This week has been pretty good. On Tuesday I had my first interview with the President. It was only like 5 minutes long. I was also able to talk with Sis. Ralph. She is super super nice! Then after the District meeting the Ap's brought in a package...and it was from me! I got Ana's Christmas package! It was great! Everyone was quite jealous haha.

On Wednesday we went on splits with the Zl's. Elder Phippen came to our area so i got the lead the area. He is really cool. He is from Salt Lake and it was really nice to work with an American Elder. We also had another dinner appointment. This time we had liver with pancit. It wasnt very good. This week we had 5 dinner appointments and lunch appointment.

On Thursday we had our lunch appointment and the tatay served his mission here in the Cauayan missions! Him and his wife are really nice and have a 6 yr old daughter who is sooo funny.

On Friday it rained like crazy here. We were teaching at the Abaya family at 4 and it started to rain really hard. And at 5 we had to be at the church to talk to the youth about preparing to serve a mission and what its like. So as we finally get the courage to go out into the rain we find that the road leading to the church is flooded and is now basically a river. I tried to stay out of it but I finally gave up and we just went right up the river haha i was soaking wet. The mutual turned out great though and many youth were there.

 Saturday was a super busy day! We had 6 lessons and a dinner appointment. It always feels great being out and serving the Lord. Some of the members we saw out on the street decided to buy us a snack so we got...chicken feet! They actually aren't that bad. When you eat them though you basically bite off a finger, bone and everything and eat all the skin and what tiny bit of meat there is and then spit the bone out.

Church was pretty boring because they speak ilicano and i cant understand a word. I dont know how to say "youre crazy" though! Bugtit ka:) Sunday night we had dinner at our Branch Presidents house. They feed us every sunday. They have a daughter who is 12 and asked if i had any younger brothers...Dallin i found your new GF! hahaha she said she wants to come to America now.

So the rat i ate was mixed into this soup stuff and i didnt know what it was till after i ate it. It just tasted like meat haha i dont know. Another thing that happened was during a lesson a goat walked into the house and just pooped all over the floor! We had a fun time chasing it out of the house.

Well thats all this week! Mahal ko kayo.

-Elder St. Gelais

 This week has been pretty good! On Wednesday my comp and i went to the mission home for a trainer and trainee meeting. It was so good to see friends from the MTC and to hear how they are doing. On sunday we had the branch mission leader go out with us. It was a great time and he helps a lot with Tagalog. The members are great too. During most of our visits they will give us soda and a snack. My favorite soda out here is Sparkle. Its like a mix of MT. Dew and sprite. As for spiritual we had a family commit to preparing to be baptized! A mom, 2 sons and a daughter. So if everything goes well they will be baptized the 2nd saturday in December.

  Yes mom i still wear my retainer every night...

  Happy Birthday Lauren!!! I cant believe you turn 11 on Saturday! I hope you have a great day and that mom and dad get you a super awesome present! If i find something here that i can send in a letter i will do that ASAP:) Happy Birthday:)

  Well the Philippines is defiantly not America...during one of our lessons the mom pulled her shirt all the way down and started to feed her baby...it was super awkward but the other American Elder said its normal. Oh I also ate some chicken intestine and some rat...they actually aren't that bad! I eat so much food here. Im not really too hungry and if anything im getting fat here haha. The other American elder is starting to make me do P90x with him every morning because he doesn't want to do it by himself. The language is alright. I still feel like im not really improving that much. Im going to start doing some different things for language study though. We have these pamphlets we hand out to people that are basically the lessons from PMG. Im gonna practice translating those every morning.

  Thats pretty much it for this week. Love you all! Oh and Dallin...Stop being a girl haha

-Elder St. Gelais

This is a literal icecream sandwich...
One of the super crazy kids from a family we teach.

Hey!

The bad part of the typhoon hit down south. We did get about 6 hours of some good rain though. It was pretty much a regular day for us.

Yes, wiping with your left is exactly what you think haha and toilet paper can get pricey so we tend to not buy it. And a bucket shower is where you have water in a bucket and you pour it on yourself to get clean. Its actually quite nice. The balot...it has a bit of crunch to it...not eating it again!

We will usually have about 5 lessons a day. Most of them are with recent converts or less active members. And the rest of the time we are just talking to people on the street. I am getting to know our area pretty well and who all the members of our branch our. Our president is pretty cool and his family feeds us every sunday night. We also had a new branch mission leader called, an RM that just got back this Wednesday. We went out with him on Sunday night and i like him a lot. He also helps me with Tagalog. All of the members are really nice though. We have a FHE tonight at a less active members house and the dinner appointments Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. Everyone here is so humble because they literally have close to nothing but are always wanting to give us a snack when we stop by to teach.

We are able to exercise every morning for 30 min. One of the Elders has P90x so we will sometimes do that. If not its usually just some push-ups. On p-days though we go to another area and play basketball for 2 hrs and then get our shopping done there since we dont have a store in our area. We also eat at a place called jolleybee which is like a Filipino McDonalds.

Here we shake everyone hand and if they are pretty old we take there hand and put it to our forehead which "blesses them" and gives respect. Little kids will also do it to us. And yes there are kids everywhere! And whenever they see me they smile, wave and yell "hello" as loud as they can. Today on our way back i was sitting on top of the tricycle and school had just gotten out so i felt like i was in a parade haha.

This week we had Zone conference on Thursday so we had to wake up at 3 and travel up north. We had Elder Anderson of the 70 talk to us. It was great and very spiritual. For lunch an American who lives here, Bro. Pete, made us all lunch! We had rice, grilled chicken, spaghetti, and a sausage sauce thing that went on top of the rice. It was so good. I also bought a carabow belt from him. Its made from the horns and looks so cool. Im going to bring one home for dad. Oh and a carabow is a water buffalo. I will send a picture. Another thing that is really cool is that people that arent members will ask us to give their sick babies a blessing because they know that we have the Priesthood of God and that we can bring about miracles. The oil and vial i got from grandpa and grandma is being put to great use. We have giving maybe 7 blessings so far. And with blessing the babies comes a great opportunity to teach and share the Gospel.

Thats pretty much it or this week. Mahal ko kayo.

-Elder St. Gelais

Its great to hear from you! Halloween sounds like it was a great time. This past week has gone by so fast. I love being out here and i love the people. The schedule is still the same.

I tired balut....super gross! You can see the head of the chick and you just crack the top drink the juice and then take bites out of the chick.
Everything else is pretty much normal-ish. We have rice with every meal though. I did have McDonalds the other day! It was awesome! We have to go to another area to get groceries because we live in the middle of nowhere and dont have stores. The town about 20 min from us has a mall so thats where we go.

My companion is from down south. He can speak some Ilicano but he is still learning. For me the language sucks! Its the hardest thing out here for me. I feel like I have adjusted to the culture just fine,( bucket showers, wiping with my left, bugs everywhere, and the food) but the language is whats killing me. I can help some what with lessons. Mostly just bearing my testimony though.

My area is basically the jungle/farm land. Its so pretty. Its supper poor though. Most people work in the rice fields or drive trycies around. A trycies is basically a dirt bike with a side car. Thats how we get from our apartment to junction where we get a jeepney. There are also intindihuns which are snack stores out of peoples houses. There is one on like every corner. I love it here! My comp can speak pretty good english so talking to him is fine. The other American Elder is from Idaho. He has been out for about 9 months. He is great and helps a lot. Ya we spend a while with them. The only time we dont is from after lunch till we get back for the night.

Halloween for them is Nov. 1 and is more of a day of the dead thing where they spend time in the graveyard. We didnt do anything special though. They start celebrating Christmas in September though. For Christmas a flashdrive would be great. My comp wants a small preach my gospel. I cant really think of anything else though.


One funny thing that happened was during p-day we were out playing basketball and two Filipinos were on their motor bikes and crashed because they were staring at a white guy hahaha it was funny, But everyone here stares at me haha and the saying here is tall, white and guapo!

Mahal ko kayo!
-Elder St. Gelais