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

Week 4, Manila MTC, Philippines

Hey everyone!

So this week was pretty good, we got to go out into the field for 4ish hours to do some proselyting, so I  went with a Filippino missionary called Elder Bangan. So just us 2 went out into the feild to Danella's home (a recent convert) to teach her Enduring to the End from Lesson 3. It went pretty good I could understand pretty much everything that was said however I couldn't really say to much cause most of the language I learned was kinda simple and I didn't know too many words/phrases for endure to the end (like i didn't even know how to say endure to the end in tagalog) but it was really fun. After that we just kinda walked round and OYM (open your mouth) so just talking to people. The area we were in was pretty much slums, like it's hard to explain without a photo which unfortunately i didn't get any. 

Being White is really good, like all the kids follow you round and hold you hand. Most of the kids don't think that i can speak tagalog so they get a bit shocked when i say hello to them hahaha. but yeah so the area was just really poor and dirty but i really enjoyed being out there. Next week we go out again but this time we go to the Quezon Mission and proselyte there (This week i was actually proselyting in my mission!).

This week Elder Golden Left for his mission in cavite, he was my apart of our companionship for 3 weeks so he's out in the field now.

Being Zone Leader has been really good for me and Perkins!

I'll tell you who's in my District, So look at the photo i attached!

So back Row, Elder Golden, Elder Afoa, me, Elder Perkins, Elder Malu, Elder Ah Ching and Brother Camiso (teacher).

Front Row, Sister Custodio, Sister Brarquiel (teacher), sister Magellanes.

90% sure I spelt all their names right but the sister's names are hard to spell :(

So that's our Dirtrict, me, perkins, custodio, magellanes are going to QC North. Malu and Ah Chinh are going to legaspi. Golden is now in Cevite and Afoa is going to Naga.

A new Batch of missionaries arrived today with Elder Dawson, they've only been here for like 2hrs so i don't really know them yet hahaha.

Anyway everything is really good here in the Philippines. I think i attached some photo's form duing the week and i think there is one of my ring, it has that wording all around it hahaha 

Love Elder Holzworth

Week 3, Manila MTC, Philippines

Hey everyone! The MTC is really awesome with the language + Food! For dessert we get ice-cream like 3 times a week at dinner, so they a soft serve machine, toppings and a bunch of cups. They say to only have on cup of ice-cream but that's never really the case hahaha. Other than ice-cream they'll give us a Philippines dessert, cream and jelly. We get that dessert maybe every other day at either lunch or dinner.

Last Friday in the arvo (so after I sent emails) they called me and my companion to be Zone Leaders, which is pretty weird as we had only been at the MTC for 2 weeks at the time! My other companion Elder Golden (we're in a trio) leaves this Wednesday for the field so he didn't get called as a zone leader but he got called as a district leader. So Zone Leader you look after the entire Zone (duh) so for me it's all the Language training missionaries here. We're in charge of running gym, roll call and leadership training meetings. The MTC Presidency also will ask us to run devotionals out of the blue hahaha so last week we got told in the arvo that we had to run a 2ish hour devotional for the zone, for that evening hahaha wasn't too hard as it was based of a 50min talk by Elder Bednar so we only had to do an hour of stuff hahaha.

I'm with Elder Perkins for the entire time here at the MTC and he's the other ZL but 1 week Elder Golden arrived and joined our companionship but he leaves this Wednesday as he already went through Provo MTC.

Most of the LTM's (language training missionaries) are either from NZ, Tonga, Samoa, Australia or the States.

Last Friday after I sent emails we went out can found this lady who makes all these rings for missionaries, so I bought one for 400peso so that'd like $12AUD? It has Philippines Quezon City North Mission engraved on the outside and then I think it has my name engraved on the inside. I ordered it last week so I’m picking it up today. There is also a janitor in the MTC who sells watches which are really nice but I’m 90% sure they're fake (brands like g shock, Ripcurl, etc.) but they are pretty decent quality and really cheap 350-450 peso's so like $10-$13 AUD!

Anyway, my favourite part of the day is Between Lunch and Dinner because we have two meals, gym at 3pm and then language trainging, online language training and additional study.

Well that's all the time I have, love to you all!

Elder Holzworth.

Week 2, Manila MTC, Philippines

Hey everyone! 

I'm having a lot of fun over here in the MTC! In the MTC we eat pretty much the same for breakfast as we would for dinner, so rice and meat. Sometimes, maybe once a week we get cereal and maybe another day we get pancakes, but most of the time it's just rice and meat hahaha. The language is coming along really well now that I'm in my second week, my companions (we're in a trio now, Elder Golden leaves for the field in 2 weeks as he has already been trained) and I can teach a lesson pretty much 90% in Tagalog.

MTC routine is pretty much eat, study, eat, study, eat, study, sleep. On P days we can go to the supermarket which is pretty much the exact same as woolies but slightly smaller and with some different brands. So last Friday after I sent emails we went out and bought junk food and stuff. They sell over here 1.5L Gatorade for like $3.50 which is pretty decent as most American things here are expensive. Like a block of Cadbury chocolate is like 1.5x to 2x the price than it is back home.

In the MTC, we focus on teaching with the Spirit. With learning a language, you can testify as deeply as you could in English so you need the Spirit to fill in the gaps of your testimony. A lot of the time we teach with our minds as we focus on speaking Tagalog but we’re trying to focus on teaching with our hears as the Spirit is the one who converts, not us.

Tagalog is a really cool language, it has so many Spanish words in it. They even use Spanish for counting. Right now in the language, I can bear testimony pretty much of anything from lessons 1-3 in Preach My Gospel. I can pray somewhat specifically for things and I’ve just started learning the First Vision!

"Ako ay nakakita ng isang haligi ng liwanag na tamang-tama sa tapat ng aking ulo, higit pa sa liwanag ng araw, na dahandahang bumaba hanggang say tio ay pumalibot sa akin."

( so thats just " I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which decended gradually until it fell upon me.")

Anyway MTC is great and it lots of fun!

Missing you all! Elder Holzworth.