[From Alayna: Here are the past couple of week's emails. It has been an exciting 7 days! Sept. 10th was a normal email, then on the 12th, we received our first message from the mission home about the typhoon! I included them in the blog. The first message we got from Fras after the Typhoon just came in on our phones through Google Hangouts and it popped up and said: "Buhay Pa Ako" which I had to translate and found out that it meant... "I'm Still Alive". Ha ha, Fras! Thanks for letting us know! :) ]
9/10/18
Merry Christmas In September
I will do more on explaining this next week, but because September has BER in it, that basically means it is December here. People are already setting up for Christmas. I don’t quite get it, but that is ok.
Hopefully, the pictures and the little descriptions I sent will give information about what has gone on this past week. I had my birthday so I made sure to take some pictures and eat some fine dining. Snow Panda tasted great by the way!
Our two progressing investigators that we have right now made sure that we would be teaching them on the 4th so that they could make dinner for us. It was awesome. I got some texts from a bunch of members as well. It is crazy because I don’t feel like I have done anything too special for them, but they all love me. One even texted and said about how I am part of their family now because my family is far away. Needless to say though, I was treated well on my birthday. I love the people here and am growing super close to them. It might be a little bit hard to say goodbye when I get transferred out of this area. Even the little kids of our two progressing investigators consider me their older brother now. I guess giving little kids candy and stickers has its perks!
One thing that happened, that is now adding to my list of things I have to do, is this: In our branch, there are two young men that are preparing to go on missions, as in they have submitted their papers already. One of those young men is the current branch mission leader. The problem about him though is he is borderline less active. Just enough that his papers are going through, but just enough, as well, that President Hiatt has been in contact with the branch president about him. The result was that we had a meeting with the branch president and the branch missionary leader. I love the branch president, but he is a very strong personality. He chastised us just a little bit for not working together as well as we should. It is now my responsibility on top of doing missionary work, preparing for meetings, cleaning our apartment, and trying to be obedient to babysit this guy as he is preparing for his mission. It was good though because last night we had a lesson with our progressing investigators. We were teaching them about the 10 commandments. We gave the branch mission leader the book and told him we were teaching the 10 commandments. My companion took charge and basically told him that he would be teaching. What the branch mission leader did was the best. He held the book, read the (abbreviated or simple version) 10 commandments aloud. He then asked our investigators if they remember the 10 commandments. They said yes. He then ended the lesson. He didn’t do any explaining, ask any questions, or anything. It was awesome. Haha. My companion and I laughed about it later that night.
One thing I would just like to say real quick is this: Being a missionary is hard. It is not always just super simple and fun. It is a lot of hard work and you have to stretch yourself in ways you never thought of. I have thought of this before that it does not make any sense to be a missionary if you think of it the wrong way. You signed up voluntarily to spend two years away from your family, living on a budget, having to follow a fairly strict set of rules about missionary conduct. If you don’t follow those rules you can get in lots of trouble, even when most of the time those things caused no harm when you did them before your mission. If you think about it that way, a mission makes no sense at all. The good thing is there is actually a reason that there are missionaries right now. We have the true church of Jesus Christ here on the earth right now. I don’t like to use the word "know" because I don’t feel like I can honestly tell people that I know many things. I do take joy in the fact of telling people that I believe these things are true. Almost all missionaries are out here because they believe in the church and in the Book of Mormon. I would just like to say for people that might be preparing for a mission, or even just members of the church…Be exactly obedient! That is the only way for us to receive miracles in our life is if we are exactly obedient to the rules and the gospel. That doesn’t mean that we have to go throughout life or a mission without any fun. In fact, we are here on this earth to have joy and fun. We need to keep it within the boundaries that the Lord has set for us in order to receive blessings and miracles. If we are breaking the rules, it is honestly pointless what we are doing.
Last night I started taking pictures with these two little girls at dinner. They thought it was the funnest thing ever and didn't want to let me leave. They kept on coming up with hand signs to do and stuff. One of their moms told me that my new name is Kuya White. I have graduated from being Elder White to Big Brother White. She said that they always ask when I am coming over and said that we are siblings now.
I bought myself doughnuts for my birthday. I made sure to buy two pink ones for the two little girls that we would be with at my dinner. Apparently, they only wanted the pink though because both little girls only licked the frosting off but didn’t actually eat the doughnut. haha
My birthday dinner with our two progressing investigators. We don’t usually go to their house on Tuesdays, but they made sure that we taught them on Tuesday so that they could make me dinner. Anything a Filipino makes will probably taste good, but when it is a birthday they make sure there is always food.
More pictures of my birthday dinner.
Of course, when it is your birthday you have to take a bunch of pictures. I felt inspired to take a picture of me in my running shorts and one of my white shirts. You can tell most of my body has not been seeing much sun lately because I am glowing white. You also know you are in the Philippines when cereal for breakfast is a special thing that you do on your birthday.
We also had dinner last night with those two ladies again. We had a couple future missionaries with us as well. I told them that I would cook so I made dad’s chili again. They all seemed to like it, but I think they like Filipino food better. haha
[Added by Alayna: Notice the Christmas decorations and the chili 'ala rice! :) ]
I bought myself a hammock a few weeks ago. I end up using it almost every night as I process what went on throughout the day. I also had to buy myself some Mountain Dew for my birthday. I ended up taking a picture because...why not?
We were able to go to Cauayan last P day so of course, I took the chance to go to Snow Panda. I still haven’t figured out how to smile for a picture though. We also had a branch family home evening this past week and both of our progressing investigators came so it was a pretty good experience for them.
[Added by Alayna: Two days after the email above, we received the following 4 emails about the typhoon.]
#1 came at 12:30 am on Wed. 9/12/18
Dear Families and Leaders of Missionaries serving in the Philippines Cauayan Mission,
Typhoon Mangkhut is expected to hit hard in northern Luzon and particularly in the Cagayan province as early as Friday. The northern portion of our mission, especially Tuguegarao North and South Zones, will likely be affected by this Typhoon. Those missionaries in the path of the Typhoon will be evacuated to areas that will not be affected. All missionaries have been provided 72-hour kits and have a reserve fund with enough money to travel to the mission home or other parts of the mission as needed. We will send updates as necessary concerning the safety and health of your missionaries during the storm, as well as a post-storm report.
We are confident that appropriate measures will be taken to ensure the safety of each missionary. We express the love of our mission President, President Hiatt and his wife Sister Hiatt. They lead the mission with high expectations and high love. We are also grateful for the love, support, and concern that you show for all the missionaries worldwide.
Missionaries will be provided and study the attached files to ensure their safety after the typhoon. The following link may be viewed to track the approximate real-time position of the typhoon
Elder Rusch
Mission Office Secretary
Philippines Cauayan Mission
Dear family and leaders of Elder Williamson,
Elder Williamson will be evacuated from his current area to a safer location in Roxas 2A area, Roxas Zone. This evacuation is happening today and is expected to last only a few days. Elder Williamson has taken safety and cleaning precautions this morning as he left his apartment, including closing and locking all windows, removing anything off the floor, and putting items in plastic bags.
We will continue to update you as the storm continues towards our mission.
Thank you,
Elder Rusch
Mission Office Secretary
Philippines Cauayan Mission
Dear families and leaders of missionaries serving in the Philippines Cauayan Mission,
Typhoon Mangkhut, locally known as Ompong, will be striking the Philippines Cauayan Mission early Saturday morning. As needed, missionaries have been evacuated to safer apartments at higher ground with easier access to main highways and emergency transportation. We have notified those parents and leaders of missionaries who have been evacuated to these safer locations. If you did not receive an email, your missionary was not evacuated. All missionaries will be at their assigned apartment before dark on Friday, September 14th to ensure their safety. They are to stay indoors at all times during the storm and are only to leave their apartment after notification from President Hiatt that it is safe to do so.
Once again, we appreciate your love and support for the missionaries. We will notify you again after the typhoon passes.
Thank you,
Elder Rusch
Mission Office Secretary
Philippines Cauayan Mission
#4 came at 10:17 pm on 9/14/18
Dear families and leaders of missionaries serving in the Philippines Cauayan Mission,
We are glad to announce that all missionaries are safe and accounted for. Most of the typhoon passed during the night, and no missionaries were injured. All missionaries are staying at their assigned apartment until the storm concludes and it is fully safe to leave.
Elder Rusch
Mission Office Secretary
Philippines Cauayan Mission
I Survived Mangkhut (Ompong)!
You can tell everyone that I am ok. As far as I know, my area is ok as well. We are just north enough that we got transferred out of our apartment, also it is out in the nowhere so they took us out. We just went into the city and stayed with our zone leaders though. I haven't been back yet, but we were given permission to go back to our area today because they got electricity back there.
We've texted and called a bunch of people. It sounds like they are all ok. Nothing too bad happened in our area. It just had some strong winds and rain. The northern part of the mission got hammered though, I have heard. Those missionaries have not returned to their areas yet. All the missionaries were safe though. They moved us out 2 days before the storm even hit.
I heard it was a signal number 5. It hit almost the whole country in some way or another. I heard it destroyed Guam before it got to us.
To be completely honest, this past week wasn't very productive as far as work goes. Wednesday we were informed by the mission that a very strong super typhoon was on the way and that they weren’t sure exactly what was going to happen, but that we all needed to do some basic preparations at our apartments and wait further notice. So my companion and I worked on Wednesday, but our day was cut short because we spent a little bit of time preparing.
Thursday our alarm went off at 6:30 to get up and get ready for a normal day of work. Not even 20 seconds after I had turned off the alarm, and definitely before I had gotten out of my bed, we received a text from the assistants with a huge instruction list of what we were supposed to do in preparation to evacuate our apartment. I texted him and asked if that meant that we were going to have to leave because I still wasn't sure. Still, before I had even gotten out of my bed, the assistant then called me and said I would have to be evacuating. That meant that the whole morning we had to prepare our apartment. We had to move everything outside inside. Then we had to move our fridge and put in on something above the ground. We had to shut all the doors and windows and everything. As we were preparing our apartment, my companion told me that he was feeling a little bit sick. Once we had finished our preparations, we left and went to our zone leaders’ apartment. It is only like half an hour travel away, which is like 10 kilometers, but they are in a safer area.
Before the storm started we stopped by the district center here in Roxas and it looked like a refugee center. There were people all in there set up for the storm. The mistake we made is we stopped by the church as we were leaving the store from shopping for food to make the stay in more enjoyable. All the members were teasingly asking us for it. I think the members were pretty much safe though because the churches here are the strongest built buildings.
All I had was junk food...a few bags of chips and a bottle of mountain dew. They were fine though. There were a few rooms where people were cooking tons of food. Next time there is a super typhoon though, we will go to the church before we buy food!
Once we got to the zone leaders' apartment, we ate food and then my companion started throwing up and feeling really sick, so he went to sleep or was in the bathroom for the rest of the day. I set up a hammock outside and ate candy while the cool breeze of the coming storm was blowing over me.
Most of the rest of the time we were just hanging out in the apartment telling jokes and goofing around. It was kind of good to take time and relax a little bit. It was kind of like we were just having a sleepover or something in my zone leaders' apartment. There were 5 of us in the one apartment. It was fun because we just spent the whole time talking and whatnot.
There is a new missionary here who was in the apartment with us. His name is Elder Finau. He is from Hawaii. He plays football for byU. He is 6'4" and weighs almost 400 pounds. I was hanging out with him the past few days.
I definitely didn't have a very good diet, and literally spent most of the time on the same mattress. It was fun though. We had lots of laughs and were making the best of our time locked in an apartment. I don’t know if I would complain if there was another typhoon in a couple of months. Haha. Joke lang. It is a terrible thing for the people here that are affected by it!
I did a horrible job of documenting the experience. We had to be in the apartment with all the doors and windows shut tight. I took some videos but the worst of it hit while we were sleeping, and all you can really see is what looks like a little bit of wind. We did end up going just outside on the front porch to take videos and pictures. I don’t know if the video will do any justice. I sent everything that I have.
We will be going back to our apartment later today after we finish all our P day stuff. We probably won't get much work in today because we are going to have to put our apartment all back together.
The great thing about the people here though is they are super chill. The day before the storm, everyone was out doing their normal things. I even saw people drying rice outside. Now a day or two afterward everything seems to be about normal here. I am lucky that we weren’t affected too badly.
buhay pa ako video
buhay pa ako pictures
I took these pictures while we were waiting around for the typhoon to pass. We got pretty bored because we didn't have any electricity meaning no music or movies, and we couldn’t go outside. I took a picture of one of my zone leaders, Elder Perez, as he was looking out the door rather dramatically. I got bored enough that when we decided we were going to eat dinner I said I would make the table so that I didn't have to do the dishes after we were done eating. That other picture is what my apartment looked like before we left because we received a huge list of preparations we were supposed to do. I didn't take very many pictures or anything because most of the time none of us were wearing shirts over our garments because it was hot in the apartment with all the windows shut.
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Forever and a day, Love Elder Williamson!
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