Week 10, Sapang Palay, Philippines

Hey everyone!

So today for P-day we met up with our district and traveled 3ish hours to a place called Wawa! It is so cool there! Really beautiful place with a villiage on the water! So they use bamboo for everything and you can eat your lunch in front of a waterfall and stuff! There is also a bunch of caves there that we went to with some bats in it too so that was really cool as well! 

So some answers to Dad's three questions...

1. Tell us about the unit you live in and what facilities it has?

So pretty much we have no hot water so that means cold showers we have an iron a toilet, minus a toilet seat and the flushing mechanism, we have power which sometimes goes out, we have some fans and we have running water but it's not good to drink so we don't drink it!

2. Is your mission fun?

It's tons of fun! Even though you literally live and breath the gospel every single hour it's fun! Like it's not as boring as it people might think! I think the what makes the mission really fun is the people, like the members, the investigators and the other missionaries! Like

3. How has the Lord blessed you this week?

This week i had a really good time understanding scriptures in Tagalog. Usually its quite hard as the Tagalog in the scriptures is really deep but i was really blessed this week to be able to understand what was happening in each scripture. Like I don't understand it 100% but I understand enough to get the meaning of the scripture which is really awesome!

Also a cool scripture i read this week, Alma Chapter 38 - Alma is speaking to his son Shiblon but anyway read it with the context that you are alma's son and your father is your earthly father or your Heavenly Father! Anyway it's a really cool passage that I read this week that stood out to me! Hope you enjoy reading it!

Have a awesome week

Love
Elder Holzworth

Week 9, Sapang Palay, Philippines

Hey All!

This week was was great! Great to hear that Jalen or Elder Green has left for his 2 years!! 

Here are my 3 questions & answer's for the week!!

1. How are you going with teaching the Lesson's?

So teaching lessons is kinda hard cause it's tagalog but i say what i can and Aue covers the rest. With the Less Actives we mainly read book of mormon stories with them so i usually run them which is fun cause again we read the scriptures in tagalog so yeah hahaha sometimes i have to re-read them in english haha.

2. How is your health?

My health is pretty good! I haven't got sick really at all. I haven't drunk any water from the taps here so that's probably why I've stayed healthy.

3. How has the Lord blessed you?

This is kinda hard to think of, just cause your blessed with everything. But if i had to be specific I'd say the members we work with. Most of them are my age so we talk a lot with them (most of the time me trying to speak tagalog) and we get to joke around with them too. They also help a lot in lessons as some of them are recent converts and the others are really strong in the church and have solid testimonies. 

Anyway another thing that is weird over here is that people think I'm older than i look. So this week I asked a girl how old she thought i was, (she was 17) and she said 27........ hahaha so most people say like 21ish but 27 was just way out! I'm not sure if it's just cause I'm taller than them over here or I actually look older than 18 hahaha.

This week was Stake Conference for us which was cool cause some of the talks were in english! I'm mostly keen for General Conference next month but stake conference was good none the less as I could actually understand everything they were saying!

So our flat is really cool! We have to buy all of our water (yayy) because we can't drink the water out of the tap. It's kinda hard to explain what it looks like without any photo's so i'll try to show you next week some photos! It's got everything we need, it's just that it gets really hot all the time. In fact i don't even do my own laundry! hahaha, so I pay 120ish pesuos each week and our ward mission leader comes and does ours! So yeah I don't do laundry or make my own food hahaha

My favourite Preach my Gospel chapter is on Christlike attributes, just because those attributes makes us better people and better missionaries. Every time i read that chapter i always learn ways i can improve.

A really cool thing out here is the bakery's! They are really cheap and really good! Like ridiculously cheap!

Love Elder Holzworth!

Week 8, Sapang Palay, Philippines

Hey everyone!!

So this week has been crazy!!! One thing I forgot to mention is how the people here can't pronounce my name "Holzworth". Like they can't really say it even remotely close to how it's supposed to be said!! So yeah :(

So I'll answer three questions for you guys!

1. Who are we teaching?

2. What is our ward like?

3. What scripture has touched me this week?

So for who are we teaching, i attached our plan for teaching this week, we teach pretty much 85% of those on there (Sometimes they fall through). So yeah we do a lot of teaching. So the green ones are less actives, Red are most progressing investigators, purple are recent converts and blue are new investigators.

Our ward is really awesome! Each day we have 2-3 members working with us, there is a guy in our ward, Brother Elmer, who goes out with the missionaries 6-7 times a week for the past 24 years, he's insane (the good type)!! Some of the members are RC's of about 1 year maybe (rc = recent convert) which is quite crazy hahaha.

What scripture has touched you this week, so Ether chapter 14-15 is pretty insane, it's about how nations all perish in war and blood shed. We've used it a couple of times in lessons this week explaining about how Satan can take a hold of us. I encourage you guys to read it but it's kinda gruesome hahaha 

This week was really good work wise! We had a lot of lessons (28 which is insane)!!

This week i had a Big Mac!!!!!! it was P195 for a large big mac meal so like 6sih aud :D The best thing is that it tasted the same as they do in australia!!! It was pretty epic :D

The bad thing about emails out here is that the keyboards suck :( they're never as good as mine back home :(((

A kinda cool thing this week is that i start to suck at English yay!!!! So I mess up my sentences more in English now (as well as in Tagalog haha) So yeah sometimes i struggle to put out english but it's all goods, there will probs come a time where i can't speak english and tagalog so yeah hahahah.

So the work out here is fun! I learn so much each day!

Coming on a mission you receive so many blessings, one thing i've learnt is that there is nothing that you can never give the Lord more than what He can give you. In other words you receive more than you give. So when you choose to serve you get blessed so much. 

Have fun in Australia!

Love Elder Holzworth

Week 7, Sapang Palay, Philippines

Hey everyone!

So this week was pretty hectic, we just taught a whole lot through out the week. We have what's called 15 focus families/people which are the 15 we focus on for each transfer. Plus we have around 5ish families/people that we get as new investigators each week. So we have a lot of people to teach which means we have a whole lot of people to study for. Me and Elder Aue get along pretty well as expected but I forgot to mention last week that we share the apartment with another set of elders, Elder Waltz (American) and Elder Baylosis (Filipino). They are really cool elders, especially Waltz he's just really funny and is into gaming and all.

Food over here is really good, they have a fruit called star apple which is really nice but kinda hard to explain it's taste, but it's kinda soft on the inside hahah. They also have a drink over here called Buko Shake which is like a coconut and vanilla milkshake. If you googled "Buko Shake" you could probs get a recipe and make one at home :) 

It gets really hot here and it's gonna get hotter as we move into summer :( so at night in the flat it's like 34-35 degrees and during the day it's 37-39 degrees. The area I'm in isn't poor for the Philippines (I'd show you a photo but i can't get the camera to connect to the computer.). 

You can buy a whole lot of fake stuff over here for really cheap too :)

It's funny for lunch we get pizza and burgers 80% of the time so I've literally eaten more american food than Filipino hahaha. Another thing they have here is chicken oil which is kinda like chicken salt but a oil version that you put on meat and rice. It's really good :D

Another cool thing is that there are these little stores everywhere that sell snacks like cookies, bread rolls, pastries, soft drinks, ect. So we go can get food from them throughout the day :D

Have a great week :D

Love Elder Holzworth

Week 6, Sapang Palay, Philippines

Hey!

First week in the Field! I'm in Sapang Palay area 2 and in Sapang Palay Ward :D

This place is crazy! Really beautiful and open areas and then a bunch of slums. But this place is really nice and I love it here. Most of the time we teach probably 40-50% less actives or inactives, then 30% investigators and the rest are recent converts. We don't OYM (proselyte, like go out and find new poeple) at all really, it's just visiting and teaching all day.

Our schedule is quite insane but fun: wake up at 6:30, exercise, eat, shower and get ready. Personal study at 8am, 9am companionship study, 10am language study, 11am we go out and get lunch, midday we do my 12 week program and then from 1pm to about 9pm (most times 9:30-45) we go out to people and teach. Breakfast is just cereal here so no big problem, lunch we go out and buy something so either burgers or other street food (so rice and currys and stuff) and we usually don't get dinner, we just get something when we get back to the flat. So I haven't really cooked yet :P unless you count cereal :D

On Sunday they asked me to introduce myself and bear my testimony which was interesting because I speak tagalog with an accent (like everyone else new to tagalog) so it's hard for them to understand me casue I don't pronounce words that well yet.

So as you guys already know my trainer is Elder Aue, or as Jess and Emma know him as Bennet or Rockmelon hahaha My SMYC leader!! It was crazy when we first saw each other, all the new missionaries where stting at the front in the chapel and the trainers came and stood at the back as they arrived. Elder Aue came and saw me and was confused because he recognised me pretty well, I was just nodding like "yeah it's me" hahahaha then President Bertin told the trainers to come forward and Elder Aue just like raced up to me hahah and we just hugged <3 Everyone was kinda looking at us weird cause this poly and white guy somehow knew each other but yeah it was crazy :D

Stuff here is really cheap, you can buy street drinks for P5 (5 pesuo's) which is like 20c Australian.

Toliets over here werid too as i kinda expected, so you have a toliet bowl, a bucket, tap and the little dipper thingy.  So yeah you can work out the rest :) However I use the wipes still until i get used to everything hahah (Thanks mum).

Like i said before, everything i've eaten has been bought or it's cereal so nothing weird, yet.

So it's crazy out here I'll try to film some of the crazinessand take lots of photo's. 

The people here are really loving, on my first night here they had a FHE for me hahaha so I got to meet some of the members that were close with the missionaries. The kids here are really cool they still love to hold your hand (that's why i have sanitiser hahah) and they love it if you can touch the basketball hoop (they go crazy). They are all so shorrrrtttttttttttttttt!!! Like they are tiny here, I have to duck when entering in and out of homes hahaha and I'm just like average height hahaha.

That's about it here, I love it out here in Sapang Palay :D

Elder Holzworth

Week 5- Manila MTC, Philippines

Hey! So this week we went out proselyting again to Manila where Elder Appleby is serving hahaha he wasn't my companion for the day but at the start and end we talked which was good! This week wasn't too much different we all leave for the field this coming Wednesday so most of us part ways :( so this will be my last email until i'm assuming monday in like 10 days time. 

Our district has really bonded over the last month being here as we do so much together hahaha, we're all pretty much together all day. We're all really good friends so leaving the MTC will be pretty sad. Me and Custodio are Pinaka Kaibigan magpakailanman which translates to Best Friends Foverever Hahaha

The short time we've had in the field has been crazy, in manila my comapnion showed me a cool way to get poeple to talk, he just got me to ask people if they knew someone, so I'd just go up to pople and say "May kilala po ba kayong Connor Boyle?" which is kinda like saying "do you know Connor Boyle?" they obviously didn't but it got them talking so we got some cool referals that way hahaha.

This week President Trask (MTC pres) told me and Perkins that we can come back to the MTC whenever we're around which is awesome because usually in field missionaries aren't allowed on premises :D

Anyway next time i'll email i'll be out in Quezon City North :D Hopefully with some pics hahaha

Mahal kita lahat,

Elder Holzworth