A Wedding, Baptisms, and President Guanzon

September 23, 2013

 So for those of you who didn’t know, I reported to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on July 17, and this past week marked a (2) Month Milestone!  Not that I’m counting.... Haha, don’t get me wrong, I love it here and I know I’m going to wish one day I didn’t have to leave, but sometimes it’s hard to not think about how much you have left (especially when you just got out here...).  Quite an eventful week, I seriously felt like it was all one day it went by so fast.  I don’t think I really emphasized this, but in order to get baptized, if you’re living with your companion but aren’t married yet, you have to do that first to get baptized.  So for the past 2 weeks, I was a professional wedding planner, no charge!  We ran all over Santo Domingo planning this wedding, which included even traveling to other cities to get the wedding certificate or something, talking with multiple members a day asking for help and discussing with the couple for hours a day what needed to happen.  It was tiring work!  I’m surprised we got that thing organized, props to us!  The day before the wedding though, I had my month check up basically.  It’s awesome because all the new missionaries and their trainers get together in Legazpi to see how our first month went, which meant I got to see all my MTC friends!  If only you understood the bond we had in the MTC.  Unfortunately, half of them went to other missions, but getting to see Elders Miller (the best companion ever), Poulton, Nelson, and Ruben along with Sisters Ogden and Mwea (who also came from the Provo MTC, just weren’t in my district, but were still close!), plus all the Manila MTC people (we never got to be close, but they’re still chill) was flippin sweet!  I truly love the Elders from my MTC district though, and after a week like last week’s, it was just what I needed.  At this New Missionary Workshop, we were able to vent about our trainers, be taught, practice teaching, and then catch up on everything and take pictures.  It was hard to say bye at the end, because that was the last guaranteed time I’d see those people for the next 2 years!  Oh well haha but ya, this workshop, the day before the wedding kind of caused a lot of stress because there were some last second things we had to do and this took up the whole day!  Obviously, since I’m a super missionary, we got things done, don’t stress.  Ha ha.

 The wedding was awesome, but somehow I got roped into singing in front of everyone with the 2 Samoan Elders that live with us and Elder Moss who was on splits.... It could’ve been better, but all the Filipinos loved it so who cares!  Man, the funniest thing ever was seeing the people react to the cake.  So the newly weds took their piece, and since we bought the wedding cake, they offered the missionaries a slice first.  We aren’t going to deny some cake, so I go over and cut my piece....  It gets quiet and I look around and mostly everyone’s staring.  I start to walk away and suddenly everyone rushes the table!  It was hilarious!  The whole cake was gone in less than 30 seconds, one of the funniest things I’ve seen here!  They were like wolves... haha it was awesome.  Afterwards, we were outside when all of a sudden, our whole district (which includes my MTC mate Elder Nelson and his companion Elder A, and then Elder F, a giant Tongan, who doesn’t make sense that we call him Halimau, or Bigfoot in Tagalog, and his Filipino companion Elder B, who is super short) comes walking up!  PARTY!  They came to celebrate but they were a little late haha, so instead we taught the kids to play Rugby.  Elders F, F, and T are giant Polys so they get pretty intense with each other, and they got some of the Filipino kids to get pretty fiesty!  The girls were more ruthless than the guys, they had no fear when going to tackle some of the boys!

  On Saturday we had my first baptism since I’ve been here!  We baptized the newly wedded Melissa and a little 8 year old girl.  We don’t have a font here, so we baptize in the ocean which is SICK!  So we all gather down at the beach around 8 a.m., but since we’ve been experiencing some Typhoonal weather, the water was super wavey and choppy so where do we go?  A Swimming pool!  Haha yep, it was awesome, the people there were just staring at us too!  But hey, its the ordinance, not where you do it that counts!

 Sunday was pretty fun too, we were sitting in sacrament meeting (as the pigs screamed as they were getting their heads sawed off) when suddenly our mission president, President Guanzon, and his wife come walking in!  Elder F was kind of confused and worried because he thought we were in trouble for something.  I guess this is a very rare occurance to have your mission president show up.  Thankfully he was just checking on our branch and shared some good things with the branch!  The best part of the day was there’s this place in my area, called Salvacion.  It’s really far away though and is back in the coastal jungles so we never go there.  On Sunday, many members of the branch got together, loaded up on a trike, and headed out to Salvacion!  We had so many people we gave the trike a flat and had to walk the rest of the way haha but it was worth it!  That area is beautiful!  I called us the JT Squad, or Jungle Tracting Squad since we were literally walking to find huts in the jungle.

  I’m doing amazing guys, ya I have my struggles but I just put those behind me.  I take showers in the rain, get blown around by typhoon like winds and rain, saw a dog get run over and have its guts splat all over the road, am called Mr. Bean by the kids, eat mini pineapples, chug mango juice made fresh in the sentro, eat rice, rice, and more rice, get asked to twerk by little girls, have my clothes get blown away from the clotheslines on the roof, get stopped and asked to shoot the ball at almost every basketball court, and it just gets better.  I love life!  I miss you all so much but I’m starting to like this place a little more sometimes....  Sorry!  Until next week!  Mga Deuce and Mahal Kita!

Sup

I'm Ready

Psh, Elder Morgan Thinks He's So Cool!

Nicest Guy (Aussie) Ever

Wedding....

Singers!

Bride, Groom and the Missionaries

Wedding Attendees

Wedding Crashers

Pinos, Polys, and White Boys

Thugs

Slide Train!

Giants!

First Baptism and Branch

Fellow MTC Friends

Silly Selfies

"JT Squad" (Jungle Tracting)

Top Trike Party

Pig Head for Sale!

A Week in the Life of Elder Moncur

September 16, 2013

KUMUSTA PO KAYO?!  Well, I hope you’re all doing fine.  I believe school is starting along with fall sports and such, so I'm expecting to hear from you whether by e-mail or through letter! 

Elder Max Moncur

152 Rizal Street

Barangay Sagpon, Daraga

4501 Albay, Philippines

 I hope you all got my letters I wrote to those who requested them, and if not, then they’re hopefully on the way!  So how was my 3rd week in the Philippines?  Well I don’t want to sound all down, but I will admit at times it was pretty crummy.  I finally had one of those days where things just aren’t goin’ your way, on back-to-back days.  Real men cry is all I have to say.  The work’s hard.  I don’t understand most of what people say.  My companion is hard on me and doesn’t understand me at times.  I’m just constantly overwhelmed, and I don’t feel good enough to be out here.  I’m pushed to my limits constantly and I finally couldn’t take it!  It’s life though, and I love it.  Besides those days, this week was just amazing as always.  Life couldn’t be better.  Give me another mountain to climb, because trials are what makes us stronger.  On to the positive, because this week was intense. 

 So much happened, it’s true how everything blends together and you start to forget, but I’ll start with the best thing.  So since my mission, the Legaspi mission, is new, we had the Area President and member of the Quorum of the 70 do what’s called a Mission Tour.  It’s sick!  So Elder Nielson and his wife came and spoke and we just had a day long devotional thing.  So on Wednesday, there was a devotional open to the public.  Our branch in town rented a jeepney, and many of the branch and Elders T, F, B and I all hopped on and went to Legaspi city for this devotional.  It was sooooooo good!  It was on marriage mostly and the family, but I really took a lot in still.  I’m sorry family, I wish I could’ve been better!  But Thursday was an all day thing for all the missionaries!  It was so sweet!  Elder Nielson and his wife spoke again along with President Guanzon and his wife!  Double the spirituality!  I learned so much from that day, but if I had to choose one thing to share, it’s this:  The Atonement doesn’t only help us receive a remission of sins.  Through the Atonement, we can receive strength in our daily lives!  Example?  Look at the leaders of our church!  Or mothers!  They pray daily for strength and somehow these 80+ year old men run the church and mothers take care of crazy kids!  I also heard a story about when the church was trying to build a BYU in Jerusalem.  The reason the government didn’t want one is because they didn’t want us converting their people, so we tried working out something along the lines of that they let the church build a school as long as we don’t proselyte.  I guess the government still had concerns.  Why?  Because of the light in our eyes.  The President or something like that said, "What about the light in their eyes?  I’ve seen you Mormons before and you can see that they know something in their eyes."  Man, it’s crazy cause its so true!  I was brought to tears as the spirit spoke to me.  I know this church is true, and I know when we live the standards it’s visable in our eyes.  How incredible is that?

 So this week was pretty busy. We have a member here getting baptized and married next week, so we as missionaries have to plan a lot of it since they can’t afford it.  We’ve been running from member to member’s house as we have been recruiting help and donations.  It’s going well but it’s just a lot of walking!  It’s all good though, because this week has been especially rainy so it’s been super cool out!  Something crazy I never thought would happen:  I actually got cold at night!  I had to turn off my fan and put on a blanket!  I’ve never been so happy to be cold!  But that’s basically all we did for missionary work this week. 

 The extra stuff?  So as you all know or most of you know I think, as missionaries, we give up music.  Not in the Philippines!  Ha, everyone blasts music 24/7 and they have Videoke, which is karaoke, so people sing all day.  I hear all the popular songs back home, golden oldies, and some sweet Filipino music.  It’s fantastic!  At the stores, they had an American food section, so of course I went straight to it.  Unfortunately, since it’s all imported, it all costs like 5 times the amount it would back home.  Not worth it. Weirdest thing.  People wear all these American things!  I’ve seen American high schools shirts, American small brand name stuff, and weirdest of all, a "Girl Scouts Rock The Orange County Fair 2011" shirt!  Ha, it helps me feel close to home though.  They have the weirdest smells here.  Every 20 yards it smells like something else, and not many are the most pleasant.  Every once in a while I’m woken up by the sound of screaming pigs as they’re dragged off to the trucks.  The trucks?  Ya, the ones headed to the butchers.... And what’s better than that, is the butcher is right across the street!  So in the middle of sacrament meeting, you’ll just hear pigs scream as they saw their throats off!  So peaceful!  Not.  They should probably like put them to sleep first or something, but nope, they choose to torture them as they slowly cut their heads off.  A woman asked me to marry her daughter too!  She wasn’t bad looking which was nice, but I just laughed and stopped talking.  Pretty awkward.  Mom, I need you.  You know how I was decent at cooking?  Well all the ingredients I used to cook, they either don’t have or are super expensive (for example:  Dairy! like cheese! Not cool)!  Get this!  Elder T, one of the other missionaries we live with, went to school with the up and coming John John Florence!  He’s that crazy good surfer!  And even cooler is his mom went to school with and knows Jack Johnson!  He’s from Hawaii, and man was he lucky!  The weather like I said this week:  GLORIOUS (Maluwalhati!)  It’s so cool out and there’s a heavenly breeze.  But when it rains, it comes down!  We had to stay inside because it is just so much water you’d get soaked and your umbrella breaks!  And at night, there’s almost always lightning.  It’s so beautiful though, it’s like a firework show!  The whole sky lights up. The scary thing is the thunder, I swear a bomb is going off only a few feet away from me.  Sometimes I even jump, it’s seriously that loud!  Crazy, I’m telling you.  You think it sounds so crazy, but when you’re living in it.... It’s just incredible how this place is.  I love it.  Basketball is the Filipino sport so everyone plays, it’s legit!  Whenever we walk by a court people toss me the ball to take a shot.  Sadly, they use women size basketballs so I tend to airball.... It ain’t easy shooting in mission attire with a shoulder bag on either!  At McDonald’s, they serve chicken and rice.  What?  All the meat they eat here has bones in it.  I swear, the meat tries to kill me!  I’ll be chewing when all of a sudden a random bone appears in my mouth and I chomp on it and it hurts!  The other day something was stuck in my teeth, or at least I thought, and it was bothering me all day because I couldn’t get it out.  When we got home that night, I checked my mouth and turns out a skinny bone was stuck in my gums!  I got tweezers and pulled out an almost inch long, bloody sliver of bone.... Ow.  How did I not feel that go in?  Riding on top of Jeepneys and Triceys will never get old.  Whenever we ride on one, I get on top.  America is really missing out, they need to legalize being in the back of trucks and such.  Not safe?  Well Filipinos are no doubt the worst drivers in the world (they have no traffic laws here), so if they can do it, we should be able to also.  When you’re out so late on the opposite side of your area, it’s better to catch a trike and ride home early while you can.  Otherwise you’re trapped walking 3 miles home in almost pitch black with dogs that could attack you from the darkness.... Not a fun experience, luckily the dog didn’t bite. 

 The hardest thing for me right now is the bad rep past Americans have left.  We have this family, who feed us almost every night, but they had negative feelings towards Americans when I came in.  Thankfully they love me, but they still tell all their stories.  It’s hard to be disliked and to listen negative comments about your country and not being able to stand up for it and say not all people are that way.  I’m definitely learning to roll with the punches.  You know how in early American history there was all that witchcraft too?  Well, they still have that here.  You hear some pretty interesting stories about this place.  I’m pretty creeped out, and the worst part is, every night we walk home, we have to walk right past a cemetery.... Blah, least favorite part of the day.  People here speak Bicol, which is the native dialect so what I learned in the MTC doesn’t help much as I try to listen and I pick up mixes of Bicol and Tagalog.  As I walk around, I swear I see Filipino look alikes of people back home!  Atmospheres lyrics "Was that you? Looked just like you.  Strange things what your imagination might do.... OR AM I JUST GOING CRAZY CAUSE I MISS YOU?"  I do miss you all!  Please update me on your lives!  I love you all!

Welcome To My Land!

Squishy the Gecko

My "Bathroom"

My "Washing Machine"....Jealous?

My Humble Abode

Personal and Companionship Study Desks

Still Top Bunk as Always, and Still Don't Fit!

My Kitchen!

Showering in the Rain!

Cute Filipino Who Loves Shooting Me with Fake Guns!

Gorge View

Cute Puppies!  They're Everywhere!

I'm a Smart Kid!

With Elder Brown

Tobaco Zone "The Sharpest" 

Spidermanning on Top of a Jeepney

They Have 7-11 Here!

Rooftop Views

A Week in the Philippines

September 8, 2013

 Dang, I feel like it was just a couple days ago that I was in an internet cafe writing my weekly update.... So much has happened since I’ve been here in the Philippines, I don’t even know where to start!  Bear with me, I’m going to write as things come to memory and things will probably get a bit jumbled up.  But it’s all good stuff.  Enjoy!

 So.  The Philippines.  Let me start off by saying that this is probably the most difficult mission in the world.  I don’t care what anybody says, cause I know it is.  We’ve got the intense heat and humidity to walk in all day, no toilet paper, you shower with a bucket and ladle, all you eat is rice and ulam (stuff you put on top of your rice), the areas are huge and you walk more than you do at Disneyland (crazy, I know), you can’t do anything without sweating (literally, sleep, sit, eat, use the bathroom....we have fans blowing on us at all times), theres no a/c, you hand wash your clothes (top 5 worst things I’ve ever done), etc.  The list goes on, we are tested constantly here, yet it’s impossible not to love it.  This place compares in beauty, if not more beautiful, to Hawaii.  The only thing that is a bust is the heat!  My area is Santo Domingo, which is one of the most amazing areas in the Legaspi Mission I hear.  We have the Mayon Volcano and the ocean in our boundaries, incredible!  I look at the ocean sometimes and realize you all are just a boat ride away across the Pacific.  I’m so far, yet I feel so close.  I’m constantly just looking around.  I haven’t accepted I’m in the Philippines yet!  I must look like such a tourist, but I can’t help it!  A bad American missionary was put here a year ago and made a bad rep for Americans and there hasn’t been an American missionary in this area for about a year.  So everyone hates me, basically, but it’s all good because Elder Bazar tells me I’m doing a good job of making people love me!  Score!  It’s kind of intimidating but I guess I’m doing a good job of bringing us back up!  Everything about this place amazes me.  The best part is, to Filipinos, I’m a celebrity, a blond-haired, blue-eyed American.  As we walk throughout the city, I constantly hear people yell "What’s your name?", "Where are you going?", and "Why are you here?"  Haha it’s too good.  They call white people Joes here too, so I’ll just be walking and I’ll hear someone yell "hey Joe" or one of those other questions, and I’ll look over to a group of Filipinos just laughing and pointing.  I love it!   Whether they’re making fun of me or not, to me it’s attention and it uplifts me.  Oh, and I can’t forget the Filipino girls, they all just stare and laugh.  I’ll look over and wave to a group of girls and they’ll all just giggle and blush.  They ask me if I’m wearing contacts since my eyes are blue, and I’m constantly getting told I’m cute.  I think I could live here, hahaha!  Kids like to rub my arms and head since my hair is blond.  It was weird at first, but if you know me well, you know that I’ll take all the attention I can without being too proud.  So ya, the people here are legit. That doesn’t mean this mission is easy though.  I’ve been thinking about cross country a lot lately with season starting up back home.  Man it’s weird not to be a part of it!  But running really prepared me for this place.  Although Coach Clemons may have thought otherwise, I truly learned a lot from that guy.  Ya, I may have liked my fun, but I was always trying to be a better athlete.  Clemons always taught us that Trabuco Hills does not get out-kicked and when you feel like you can’t go anymore, that’s when you push.  It’s so true!  I’m always trying to keep up my pace, and push myself until the end of the day here.  Sometimes I feel bad for my companion Elder Bazar, because I’m pushing the pace constantly!  Whenever I’m overwhelmed, sad, or tired, that’s when I push.  Clemons taught us to always push and never stop surging, and those traits really come in handy out here!  Shout out to the best coach ever!  You helped me more than you could’ve imagined, and I wish you could see it. 

 Elder Bazar and I really work.  Well, really just Elder Bazar.  The language is coming but I’m still not good enough to teach in it.  All the guys from the MTC, even the ones that were really good at Tagalog, tell me they’re struggling with the language and never know what’s going on, so that was nice to hear.  Elder Bazar will just be teaching and I’ll be doing my best to listen when all of a sudden he will ask if I have anything to add.... Uhh, I don’t even know what’s going on, haha!  So I always just read a scripture at the end and bear testimony.  With lessons that we planned to teach with people, I know what’s going on and then I’m able to pitch in more.  It’s quite interesting to see myself grow in the language, because Elder Bazar has me teach the whole lesson as simply as I can using as much Tagalog as I can and of course it’s terrible, but I learn at least one new word to throw in each day to my teaching.  Doesn’t sound like a lot, but trust me, it is! 

 Being a missionary, I can’t even explain how amazing it is.  I experience things that just blow my mind.  It’s crazy to see the Spirit guide you sometimes with every word you say!  The other day we were teaching a family, and this is pretty big because usually you teach a single person or kids.  Elder Bazar and I set a goal to teach a family so we were really excited, too.  Anyway, so in our second lesson with this family, the Balasta Family, things were going really well.  Elder Bazar looked at me, which meant I was going to invite them to be baptized.  Part of my training is that I always make that invitation, but I was freaking out because I couldn’t remember how to!  I told myself to calm down and trust in the Lord.  Best experience yet.  I look at the family, and as I opened my mouth, the words just flowed out.  I honestly couldn’t even remember what I said or how to ask it again after, but the family just looked at each other and then the father said a bunch of stuff in Tagalog.... I thought they said no, but then Elder Bazar looked over at me with a huge grin as he gave a thumbs up and said they said yes!  No way!  They best part was, was right after they said that, a neighbor started blasting Daylight by Maroon 5 and I know it’s not a spiritual song but it just fit the moment.  I couldn’t stop smiling.  (The only problem is I got distracted as I thought about Sarah Paul, a girl from back home that once sang that song to me.)  I heard my name and I was like “Wait, what?  Haha, obviously I have lots of work to do to become a good missionary, I was just so excited! 

 Let’s see what else.  OH!  So you know how on the Pirates ride at Disneyland, there are fireflies?!  Well guess what?!  They have them here, but they’re real!  I sound dumb, I know, but they just amaze me!  I hand washed clothes for the first time, and like I said, it was one of the top five worst things I’ve ever done.  It took three hours!  It was miserable and made my back hurt so bad.  Just 22 more months of it....  Dogs and cats just roam here along with chickens.  There are rice fields everywhere.  Caribou just chill in the mud.  Houses are made of concrete, bamboo, and leaves.  We ride on trikes and Jeepneys everywhere.  Riding on top is the best thing ever, it will never get old.  We’re by the ocean so our whole area is uphill from where we live.  These hills make me think of the Ottoban, or however you spell it, which is a hill we run at cross country camp.  I could totally see Clemons killing us on these hills, he would love it here!  We live with two Samoans who we share the area with, and they are hilarious!  They have literally every flavor of Tang juice.  I can’t get enough of this place!

 The one thing that makes me sad is there’s a lot more disobedience than I thought.  I always thought missionaries were perfect, but I have come to find otherwise.  For the most part, we’re all good missionaries and work hard.  It’s just hard to not fall in with the disobedience, I try my best though!  I want to be like my Dad and be able to say when I’m home that I rarely wasted any time! 

 Every time we eat, I worry about getting sick.  So far, so good.  I got my first haircut and I look like a skinhead.  You can walk around and pick bananas, papayas, and coconuts from trees.  It hasn’t rained hard on us yet, but it has been really stormy out which has kept the weather out really cool.  We have a cat that lives with us that we named Rodriguez, after an investigator who told us our message wasn’t true, haha.  Every time we try to kick this cat out it just comes back so we just let it chill.  There’s nothing we can do about it.  I sweat constantly.  At night you sleep with fans blowing on you.  We have lots of brown outs, when all the power goes out and you literally can’t see anything.  It gets dark here at 6:30 and as you can imagine, there’s not much electricity here, so even when there is electricity, it’s still really dark.  There are so many stars here you can’t count.  The Mayon Volcano smokes all day.  I still can’t believe I’m here.  I LOVE LIFE!

 Lastly, the people here are so happy.  They have so little.  It’s hard to explain, but if you could see first person their lifestyle, you’d be so humbled.  At first I looked at these people who have so little and felt bad!  But honestly, you look into their eyes and you can’t help but love them.  Their love and happiness is radiating!  I wish I would’ve realized how truly blessed I was back home.  I use to be thankful for no homework, a good run, hanging with friends, stupid stuff like that, and now I’m thankful for the small things.  Remember always how blessed you are, because no matter how bad you think you have it, these people have it worse, yet they make the best of it. 

 Thanks for keeping in touch!  Here’s my new address, so write me!  Or e-mail.  Whatever works.  Love you all, and stay sweet!

My new, Filipino "3" hair cut (Skinhead)

My Restaurant (Pacific Mall, Legaspi City)

First Rain and New Haircut - So bittersweet

Drying Rice on the Road

Welcome to the Jungle
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Santo Domingo

Average Filipino House

For the Guys......

Ya GOATS!!!

Heavenly Baked Goods

Baby Red Caterpillar

The Never Ending Hill We Walked Up (Coach Clemons' Dream)

Rodriquez

View From Apartment Roof 

Riding on top of trikes and Jeepneys never gets old