I Think About You All A Lot Every Day

From Alayna...this is Frasier's email from 10/15/17. We should hear from him again tonight! I'm a week behind due to traveling in Peru. He emails on his Monday mornings which are our Sunday nights. It has been fun to be able to go back and forth asking questions, etc. Here is an excerpt from his little back and forth with Troy and me. He also sent a bunch of pictures that his mission president, President Hiatt took, which are really cool! In a bit, you will read his full letter that he sent for me to post.

My companion and I were blessed enough to be chosen to go and teach with Elder Schmutz of the Quorum of the Seventy. He was in town just for a stake conference and was staying at the mission home. I got to go and teach 3 lessons with him and President Hiatt. Elder Schmutz was the one that said the closing prayer of the Sunday afternoon session of General Conference. It was pretty awesome! Out of the 170 something missionaries here, he decided to choose me. A brand new missionary who can't speak the language. The assistants were the ones who called us and told us that he was here and wanted to go out with us. They said that he told them, "I was thinking about going out with you elders, but I decided not to. Will you call these 2 (Elder Idorot and I) and tell them I want to go out with them.

Official Letter from 10/15/17

(Added by Alayna: I told him about me watching the Utah/USC game in the airport in Peru and how they lost by trying for a 2-point conversion. This next bit is in regard to that.)

I think about you all a lot every day. I miss you a ton.

That's a bummer Utah lost. It sounds like they should have just gone into overtime. I don't know if anyone here would even know what football is, so that would make sense that people in Peru would be confused. Ha ha! They all like basketball here and everyone is wearing knock-off NBA jerseys. I've been asked a few times if I play basketball because I'm from America and what my favorite team is. It'll be nice when I get home to actually see a football again.

It still feels kind of weird knowing that I am in a different country on an island. It is not too weird though. I'm adjusting to the food. I actually cooked myself rice for breakfast one morning which means I am at least somewhat adjusting. The 2 times I have personally tried to cook rice it hasn't quite worked out right. One was like soup, and the other had rice all stuck around the edge of the pot. I think I will get pretty good at cooking rice at some point though. A lot of the food is really good. Definitely not American food though. I bought pancake mix and bread and cheese, so I have been having at least some American food. But when I have had my grilled cheese a couple of times I have eaten it with rice.

The people have kind of been an adjustment as well. Most of the people I come in contact are way nice and always excited to see us. The older people will say hi to me, I will say hi to them, they know I don't speak Tagalog and I tell them that, but they still just go off in Tagalog and I have no idea what they are saying most of the time. It's all good though. The main adjustment though is with my companion. I don't know if it is just after I spend time with people I just find faults in them or they can only stand me for so long, but that has been the hard part I guess. I think my companion is maybe a little bit weirder than most other Filipinos, but I don't know. Some things just don't come across and that is what is hard. One example would be this morning. We worked out. I ran for 40 minutes and he was doing something. Afterward, I told him he could shower first, but he said he already showered. I tried to explain to him that if you shower and then work out afterward, that does not mean your clean. You have to shower after you work out. He also gets up like an hour early, only eats rice, drinks hardly any water, and then doesn't understand why he is always tired. I don't know, its just weird getting used to a totally different culture. We have gotten in a couple of little arguments as well. One started because we were shopping, I asked him what a certain type of beef was. His response was "its beef". I replied in a very reasonable and non-angry way "I know that, but what is it." He all the sudden just stopped talking to me and seemed really mad. He said that I am "always snobbish and think that I know everything better than anyone else" all because I said, "I know that". Another time we were setting goals of how we can more effectively teach certain people. He just made me do it all and wouldn't give any input. Whenever I asked him a question he would just wink at me and laugh. I eventually asked him why he kept on laughing at me and he said, "You are just so serious. You keep on asking me questions and getting serious." No duh. You weren't helping and kept on laughing at me! All in all, it is good, I just have to work on being more patient and understanding that I am not going to understand everything.

The language is coming I guess. It doesn't feel like I am any better at it than I was 3 weeks ago. I can get basic ideas across to people in Taglish. I struggle to understand what people are ever saying. In lessons, I can follow along what the basic topic is. I recognize words, but by the time I think of what that word means, the conversation is already going in a different direction. That makes it hard sometimes. I try my best to pay attention, but by the end of the day sometimes I am just ready to speak in English with Elder Temple. The only promise is that everyone says they struggled with the language at first. And Elder Schmutz said that I am good at the language. The struggle is just being patient enough with myself to wait to make it the "6 months" it takes people to get the language down enough to have a conversation. I have had the thought before, and still do feel sometimes, like I am just wasting time. Like I would be so much more effective if I went to an English speaking mission. God has a purpose for everything and was directly involved in my mission call. It is my job to just be patient and find that reason. You can all shove this part of the email in my face when I get home and struggle speaking English to you, but right now it doesn't feel like that is coming anytime soon.

Besides the fact that I can't hardly contribute in the lessons, it is going really well. Not that numbers are what truly matter, but our numbers are pretty good. We teach over 30 lessons every week. We have 25 investigators with baptismal dates (even though a lot of them won't probably follow through. Everyone here is just too nice and will say yes to anything you ask them). Yesterday at church we had 3 investigators and would have been 4 or 5, but some people had a neighborhood meeting they had to go to. If we can get even half of the people we have to be truly converted, I will have already done my job here. It is such an awesome feeling to see people that are so ready and so willing to hear the gospel. Even though I don't know what they are saying, I can tell they feel the spirit and are truly interested. One of our investigators said a prayer for 30 minutes. It was kind of a weird situation because we don't want to tell him to stop praying or anything. Luckily I have my scriptures open on my lap, so I just covered my eyes with my hands and started reading my scriptures. Ha ha! There have been multiple people that have prayed and asked God to keep the missionaries coming back to their house. That is an awesome feeling.

For those of you back home, especially in Utah, you don't realize how lucky you are. One day I went and taught a few lessons with my kabahay (housemate). First of all Elder Temple is a great missionary and a cool guy to be around. We went to one of our branch presidency members house and had a "general conference review" with him and his family. This brother has only been a member for about 6 years but has just as strong a testimony as anyone I've ever met. He just has a glow about him. It was super nice to go into his house at the end of the day. After spending all your time in people's houses that don't have the gospel or the priesthood it was nice to be in a house where it was present. They had pictures of the prophet, the temple, and their family at the temple taped onto their wall. You could just feel something special and different walking into that house at the end of the day.

I had the opportunity to go on splits with one of the zone leaders for a day. It was cool just to be able to go with another missionary (American) and meet different people. The highlight of that day was probably a member family that we taught. They were both baptized about 10 months ago and are going strong in the church. We just went in planning on visiting with them, but they got super emotional about being together forever and said that they already have a temple trip planned for the day they hit their year mark. We ended up teaching them a lesson about temples and it was super cool to feel the spirit and see their excitement for the temple.

When I got home from doing splits the next morning I started thinking to myself "that was awesome, but now I have to get back to normal mission life and can't just spend all my time with an American. I was working on cooking myself a grilled cheese and some frozen pineapple chunks for lunch. All the sudden I get a call from the assistants. They say, "Hey elder how's it going? You are super lucky. Elder Schmutz from the quorum of the 70 is in town staying at the mission home and wants to go to some lessons with you. We will be to your apartment in half an hour to pick you up. Make sure your ready." All the sudden I went into overdrive. I finished my food, put on a clean white shirt, did my hair better, cleaned my shoes and did everything else you could imagine. It was so cool. I still don't know why a General Authority would pick a newbie missionary who can't speak the language, and his companion, to go and teach with. Especially because he could have picked any of the other 170 missionaries that are in our mission, but it was awesome! He was so bold and had the spirit so strong with him as he spoke to our investigators. I hope I can be like him someday.

Just watch, I am pretty sure that he is going to be the next apostle! Next conference when he is sharing experience about going out with missionaries, Just know that it was with me. (Elder Schmutz is the one that said the closing prayer at the Sunday afternoon session of Conference.)