NOVEMBER 14, 21,

I am in a new area!  I am in a town called Carmen.  My new companion is great. His English is good to, however he is tough sometimes to understand still. He is a great teacher though.  He is from up by Manila. My new area is still very bukid, it feels very disorganised.  There is not as much stuff here as my last area sadly, but oh well, I will get by. The typhoon was actually very lame, it missed us, so we just got wind, not even that much rain. There are downed trees in some spots but as service goes, there really isn’t much anywhere around me. So ya, that about it. 

We have one investigator named Joel. He is a sweet guy, he is 40s i think. Anyways he aways calls us brud and is always super happy to see us. He has agreed to baptism, but his wife doesn't live at home, she works somewhere else and isn't ever home so he is waiting to decide if they should get baptised for her permission too. I hope so. So another family we visit is a single mom and her daughter. She is 9, and her name is Rhea mae. The mom is a recent convert, and now we have been teaching Rhea Mae so she can be baptised too. She is so sweet, and so shy too. I feel like she is sorta my sister. We were talking with her about school then she totally opened up about being bullied by a girl and boy, and i totally was ready to go beat up that boy, lol, we sorta joked i would go get him, hahaha. She is so shy though, so it was super unexpected. During lessons she is quite hard to get her to answer because she is so shy, and she is still quite young. She is getting more comfortable every time though, and she is scheduled to be baptised on January 10. So that will be good. So those are a couple of our focuses right now. We see them about 3 times a week. 

So did I mention about how i see out into the ocean several times a day, from our apartment. You cross the road, walk 20 steps around some houses and then you are on beach. There are a bunch of resorts around here too, but they are all fenced off so you can’t see into them. Maybe one day i will stay at them. Oh, and i don't know if i have told you this yet but I am called gwapo, or handsome/good looking  every single day all the time. My investigators call me it, workers at stores tell me it in check out, people always stare at me, I am always being told people like me.  It is quite the experience. Whenever I get called joe or americano by guys or little kids, I say, "wala, filipino ko" or no, I'm a filipino. Haha, it is always super crazy mind blowing to so many people i can speak the language, or a bit of it. But ya, its an interesting experience. I was talking with Elder Albar today about how literally everything I know is different here. Climate, people, culture, food, money, literally everything, even the time of day, is different than Canada. 

So beautiful here!