Well so i made it to the Philippines everyone! and i couldn't be more excited to finally be in my Mission!!!!! It is freaking hotter than hot here and the humidity just makes everything worse! haha everyday when i go outside it doesn't take more than like 15 minutes to start sweating.... pero! I love it here and it has been so amazing to be here! There is a 14 hour time difference between here and Utah so right now it's the 29th and is 6:20 pm and i get to leave at 4:15 on the 30th to my actual mission area! so for all of you that will be the 29th back in Utah pero(but) I can not wait to go out and to get to know more about the people here and the culture! When we got off the plane it was a huge culture shock driving back to the MTC here and honestly my heart broke because of how bad it is here.... :) don't worry i'll send pictures when i get the chance this week cause my camera is charging currently at the moment for tomorrow and because it was almost dead... but the food here is super super good! yes there are still some things that i will not eat quite yet mainly the fish that they served here at dinner our first night we got here at the MTC pero(but) i have tried some other things here that you'd look at and just think nope not for me! like there was this stuff called bilobilo that i tried and it was good but super weird... It had like jack fruit in it and banana and sweet potato and pearls ( boba beads) and some coconut milk yes it sounds good and it kind of was but it looked super weird but we just said what the heck and went for it! Also there was some other things that i tried that i didn't bother asking what it was because i didn't want to know what i was eating haha all i knew was that i was hungry and it looked good and it was until i got some bone. which is a very common thing here out in the Philippines! :)  So i had the most amazing time and experience the other day.... I got to go out and tract and teach a lesson for the first time out in the actual field of Manila with the tagalog speakers in the area! i had such an amazing time :) it was the best feeling i've ever had! so first we went and planned what we were going to teach and we had 3 people that we were going to teach and after that we headed out but we only got to teach one person because we ran out of time till we had to go back but just being able to teach that one person was the best feeling in the world even though i couldn't say much cause it was in tagalog but so we took these things called jeepneys don't worry you''ll all get pictures of what these are and some may already know ;) pero(but) so we took that and then walked for about 20 minutes in what seemed like the middle of nowhere and just down a bunch of alley ways and we finally got to this little shack that sold like snacks and what not but i thought my companion for the day was just wanting to get something from there until we sat down and he started to talking to the person inside the shack and that's when i realized oh this is the investigator we are teaching today! So we started talking for a bit and the kid was really sweet and funny and his Nanay(mom) was the sweetest thing ever! she was talking to my companion for the day and told him "Oh i wanna see the white american!" so she comes over to the window thing and takes one look at me and just says "Oy very very guapo!" which means handsome and all i could really do was just kind of laugh and try not to blush super bad haha but she asked me if i spoke any tagalog and i said indipo (nice way of saying no) so i told her in Ilonggo that i speak english and Ilonggo and so she said oh i see well Mahal Kita( i love you) like you are my son and you better Mahal Kita me like i'm your mom! and she said it again because i didn't know what to say but the second time i told her that i will be able to do that :) but she was the sweetest thing ever! I love the people here so much! but carrying on haha so we started to teach this kid named Jarenz about the Restoration more like reviewing it but we finally got to the Book of Mormon and started to teach about that and again i wasn't able to say much because of the fact i don't speak the National language here but i guess the Jarenz was asking my companion which is native by the way if Joseph Smith was a treasure hunter since he went to go find the Golden Plates and i just laughed a little bit about that i mean my companion didn't tell me that until after the appointment but so after we had taught about the Book of Mormon my companion looked at me to bear my testimony in English since the Jarenz spoke it and so i did and before that he did ask about my arm since it is Bawal( forbidden, not allowed) pero i was bearing my testimony about the Book of Mormon and how much it had helped me in my life and has helped me to get here where i am now and so forth he looked at me and pointed and said " that, that's exactly what i want i want to be able to have a testimony as strong as that and to be able to have that in my life and to be able to show people how important it is" and he was telling my companion things like he is trying really hard not to cry right now and i was able to understand the gist of that and the rest of the lesson but he had started to tell my companion all these things that were wrong in his life and that he wanted to be able to have the Gospel and to be able to start over new and Jarenz was so grateful when my companion gave him a Book of Mormon to read! he was just so overwhelmed with joy! But it was seriously just one of the best experiences of my life and i will always remember and cherish that moment my first time going out and teaching because even though i wasn't able to say much to Jarenz i was able to say what needed to be said and to let him know that our Heavenly Father loves him and even though i had just met him that i love him too and it was just so amazing to see how powerful and how meaningful it was for him to hear those words and to just hear my testimony. I'm not gonna lie when we went there it didn't seem real to me up until that point where i had to talk because i was just thinking oh this is like teaching my teacher back in the Provo MTC and then it would hit me that no this is real life and this is a legit investigator and I'm just so grateful for that moment to be able to go and share a message with someone who doesn't know about the Gospel because i have been so anxious to do it for the past 7 weeks now! but i can not wait to start going out and doing that in my own mission area tomorrow! woooohoooo!!!!!! Wish me luck guys! Pray for me :) also i got my first referral the other day in TRC we were teaching a Filipina that is from my mission and told me that she wants me to go and if i am in the area to go and teach her Nanay(mom) :) and i was more than happy to go do it because after hearing her story about how she came into the church and all that i felt the need to ask if there was anything i could do to help her and she said yes once you get to Iloilo if you are in the area go and visit my mom and teach her about the Gospel and i could tell it was important to her so i told her i would and got her mom's address :) also she's gonna give her mom a heads up about us coming! :) alright mas parte sa Philippines! ( more about the) So i love it here so much more than the Provo MTC even with how hot it us, tungod(because) you get to do so much more and experience real life things like for our practice teaching things we just get to go the Manila Temple since it's right across the street which by the way is super super beautiful! I'll send photos of it as well and a video with it :) but we get to go there and just walk around the temple and try to find people that speak Ilonggo to teach them and to just get to know them better and share a short little message with them and even though a lot of the time they only speak English and tagalog we still do the same and just talk to them about there families and things like that but it is such an amazing experience to go out and to just share a simple message with people :) all the Filipino's here look at me and just say Guapo 24/7 it's funny cause we do it back with them and they just get shy kind of and say it back and walk off quickly but they are all just super friendly and loving! So as we were going to immigration earlier today we almost got in about 4 or 5 car recks because of how bad traffic is here and cause there are like literally no traffic laws here.... so lets hope i don't get injured by a car out here! but as we were driving it's just so sad to see how many people live out on the streets and have absolutely nothing.... there was this adorable little boy sitting on the curb just in some shorts just sitting there all dirty and even though he had nothing he sat and waved to the cars as they passed by with a big smile on his face and we kept driving and just saw so many people that were on the street and had nothing and it was so sad because this one mom was washing her baby with what looked like the last of her water that she had for the day to clean her baby and it was just so heart breaking to see..... but also another cool thing we saw that i really wish i got a picture of were these kids sitting on the side of the street with this really old dirty mattress was they were using it as a tramp and were just having the time of their life and it was so freaking cute to see and to watch them while we sat in traffic! :) well that all that i can think off right now at the moment :) i am still trying to get used to the time switch here! and i feel like i'm about to pass out! pero kon ako(but if i) did forget something i will make sure that i say it when i can email again :) which i don't know when that will be but it may be shortly... depend's with my mission president :) but Palangga Ko Kamo (i love you all!!!!!!!!) All the way from across the world!

Palangga,

Elder Merrill :)

Ayyy Kamusta Ka???? So after a 34 hour day of traveling and 16 of those hours were flying from LA to Hong Kong pero(but) ako(i) finally made diri(here) sa Philippines! so yes i made it here safe and sound :) don't worry! I had a good time on my first plane ride ever in my life and wow flying for 16 hours is not very fun... get's boring fast but we made use of our time and also got some really cool photo's of the sun rising while we were flying into Hong Kong by the way very beautiful there and oh my gosh you guys the Philippines is so freaking gorgeous even though it is hotter than hot here. it's so freaking bad, I stepped off the plane and wanted to get back on because of how hot it is here... i wish i was in the cold still haha but it will get better :) but also so sad to see... we were flying over it and just looking out the window of the plane you could see all the tin houses but it still is so beautiful and the people here are all so friendly and just absolutely amazing! we went and talked to some people at the Manila Temple and they are honestly the sweetest people ever! i love them already and i've only been here 8 hours but i'm so excited to go proselyting tomorrow and to get to know them better! but i can't wait to write you all and show you the pictures from the trip here and of the Temple it's gorgeous and i especially can't wait to tell you about my experience teaching for the first time!!!!  :) talk to you all on Tuesday! so technically Monday night for all of you! Halong(take care) Palangga Ko Kamo(I love you all)!!!!!!!!!

quick little message but this Easter I want you guys to watch these to videos and want to invite you all to ponder on these videos and to take a moment to sit down as a family and pray and thank Heavenly Father for the blessings we have and to just ponder in your hearts all the many wonderful things we have in our life and i want you all to try and do something this Easter to make the Sabbath Day more Holy and to think of Jesus Christ and to focus a little bit more on what you can do through out the week to become closer to Him and to think of all that he did for us so we can live with our families and live with our Father in Heaven again. :)

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-00-1420-because-of-him?category=topics/easter&lang=eng

https://www.mormon.org/easter?cid=HP_SU_3-13-2016_dMIS_fSPC_xLIDyL1-A_

This was the coolest thing ever So we do this thing called TRC it's where we go and teach members lessons in only Ilonggo and it's very hard but so this past two weeks we have been skyping with members that are Filipino and we ran into this lady that we taught over skype that was in the Philippines at the temple today and got to talk to her and meet her family but it was so cool because she thanked us for our lesson's we taught her and it was just such an awesome and amazing experience before i get to leave!!!! :

Well everyone this is it! First off let me say Happy St Patrick's day! totally didn't know that was last week until one of my teacher's said something about my green tie.. That just goes to show you how little we know about the world here on missions :) it's all good though it's all good at least i'm remember now to say it! Also Happy Easter everyone!!!! i will not be in the United States for it... but i'm super excited to be in the Philippines celebrating my first holiday!!! so i have 22 hours left here in the United States and it's just blowing my mind that i'm gonna be flying to the Philippines and not to mention but flying for my very first time!!!! so wish me luck haha :) but it's so crazy that my time here in the MTC is up and that i'm already getting ready to go teach the people in the Philippines!!!! I'm so excited to go out and serve the Lord and to share the Gospel with the people there! the last like 2 days our teacher's have been showing us pictures of their mission's and it's just made me so much more excited to get out there and to meet the people! and its crazy to thing that a week into the actual mission field and it will have been 2 month's down! and 22 month's left out in the field! So this week has been a bit harder because you know we've been saying goodbye to everyone like our Branch President, Teacher's, Zone but also being sick makes your week go by a lot slower here and so i've been sick for the past week with a cold and it sucks cause i ran out of cold medicine during the middle of the week so like i haven't been able to really get much better so hopefully just by tomorrow i will start to feel better! ;) also very beginning of my last week my finger got jammed and it's still in the healing process but i found out the hard way that volleyball can be dangerous ha :) but it's all good it's made me learn how to use my left hand more for basketball and volleyball but so if this email is shorter it's because i only have 3 fingers on my right hand at the moment and cant really type as fast! but i just wan't to thank you all for everything you have done for me and i will miss you all so much over the next 22 months but I know that it's my time to go out and serve the Lord! I have never felt so close to my Father in Heaven and it's so important that we do all that we can to stay close with our Heavenly Father and to do everything we can to exercise our faith because faith is such an important thing even if we don't know when thing's will happen we still need to have faith and keep building our faith and to become more converted unto Christ. The best way to do that is to always pray and read the Book of Mormon and to ask Heavenly Father with a sincere heart and open mind to help us but the Book of Mormon is one of the biggest things in our lives and we need to be making sure that we are reading it everyday because when we start doing that we will see so many blessings in our lives and will feel so much closer to our Heavenly Father and Prayer is such an important thing for us to do as well because that is how we are able to communicate with our Heavenly Father and are able to receive answer's and the best way for our faith to grow even more and i know if strive to do all that we can to do these things that God will bless us in so many ways and It's so important that we make sure to read the Book of Mormon and Pray as a family because it's going to be one of the best things you can do as a family and will strengthen our families so much! But i just wanna say that as we build our faith in Christ and strengthen our families by strengthening our Testimonies that we will see so many blessing's in our life and it will be an anchor for us and will help us become more converted and come closer to Christ. Palangga Ko Kamo ( i love you all) Halong Kamo ( take care everyone) you're all the best and i can't wait to share my experience of the Philippines with you guys next week! 

Palangga,

Elder Merrill 

Well everyone, It's my final week here in the MTC and in the U.S!!!!! Next Wednesday at 12 i'll be headed off to the Salt Lake airport and by 5:45 i'll be flying off to LAX airport and will be on my way to Hong Kong at midnight! Guys, I have over a 24 hour flight! it's gonna be one long plane ride but hey at least it will make up for never flying before! ;) It's so crazy to see how fast time has flown by and i haven't even been out to the mission field yet! It totally blew my mind when i got my flight plans last Friday because i was not ready for it at all but as the week has gone by I've really come to realize that my time has come and even though i don't feel prepared to go out into the field and feel like i don't know any of this language that I know that i will be blessed and i will be able to go out there and share the Gospel with the people of the Philippines and to be able to show them how much God loves them!!! but i know that it's gonna be hard but i'm ready for all of it and am so excited to go and love these people with all my heart. It's gonna be weird being out of the country for 22 months but It's gonna be such an amazing experience and i can't wait to share the stories and pictures i'll get within the first week of being there and over the next two years! :) Bare with me guys i don't really want to translate this whole thing but if any of you want to you can try and use google for it if they have it but im gonna bear my Testimony in Ilonggo. Kabalo Ako nga Pulod sang Diyos nga matuod kag kabalo ako nga palangga kita sang diyos kag kabalo ako nga tuman kami mga kasuguan kita mabugay kag kabalo ako nga kita magpalapit sang Diyos kag Si Jesukristo. Kabalo ako nga pagsunod kita sang Diyos, siya mabulig sa aton magpalapit mga pamiliya naton. kag kita paghinusol kami matinlo kag kami will be forgiven kag kabalo ako nga sang matuod nga simbahan kag Si Joseph Smith sang matuod nga propeta kag palangga ko kamo kag pwede kita mabuhi sa iya liwat kag kabalo ako nga ang ebanghelyo nga matuod kag kinahanglan kita sang ebanghelyo kag Jesukristo sa aton mga buhi kag kabalo ako nga ako matuod representative Ang simibahan ni Jesukristo sang mga santos sa ulihing mga adlaw kag kita manlunluwas mga buhi. Sa ngalan ni Jesukristo Amen. I love you all and im so glad to have all of you in my life at this time and to share this wonderful experience of my life with all of you and to go and share the love and Gospel for the people in the Philippines, ako nabatygan( i feel) so blessed to go to the Philippines and i can't tell you how happy it makes me to be going next week and to just see the smiles on their faces when i can go and share with them things about our Savior. I love you all and i will talk to you all next week the day before i fly out! Halong( take care) Palangga ko kamo( i love you all) :) Palangga, Elder Merrill

Final week!

Well everyone, It's my final week here in the MTC and in the U.S!!!!! Next Wednesday at 12 i'll be headed off to the Salt Lake airport and by 5:45 i'll be flying off to LAX airport and will be on my way to Hong Kong at midnight! Guys, I have over a 24 hour flight! it's gonna be one long plane ride but hey at least it will make up for never flying before! ;) It's so crazy to see how fast time has flown by and i haven't even been out to the mission field yet! It totally blew my mind when i got my flight plans last Friday because i was not ready for it at all but as the week has gone by I've really come to realize that my time has come and even though i don't feel prepared to go out into the field and feel like i don't know any of this language that I know that i will be blessed and i will be able to go out there and share the Gospel with the people of the Philippines and to be able to show them how much God loves them!!! but i know that it's gonna be hard but i'm ready for all of it and am so excited to go and love these people with all my heart. It's gonna be weird being out of the country for 22 months but It's gonna be such an amazing experience and i can't wait to share the stories and pictures i'll get within the first week of being there and over the next two years! :) Bare with me guys i don't really want to translate this whole thing but if any of you want to you can try and use google for it if they have it but im gonna bear my Testimony in Ilonggo. Kabalo Ako nga Pulod sang Diyos nga matuod kag kabalo ako nga palangga kita sang diyos kag kabalo ako nga tuman kami mga kasuguan kita mabugay kag kabalo ako nga kita magpalapit sang Diyos kag Si Jesukristo. Kabalo ako nga pagsunod kita sang Diyos, siya mabulig sa aton magpalapit mga pamiliya naton. kag kita paghinusol kami matinlo kag kami will be forgiven kag kabalo ako nga sang matuod nga simbahan kag Si Joseph Smith sang matuod nga propeta kag palangga ko kamo kag pwede kita mabuhi sa iya liwat kag kabalo ako nga ang ebanghelyo nga matuod kag kinahanglan kita sang ebanghelyo  kag Jesukristo sa aton mga buhi kag kabalo ako nga ako matuod representative Ang simibahan ni Jesukristo sang mga santos sa ulihing mga adlaw kag kita manlunluwas mga buhi. Sa ngalan ni Jesukristo Amen. I love you all and im so glad to have all of you in my life at this time and to share this wonderful experience of my life with all of you and to go and share the love and Gospel for the people in the Philippines, ako nabatygan( i feel) so blessed to go to the Philippines and i can't tell you how happy it makes me to be going next week and to just see the smiles on their faces when i can go and share with them things about our Savior. I love you all and i will talk to you all next week the day before i fly out! Halong( take care) Palangga ko kamo( i love you all) :)

Palangga,

Elder Merrill

One Month!

Well everyone I've officially been here in the MTC for one month now and it still seems super weird to me tungod(because) it seriously seems like it was just yesterday i was saying goodbye to everyone but I've had such an amazing experience here and have learned so much from all the people I've met and from my Zone's and my Branch Presidency and teacher's! I'm doing much better this week( thank goodness) haha but my old zone flew out last week and out in the Philippines! it was hard at first honestly but once we met the new zone that came in after them are super amazing and I'm so glad that i get to serve and be an example for them for the next 3 weeks! :) It's been a long week but we've gotten through it and everything is back to normal and being good :) the language is still a bit hard to get down but i feel like I'm finally starting to get the hang of it kind of... there is just so much to learn and not enough time to learn it all!!!! it seemed like 6 weeks was gonna be forever but time just flies by in here when you're serving the Lord!!! Well i wanna take some time to talk about family today tungod(because) this week I've been pondering about family and have had some pretty amazing talks this week about families and that we need to bury our weapons(sins) if we want to teach our kids to live by the word of god and to have happy families and I've been doing a lot of lesson planning on families this past week because of two of my investigators and its been easy for me i feel like because family is such a big thing in my life and they mean the world to me!!! even the people that aren't technically related to me or are friends i still consider them family and its so amazing to see how much the gospel and our Heavenly Father blesses up by giving us families and to be able to have this amazing opportunity to live with them forever! I know that families are one of the biggest parts of God's plan for us and they're such a blessing even though if at times it gets hard or something wrong happens as long as we Pray with an open mind and a sincere heart that we will know what to do to be able to help our families out and honestly everyone family prayer is sooo important! so i want to challenge you all to have family prayer at least twice a day! but definitely have family prayer at night every night because it helps bring families together so much and it builds bonds with each other and strengthens us so much! I received such an amazing letter this week from my little brother Christopher, I can't begin to tell you how happy i was when i read his letter from him. I was smiling from ear to ear and i was just overpowered with the spirit that i just starting to cry because of how happy i was to hear from him and to know that he is thinking about me and that I'm such a big inspiration to him and when i got his letter i was confused cause it was out of the blue and was in a package from my Aunt but when i read that i just knew instantly how happy he is and that Heavenly Father is looking over him and helping him come over his trials in life and i knew that my whole family was being watched over by Heavenly Father and that Heavenly Father is watching over all of our families and is looking out for all of us and helping every single one of us! I can't tell you how much it means to me to be able to know that i can be with my family for all eternity and to know that all of us can live with our families for eternity. :) Make sure that you're always praying for your family and to thank Heavenly Father for them because they play such a big role in our lives and we need to show them how much we love them even if they can be a pain in the butt sometimes they are everything and this Gospel is true and it helps bring families closer than ever. Sangalan Ni Jesukristo Amen. Palangga Ko Kamo!!!!! ( i love you all) 

Palangga, 

Elder Merrill

alright so this week has been a bit crazy! there's been so much going on within this last week!!! so pretty much to start off the week I learned that it's not a good thing when you forget that you're supposed to have a lesson planned for your "investigator" and you don't have one so you put one together in 5 minutes.... Ya it's a terrible idea so don't do it!!! learned that one the hard way also learned that its very useful to wright those things down in your daily planner helps a lot! but ya so i had forgot we had to do that because we had been busy the previous week and we go into class and our teacher/ "investigator" asked us if we were prepared to teach him and me and my Kaupod (companion) had told him no that we forget we were supposed to do that so pretty much he was pretty pissed about it and definitely made us regret it tungod(because) as soon as we wen't in to teach him he wouldn't even let us in the door... but we finally got let in there and we were teaching on the Pagpanumbalik (the restoration) and as soon as we got to talking to him about prophets is when he let us have it... He kept asking us questions that we didn't know how to answer yet and so he asked like what are prophets and so i did my best to explain to him what prophets were and after that i told him who Thomas S Monson was and then he asked why don't we have prophets today? That one was the hard one to explain in Ilonggo... and he never really listened to what i had to say pero(but) our next lesson with him we were prepared and answered all of his previous questions and now hes going to church and has a baptism date for the 20th!!!! so it all worked out really good :) Also second.... this was probably the worst part of the week... All of my Photo's got deleted from my camera!!!! Oh my goodness i was ticked about that one pero(but) its ok dont worry i got more photo's that i took for you guys and made sure i got plenty of them! 3rd. I had TRC for the first time last thursday so this thursday will be my second time but TRC went really good! our lesson was really good and the people we taught thought me and my companion had been here for 5 or 6 weeks and were shocked when we told them it had only been 2! but it was such a wonderful experience and it was so different and felt so much more real! i seriously cant wait to get out into the mission field and to be able to teach the people in the Philippines even though they speak way to fast and i still struggle with knowing how to speak and understand the language but there was a Philippino here that spoke to us in Ilonggo and wow i felt so unprepared to leave in 3 weeks! So I got made Zone Leader this past sunday so i thought that was something really cool and felt super happy about that!!!! :) haha now time to shoot to be a zone leader in the field ;) but it was really cool and the branch presidents wife was telling me a story today about how when she was thinking about the new zone leader that my face popped into her head and she went and told her husband about it and said to him that she knows that i need to be made the zone leader and i guess he had prayed about it and had the same feeling so i thought that was something really astig!(cool) 1 last thing that i can think of... the 3rd week in the MTC sucks honestly because i guess its the week that everyone just ends up having like a mental break and we got to experience that! its mainly just because thats when the language gets the hardest and it really just sinks in because you only have 3 more weeks left until you're shipped off to the field pero(but) wow. it is real and it was probably the hardest trial i've had yet here at the MTC 

Ok so honestly there wasn't a whole lot that happened this week but the things that did happen were super AMAZING, Alright so first off I'm super glad that you all got my letter and the pictures i sent out next week. 2nd so we had a devotional last Tuesday and you'll never guess who was our speaker. Ronald A. Rasband!!!!:) he gave us an amazing talk, His talk was on one of his older ones from 2010 about Missionaries and he was telling us about his experience with Eiring and how he went and helped out with the process of how they select where missionaries go and it was really cool to actually hear how they do that i mean i've been told that before Pero(but) it's just always a lot cooler when you get to hear the actual experience the Apostle had!!! Alright 3rd, So we taught our 5th lesson with our "investigator" kag(and) he agreed to be BAPTIZED!!!! my companion and i were super happy to hear that he had prayed about what we had taught was true and that he wanted to get Baptized! honestly we were both a bit surprised that he said yes tungod(because) indi kabalo kami(we didn't know) if he even understood us half the time we were teaching him a lesson because our language is just super rough. Pero(but) he made a video for us and he told us that we did an amazing time even though there were times that he couldn't really understand what we were saying he still got our message and could feel the palangga kami(love we) had for him and whenever we taught him even though he didn't know what the espiritu santo(holy ghost) was he still felt something super strong every time we taught him a lesson. This week we started teaching our second investigator and its been going really well so far granted we've only taught her one lesson but we will be teaching her again tomorrow and will have another investigator as well for tomorrow so we'll be having to tudlo(teach) 2 investigators starting tomorrow.... Im malipay gid(very happy) about it pero(but) its gonna be hard tungod(because) i feel like there is so much that we still need to learn kag(and) it can just get a bit overwhelming! We started to learn sentence structure in Ilonggo yesterday and oh my gosh. It's the most complicated thing in the world, We sound like yoda trying to talk haha tungod(because) we have to put it in the right sentence structure in english first then translate it to ilonggo and it's just absolutely confusing. I feel like my head might explode from learning so much of the language already and then throwing the sentences in that mix is indi maayo(bad) i go home from class everyday with my head throbbing from all of the information we end up learning but its good cause its showed me how blessed we are and how real the gift of tongues is! because 8 days in the MTC i already have learned about 20 sentences maybe more and about 300+ words sa ilonggo! crazy right?? but other than that its been a pretty ordinary week and just been busy here learning the language and how to teach :) but im doing maayo gid(great) i cant believe its been 2 weeks already and starting up on the 3rd week of the MTC schedule so that means only 3 and a half more weeks till im out in Philippines!!!! im so excited for it and i can't wait to get out in the field! Well that pretty much all i've got for this week pero(but) i do have some photot's for you all :) talk to you all next Tuesday!!!! Palangga ka kamo!!!! (i love you all)

MTC First week

Kamusta everybody!!!! that means hello for everyone that doesn't speak this crazy language ;) haha well so I've officially made it through my first week at the MTC and its been way amazing being here and i love it! yes it can be very stressful especially when the first day you jump right into learning the language and have no clue what the teacher is saying and your having to run around all day but its been super good withing the third day i had to teach an investigator with my kaupod (companion) in Ilonggo and we had 2 hours to study our lesson and translate it to our language and we had the whole lesson planned out but as soon as we walked into that room our minds went blank. I felt so lost trying to teach a lesson in Ilonggo but we were able to do it and get our message across to him!!! We've taught him 2 more times since that and have one last time but the other two lessons went a lot better and we even might have him on the hook to get Baptized!! haha dont ask how we got to that point cause half of the time we didnt know what the heck we were saying to him or what he was saying to us... all we know is he said OO(yes) a lot and that he felt the spirit when he read the Libro Ni Mormon( Book of Mormon) for us and read about the Plan of Salvation! but its been such a crazy week i never knew that id be able to learn as much as i know about my language in just a week of being here at the MTC like i can Magpagamuyo (Pray) in the language and say my Testimony and its hard to get all of it down but i absolutely love learning it and teaching lessons in the language because to me its shown me how much the Spirit helps us in times like that and how real the Gift of Tongues is because some of the times we dont know whats going on but somehow we know what our Investigator is saying to us and he understands what we are teaching and understands our Mensahe (message) that we leave him with and knows that Nga Magtuod( its true) but im so glad i finally get to write you all and send you guys pictures of my first week here!!! i miss you all but im having a good time here even though im anxious to get into the actual mission field in the Philippines!!!!!! but that will come soon enough :) also feel free to write me whenever or ask questions and go to DearElder.com and ill get your guys emails that day and can read them so if you have any questions or wanna talk go ahead and ill figure out what to write to you all ;) Palangga Ko Komo!!!!!!!!!( I Love You All)