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.

Week 1- Manila MTC, Philippines

Hey all!

First week in the MTC!

So we landed in Darwin and stopped there for 2ish hours (some of it was spent in the plane). We then flew to Manila landed went through immigration (spelt wrong i think haha) and the went and found our luggage, me and Elder Afoa (the other elder from brissy) found another elder and sister from Syndey. We walked straight through customs...... like they didn't check anything hahaha. Outside it was packed with people!!! like so many people waiting for others so us 4 were petty lost. eventually we found a  guy with the church's name and MTC on a card and we went with him as he drove us to our hotel. As you can see the Hotel we stayed at was really nice for one a missionary and two a philippines hotel! We went out got KFC which was really cheap, so we got tons of it. Their KFC isn't that different but they have some very weird sides that i wasn't sure what was in it. Anyway we slept the night there then in the morning we headed off to the MTC which was like 15-20min away. Once there we got haircuts, more needles, some basic training in mission rules before we had an afternoon devotional. On the first day we got assigned out companions, my kasama (companion) is Elder Perkins ( there is a photo of us attached), take a guess who his dad is :P
So he's from Utah, serving in Quezon City North like me, he has a soccer scholarship and is a really cool guy and the only other white guy so it's awesome to have him as my kasama!

Second day we woke up at 6, go out to the carpark area do roll call (make sure everyone is here), then we go get breakfast which is usually something you'd eat for dinner ahahaha. after breakfast we go and get ready for the day for 30ish min (get in white shirt as we're usually in gym clothes for roll call). Then we go to our district room (i'm in Mosiah district) to do our personal study for an hour, then after that it's usually Langauge class for an hour with a teacher, then coaching with our techer (which is where she helps us in preparing lessons, so pretty much assisted compainionship study.). After coaching we have lunch. For lunch and for al meals we have so much rice. Like imagine what we amke for us 5 for dinner, we have half of that on our plate! the it's usually some beef/pork/chicken, vegetables, bread (which is sugary), fruit, milk/water and soup. After lunch w'll have some more language study ofr 1-1.5hrs then after that we have addition study where we can study what ever but we usually have some sort of task we need to study on. after that we have gym from 3-4 then dinner at like 5ish or 4:45pm. After dinner we teach an investigator which at first we throught was just a member that was doing a role play. but anyway we had to teach this guy (Brother Ken) every night for times. On the 2nd day we prepared to teach him the first lesson obviously but mostly in english as most filipino's spek english and we spoke nearly no tagalog. We got to the lesson and he spoke very little english! so we had difficulty teacing him our lesson haha. Second time we taught we prepared some tagalog phrases so he could understand key points in the lesson, but eventually we started using pictures that I drew and some object lessons to help teach. 

Thrid day we had someone form the quoroum of the seventy, Elder Meim. He ins the 6th or 7th quroum? and he's in charge of the philippines, him and his wife spoke to us for about 1.5hrs on missionary work and our purpose, he spoke really well and was really interesting! thrid day was the same as the second with all the classes pretty much but yeah.

Thrid day - Sunday. We had our own mtc branch with all the missionaries who are learning tagalog were we did sacrement meeting. For talks they choose randomly out of the audience to speak on 2 topics that they gave us during the day before! so they'll just call you and for i think it's 3min per person you have to speak on your topic, luckily i wasn't chosen :) Sunday didn't feel too much different except some of the study times are replaced with Sacrament meeting.

Monday Tuesday where pretty much the same as above.

Wednesday we ahd an MTC devotional from a member of the quorum of the 12 which we watched live from provo!

Thursday was similar to the rest except we had our last lesson with Brother Ken! After which we went back to our district room then like 20min later we see brother Ken walk into our room with while shirt black pants and a teachers tag on (he usually wore casual clothes to our lesson). He came in and spoke perfect english! So it turned out that he is one of the teachers here i the MTC, but becasue we didn't kno he was a teacher (or spoke english) we treated him like a real investigator (which we did :) we even committed him to Baptism) . But yeah so Brother Ken was actually his investigator when he was actually on his mission.

Oh and the photo's, some of the phot's are from the plane trip over, there is one of me and all of the Elders in my batch (who arrived at the MTC same day as me). There are a couple of a cemertary ofa some US and Filipino Soliders that fought in ww2, they had a cool memorial with Mary i think in this big building!. The photo at night is of Manila when we were at our hotel, there is a shot of our hotel room as well. Some photo's of my name badge too.

Anyway Love you all and i'll talk to you next week!

(btw my compainions father is Elder Perkins from the First Quorum of the Seventy :) you may remember his talks from General Conference.)

Elder Holzworth