9-5-2016

Dear Family,
Haha, you know I didn't quite realize how much I changed until you sent me those pre-mission pictures to me. I look pretty old now xP A lot of people we meet guess that I'm like 25 or 26 and then are totally shocked when I tell them that I'm 18 (now 19!!!! :D)

Thanks so much for the birthday wishes, it made me really happy because frankly I got a little homesick in realizing that this is really my first birthday away from home!! So that was crazy, but I really appreciated it :) If you wanna know my weird birthday food, it's the ice cream here... people have a lot of different tastes here. I've eaten this icecream that was some sort of weird flavor with pieces of cheese in it xD But it was fun celebrating it a little earlier with the Elders in my Zone (there are only 10 of us... and all Elders)

          Oh, I don't think I've ever felt more sad for the death of a sheep than for Figwit. HE. WAS. THE. BEST. SHEEP. IN. THE. WORLD..... so Imma miss him, but I'm happy that you guys were able to use his body in the best way possible and then that you got a good laugh about him and I both having rice guts. Which totally reminded me that that is what I'm going to eat for the first week after I get home from my mission... or I think I would die. Rice is one of my favorite foods now xD

Anyways though, this week was cool... 

So with this to start, I think that I'm going to straight up say that my worst nightmare and that it has come to light here in the Philippines.

For anyone that would really know me, I'm not exactly someone who likes to start celebrating Christmas until at LEAST December first. I don't know why, I just don't really like the whole Christmas music and trees while the holiday is still so far away.

 (Now remembering Christ is something that we should be doing all year around anyway ;) I just mean the celebration with the music, lights, etc)

But anyway, in case you want to learn of a pretty interesting cultural fact here in the Philippines is that the Christmas season starts when the months end in -BER. Which means... it's starting... I'm starting to hear Christmas music and seeing decorations for Christmas NOW... in SEPTEMBER.   I mean I wanted a least a day to somewhat celebrate my birthday, but the season has started... 110 DAYS TO CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Anyways though, that was my "worst nightmare" but other than that this week was pretty awesome! We had a really fun time in trying to teach and do all this work. Though it almost feels like we didn't seen any fruit this week because on Sunday it rained a little and so no investigators came to church and a lot of the members stayed home because of the "rain". But I guess there is always next week!

Other than that though, we've been working pretty hard here in trying to find new people to teach, which means we've been doing a lot of talking to people and having some pretty interesting experiences... I didn't know that there were so many different people in this world!

Like one example, we had a pretty awesome conversation with this one guy about how he 'used to come to our church' and how he really desired to go back one day but they immediately asked for money (which we gave him some... I mean it would have been pretty rude to do that to this guy who we literally just talked like 5 minutes to and seemed really genuine), he then lost interest, and left before we could even ask him where he lived.

Or the other time this week when we stopped to talk to someone once, they literally didn't give us any attention and walked away... literally ignored us. So being a missionary is pretty fun and we get a lot of awesome stories!

Finally, today should be pretty fun... we're going to hopefully be able to go to what they call Sky Plaza (which has this really big statue of Jesus Christ...... or a miniature of that huge statue of Jesus Christ somewhere in South America) but that should be super cool... and then there is this really beautiful waterfall nearby which we'll hopefully be able to walk to, but we'll see. And if I do get to, then there should be some pretty awesome pictures next week :)

   It really touched me about that story with Bro. and Sis. M.... but I don't think of it as sad. Because being married in the temple means that they only have the veil between them and will be together again one day. I think that that sort of hope from the gospel is one of the greatest parts of this message... that families CAN be together forever. 

Anyway though. Hope y'all have an awesome week and fun time preparing for Christmas >:) Love you guys so much, and I hope that this week works out better than last week :)

~Elder Morris

Ps- OH. Totally had an awesome time this week at the A family home. (Their oldest son is our new Branch mission Leader) and I got to use this big piece of wood to knock down coconuts. We then had a super delicious drink later :D