I'm going to try to change that for you....
First off- This week was one of the best weeks of my entire mission. Can you guess why?
(Work, work, work that is the secret!) Yep, thats right. The harder you work, the better your week is!
This week we set really high goals for ourselves that we had never before achieved! And then we did all we could to achieve them.... and saw miracles.
All I'm saying is... I should have been doing this my whole mission!
We are setting our goals next week even higher-pray that we can achieve them! We are hoping for 35 lessons next week. Whew. It's going to be an achievement for sure!
Anyway...........
This week I wanted to tell you a little bit more about my every day work.
We leave our apartment and jay-walk across the "Highway" to get a jeepney. (Jaywalking is not illegal here... I think....)
We take a jeepney... which is an old World war 2 jeep.... and sit sideways with no seat belts. We hang onto the bars over head so that we don't fall into our neighbors laps.
(Our neighbors can range from Gypsies to Drag queens to normal Filippinos....) We try to "Street contact them" and sometimes we actually get some really good lessons from it!
Then we get off the jeepney after a 25 minute ride and walk down to the tricycle port. We take a tricycle, usually sitting side-saddle on the back of a motorcycle which has been attached to
a side car with a wielding tool. We ride until we get to our destination, holding onto the bars for dear life. (Actually, now that I'm used to it, I don't hold the bars anymore.) Then we walk passed
Carabuo, chicken farms, and pig farms... and many houses ranging from dirt floors to giant mansions (literally, they are all next to each other.) We walk into the jungle.... and walk.... and walk....
(meanwhile, I'm praying there are no snakes....) and we arrive at the very last house in the middle of nowhere.... our investigators. What an adventure!
Actually, on that note... our route from the church has been closed down for the last two weeks so we've been taking the long way round. Because every jeep coming from this city has to pass by there now,
we've been getting a lot of gypsies. Almost every jeepney ride I've been on has one now.
Most of the time they don't speak tagalog. They are usually barefooted children dressed in rags. They jump onto the jeepneys and place envelops in everyones lap and then start playing the drums to
beg for money. We aren't allowed to give them money... and good thing. I once was on a jeepney with several adult gypsies. We got stalled for a while on this bridge and one of the gypsies saw a little girl running by.
She called her into the jeepney and made her give everything she had earned that day, right there in front of us! It was just like Fagin from Oliver Twist. Crazy!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, it's not all rags and Gypsies. We went to a college this week to speak English to one of the English classes there. The teacher invited us to come and said we could be very open about our beliefs, just as long as we spoke English. We answered many questions about America and how it was different from the Philippines. Then the teacher came up to us and told us that he wanted us to talk about how Abortion and Intimacy before Marriage was wrong... We were completely shocked. The education is very different here. They pray in schools and are able to discuss God.... It's really admirable. We all shared our thoughts and the spirit was really strong. Then we bore testimony of the church. It was just a really cool experience over all.
Anyway, that's all for this week.
Love you!
-Sister Beaumont
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