourself into an already finished puzzle, but don't worry it's not really finished, they all just haven't realized that a key piece is still missing :) We had a hot day, not one of the dripping with sweat hot days but it was hot compared to the rest and I thought that summer was well on its way. Their summer starts in March I think...but not it's rainy and kind of cold again. We found a new apartment that they want us to move into. We'll be moving houses in February, right after district conference and zone interviews, and the next week we have zone conference and a baptism and the week after that -- well that is the last week my companion has here in the mission field and the following week we'll go to Alaminos and I'll work somewhere else until Friday when we all get new companions, crazy. We're relishing the time and each week we seem to find even more investigators from the week before. The more you find, the more that progress and come to church and eventually get baptized -- it's all about finding! The finiding might go down a little as we try to help the ones we have progress -- but hopefully we find more people in the morning and early afternoon and that they continue wanting us to teach them in the morning and afternoon :) Our real problem is that we need eight night hours and no afternoon hours, everybody want us to teach them between 5-7 and that's just not really possible.

We taught the cousins of one of our new members. They are actually leaving again to Manila soon so we won't continue teaching them but I hope that the missionaries teach them there because the one sister seems ready. The interesting thing about these lessons has been that they are both blind, and thus our demonstrations and picturs do us no good, it's all in our words and our words are all in Tagalog :) Haha, I've recognized how I teach differently when I use only words, not even my hands can be used to demonstrate. Anyway, it has been an interesting experience.

So, i'm really sorry about this crazy letter but we're actually going to leave now so for this week this is what you get. I know that the church is true, I know the book of mormon is the word of God and there is not a single day that we do not need God's words in our life because it will make us hungry -- our souls. Just think about it, when your stomach is hungry you get angry easier, you are sad, you have no patience, you are weak, you lose focus on the more important things...it's probably the same with when our spirits are hungry. Feast upon the words of Christ:) Okay, that's my sermon for the day, I love you all bye.
Sister Landrum