Have a wonderful Thursday!

Family Values - Strong among Filipinos

Filipinos highly value the presence of their families more than anything. Despite the liberal influence they have gotten from the west, the family remained the basic unit of their society. This trait clearly shows among Filipinos abroad who endure homesickness and tough work just to support their families back home.

In a traditional Filipino family, the father is considered the head and the provider of the family while the mother takes responsibility of the domestic needs and in charge of the emotional growth and values formation of the children. They both perform different tasks and being remarked separately by the children. Children see their mothers soft and calm, while they regard their fathers as strong and the most eminent figure in the family.

Because of this remarkable closeness, parents sometimes have difficulties letting go of their children and thus results to having them stay for as long as they want. For This somehow explains why grandparents are commonly seen living with their children in the Philippines. Unlike the way people grow old in the west where they are provided with outside homes and care giving, Filipino elderly enjoy their remaining lives inside their houses with their children and grandchildren looking after them.

Another trait Filipinos made themselves exceptional from others is their strong respect for elders. Children are taught from birth how to say “po” and “opo” to teach them as early as possible how to properly respect their elders. These words are used to show respect to people of older level. Even adults will be criticized for not using these words when speaking with their parents or people older than them. Inside the family, the parents are expected to receive the highest respect from the children along with the elder siblings; as they are given more responsibilities to look after younger siblings when parents are not around.
Children fighting back or addressing parents or elder siblings with an arrogant tone is not at all tolerated. They are also not allowed to leave the house without their parents’ permission. Upon arriving home, conservative families expect children to practice the kissing of hands or placing their parents or elder family members’ hand to their foreheads with the words “mano po” as a sort of greeting.

Even after finishing school, Filipino children are not obliged to get out of their homes unless they want to. In fact, most of them keep close relationship to their parents by staying at least before they get married. Leaving them only happens when they really have to, but usually, at least one child, depending on his willingness and financial capabilities, stay even after marriage to support and look after their aging parents.

Moreover, Filipinos keep close connection with other relatives. They recognize them from 2nd degree to the last they can identify. As Filipinos say, “not being able to know a relative is like turning their backs from where they come from.”.

Philippines Tourist Guide

Culture

The Philippines has a unique blend of eastern and western cultures. While most of South East Asia necessarily is a blend of Chinese, Malay and Indonesian traits, Philippine culture has been marked by long periods of Spanish and subsequently American occupation.

Religion

One of the greatest impacts of the Spanish Period was the introduction of Christianity on the islands. Spanish clergy converted a large amount of Filipinos to the Roman Catholic faith. As a result, today the population is almost 92% Christian - of which an overwhelming majority of 83% are Roman Catholic, and 9% Protestant. About 5% of the population is Muslim and 3% are of Buddhist and other faiths.

Language

The Philippines is a linguistically diverse nation - there are almost one hundred and seventy two native languages and local dialects. The national language is Filipino, which is based on Tagalog. Tagalog was the national language during the American period. Filipino, with its basis in Tagalog, but containing elements of other local languages, was adopted as the national language in 1973. Both English and Filipino are promoted as official languages for the purposes of education, government and commerce. Apart from Tagalog, other dominant languages are Cebuano, Klokano, Hiligaynon, Bikol, Waray-Waray, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Kinaray-a, Maranao, Maguindanao and Tausug.

Cuisine

Philippine cuisine is as diverse as its people. There is Chinese Filipino food, such as pansit (noodles), lumpia (vegetables rolled in edible wrappers), siopao (steamed filled buns), siomai (dumplings). The Spanish introduced new flavors such as olive oil, paprika, saffron, ham, sausage and cheese into traditional food. Today Philippine food is an exotic blend of variations of Chinese, Spanish and Mexican dishes made with tropical local ingredients.

Music

Philippine music has influences as diverse as Christian religious church music, Indonesian Gamelan music and of course, the US period of occupation was significant in introducing American blues, folk and rock and roll. There was the origin of a new form of music called kundiman in the 1920s when traditional songs were sung in western ballads styles. In later times, Pinoy rock was a new form of fusion, with Freddie Aguilar being one of its most popular and successful proponents. Pinoy rock was used to motivate and unite protestors in popular uprisings in the 1980s - in fact Aguilar's 'Bayan Ko' became an anthem of the 1986 revolution.

Photos of Festival

Buchi and Rabutan "Brit's favorite foods"

Email April 20th, 2009

Hello, I checked my balance account in order to be safe and I am fairly sure I didn't use it all up...that's why I checked it, I just wanted you to know why my money is suddenly missing, we bought things for our apartment. We didn't have enough money here at the end of the month and after transfer day travels to buy all the things our apartment was lacking or that were disgusting like our mold covered half broken plates, so last preparation day we went to the mall and we bought plates and a shower curtain and a trash can and rags to wash dishes with etc. and we cleaned our apartment up all nice, it's very livable now. Don't worry, all the money I spent is refundable and the mission will give it back to me -- I just thought I would explain the great reduction in my account. In truth, it's a super nice apartment. It's my first apartment with a flushing toilet and a shower head, and there is very strong water pressure. The shower is still cold water but that's okay because we are in the deep heat of summer here (I can't believe it snowed only last week there! It's supposed to be April showers bring May flowers not April snow to kill the flowers, grabi).

Okay -- my last companion was very malambing which means very close or touchy or warm and fuzzy like, you know. As for calling each other by our first names, that's not allowed. We also are not supposed to call each other by only our surnames -- yet sometimes the American's in my district would do that and then I glare at them and ask if I am on a football team, and sometimes the Elder's in the office will call you by your first name because they see your mail and everything else all the time so they know all our first names -- but it's not really something we do or should we are Sister's and Elder's. As for my companions, let me try to remember their first names --

Sister Glazier-gay Mabalot
Sister Julie Odo
Sister Michelle Victorino
Sister Shanda Thompson
Sister Naomi Pasi
Sister LuDevina Jagnas
Sister Ruth Garcia

Sister Garcia is very good and obedient, extremely good at teaching and interacting with people (in part I expect due to having been a professor and teaching college students all day long), and loves to cook -- but we don't usually eat hot-dogs in the morning, yet we still eat hot-dogs. She is short, but not extremely short, and is from another Tagalog speaking region in the Philippines. It's nice to have a companion who speaks "real" tagalog, although hers has a lot of English in it because she's very good at English Tag-lish...because some of my other companions have different dialects and their language is also different -- but that's just what you get here if you want a truly common to all language it is actually English, the language of their government, schools, etc. and yet not even everyone knows that or is fluent in it. She corrects me when I'm wrong, which is helpful, but also tells me that I'm fluent now -- this I don't believe due to so many words I still do not know, but what makes you "fluent" anyway? There are tons of words I don't know in English and I also use incorrect English grammar and in fact probably understand Tagalog grammar better at this point than English grammar due to studying it -- hmmmm.

Did that answer all of your questions? We take a jeep or a bus if we go to district meeting and sometimes a trike if we go to far away areas but mostly we walk, as you said. I weighed myself last transfer day and one of the Elder's looked down at the scale and said "what, are you a philipina!" haha...except I'm still quite a bit larger than all of them and throughout my mission I have gained or lost eight pounds continually, I also have a bit of a gut more than before which in fact Andrea's brother warned me of because eating so much rice will go straight to your tummy even if that is not the regular palce in which you gain weight. I think I was at about 123 last I checked. So far they feed us a ton here and my companion likes cooking so I might come home with long kind of scraggly hair in need of a good styled hair cut, a slightly blotchy red face from a freakish break out that's been taking place along my jaw line for the past two months and a bit chubbier around the stomach but for the most part not really fat :) hehe who knows just don't be too shocked when you see me, I just don't know!

It's still so very far away so maybe my face will get worse or maybe improve and maybe I'll gain a lot of weight or just lose more than before due to some strange sickness I could pick up from the new area (let's hope I don't get sick) and maybe I will get so sick of my hair I'll get it chopped off at David's Salon where one of our ward missionaries works (but let's not bet on that, haha) anyway this is a lot of speculating about my appearances and kind of hilarious -- look where your question of my weight has taken us! hehe.

What is the best thing I have eaten? The cottage cheese the couples found and gave me, haha (joke) except it was really good. Ummm, there is a form of sticky rice that I really like, and pancit is okay -- I don't know if I could say I'm overly in love with their food style in all truthfulness it's not super tasty to me but it's not terrible either, I can't however think of any specific favorite dish. I really like Buchi, which is like a round ball of something sweet and also Shainghai which is deep fried pork or sometimes vegetables (kind of like an egg roll I guess) and I really like the bananas in wrappers, also deep fried. Oil is a big deal here and I expect to go back to not using it when I go home so as to help out my body a bit, haha, but I do like the things they cook using it. A fruit that I like which we don't have in the states -- rabutan which is red and has spiky like looking things on it and it's kind of like a huge grape.

Sorry -- I think I can't answer the question of whether I have enjoyed one companion more than another etc. but you can just think about it and guess for yourself and one day when I'm not here maybe I'll tell more stories, haha. We are going through our challenges of building up our investigator base and teaching lessons one all day long, but it's all good and the member's give us a lot of support. I really love our Bishop's family. We had family home evening with them last week and played games and Bishop gave a lesson then gave us an opportunity to share whatever we would like then we had dinner. After games there is a punishment. You have to give a talent if you lost. The Bishop's family loves music so they were all playing the guitar and singing and playing on their keyboard etc. -- it was very fun, I love music and playing and singing (even if I'm not particularly good at singing I love singing along and having OTHERS sing, haha).

Thanks for the letters and emails and support and hopefully all continues to go well for you there despite any trials that our economy or the evils of the world in general may bring -- we are safe in the church if we "follow the prophet," since we are "in a world where people are confused, if you don't believe me just go and watch the news..." I'm glad that is a part of a primary hymn by the way. Have you ever heard the hymns "The Time is Far Spent" or "Truth Reflects upon our senses" can I just inform you that they are two of the favorites here in the Philippines. It's very interesting, they have their own set of favorite hymns here and many are ones I don't know at all and in turn they are not familiar with some of my favorites like "Be Still My Soul." Okay, good bye for now

Love, Sister Landrum

Email April 13th, 2009 "Transfer to Darasa"

I have spent my mission life separate from the city and the busy traffic and now I'm very near it. We are still in a little town a ways away but the main street of the town is a part of what seems to be the highway into the big city so there is plenty of traffic. It is a ward here and so far seems to be very established. We don't know too much about it yet, besides meeting the Bishop's family and a couple of ward missionaries because we spent Saturday and Sunday in Lipa for general conference. Today we are here in Lipa again to buy things for our apartment because it's greatly lacking in necessary items, meaning all the plates are covered in mold etc. Oh, by the way...the reason we don't know much about the area yet is because the Elder's were taken out and sister's put in -- because we are opening the area again the assistants and Elder Cheney (my batch and office elder) took us home to Darasa.

This was actually Elder Cheney's first area, and he was there for NINE months so he was very excited that his "batch" will be opening it up again and hopefully getting the work going strong here. My new companion is straight from the Manila MTC but as the few members we have met say "hindi halata" which means it's not recognizable that she's new...she is also 22 and the youngest of eight, the fifth to serve a mission. Oh yeah, so when the Elder's got to our apartment and opened it up Elder Winn said "wow, did they TRY to make it dirty!" and all of them immediately started sweeping up trash etc. it was kind of bad news. We in turn spent much of our first day cleaning then visiting some members, especially the Bishop to get to know the ward. The next day was conference and also the next and today is Monday, preparation day. Tomorrow our work will really start and we hope to get to know our area quickly and also quickly add to our investigator pool. Conference was very good. Elder Holland's talk was like a revised version of exactly what he said to us a little more than a year ago at the MTC and where my batch got the saying "Don't you dare abandon the Savior." He added some aspects and made his talk fit better for a general audience and it was amazing to hear again. I also continue to love listening to conference while on my mission because our prophets are missionaries. Elder Uchtdorf taught the entire lesson three that we teach "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" and it was so familiar to me, everything he said, plus I learned good things that I can use to teach it myself. I most especially liked how serious and stern our Prophet was in his last speech about avoiding certain evils that will destroy our lives and spirits and the lives of those around us -- I also have come to find myself teaching these same things with gravity of heart and deep sincerity for the importance of strictly following these principles in our lives and staying far from temptation.

Back to my companion, her name is Sister Garcia, pala. She had graduated from college (they graduate very early here -- ) and is now a professor of IT at the school she graduated from, something that most cannot become without a masters, she feels very blessed to have gained that job and provided also a way for her to serve a mission. As for the Moriones festival, I thankfully was not there for Friday - Sunday. As much as it might seem like a great memory to have seen the festival itself and the people who practice self harm for forgiveness and reinact the torture that our savior went though, I have no desire to see it or have a better image of it in my mind because I do not believe in that practice. We saw the soldiers and I even took some pictures but the main things happened Friday. We experienced it in a sense due to trying to travel that day -- everything was closed! People are quiet and don't do much. I never knew that what they believe is that Christ dies again each year and then lives again, and thus a day of mourning and a day of rejoicing to follow.

I know -- we'll just have a family gathering with food etc. and then you can do a question and answer session. I figure everyone individually will want to ask me some kind of question and probably I will repeat myself about some things so instead they could just ask me when we're all together and I'll answer to them all -- who knows maybe they won't have any questions -- anyway that's in a long time so whatever you plan I'll just follow along I don't think there is much else I can do, hopefully I still won't have jet-lag.

We're really busy today with buying things for our apartment and trying to finish cleaning etc. and tonight we'll have family home evening with the bishop and then start our work tomorrow so I'm going to leave my email here for now. Oh yea, since I'm here in the city area and very close to the mission home compared to my other areas I might get my mail more often, but I don't know. Also, your package came. I actually knew that last week but still didn't have it. President called us to ask permission to open it because something had broken inside -- that would be the salsa! Oops, but thanks for the effort, don't worry I'm appreciative of the rest and was able to give the ties directly to the people who will give them to the soon to be missionaries because we were all there at transfers. I am also here where there is a mall so I just bought myself some salsa and will make myself some beans and salsa, hooray! Anyway -- that's about all for now.

Love, Britney