Elder Logan Spackman ~ Philippines Legazpi Mission

Another week, another area for me. This area's name is Daraga, or literally the biggest city in the mission. It's on the complete left side of Legazpi City, which has a population of around 400,000 people, if you include the surrounding area so maraming mga tao dito.  My first impression of this area is that there are lots of hills. We walked up to a buddhist monk temple to get to some people, to only be rejected. It's truly humbling walking up massive hills then getting rejected. Pero, the good part about being here is drum rolllllllllll please....... Jollibee and Mcdonalds!!!! As well as this being the biggest LLC in the bicol region of the Philippines. So all of your Elder Spackman needs are taken care of.  Saying goodbye to Elder Villanueva was tough because that's my dawg, good thing I have another Filipino kasama to help me when people speak and di ko alam (I don't know what) they are saying. My new companion is Elder Solidum. He's pretty cool and can spea...

I woke up Friday morning and it was a normal day. My stomach hurt a little, but that's pretty normal here so I figured I was just Hungry. Then we went to 711 for breakfast, I ate my food and didn't feel very well, but I figured it was because I over ate or something. Then we got into a tricy, I got in the back next to the driver as I always do. The tricycle driver is looking to take a left and just as I look over I see another tricycle speeding right for us. I think, "Naw, He'll surely stop for us." He did not stop and directly hit us. We crashed pretty hard and that's fine because it's just metal on metal, but my ankle got caught in the other tricy and our driver started to go forward.  My ankle was stuck and it started to twist and probably would have broken if my companion (Elder Villanueva) hadn't jumped out and blocked our driver from going. After I hopped out of the tricy so many kind Filipinos (I swear it was like the whole town) gathered around...

This week has been crazy, so much happened and it went by so fast! The main thing that happened this week was exchanges with The Zone Leaders (because my comp is a DL) and exchanges with our kabahays (roommates). Elder Garner is from Washington State and is the Zone Leader. We luckily got to go in his area for him to lead the exchange. It was a crazy exchange, we found six new people and taught 10 lessons. I was definitely nervous about teaching and speaking in Tagalog, but we just sent it and it went well. That's one thing about learning a different language - you just gotta send it sometimes.  Then we had the second exchange with Elder Asera, my roommate, and myself. He turned to me and said, "Let's set our goal for 12 lessons," in broken English. So off we went and we had three lessons in the morning, and I was like we aren't going to reach our goal. But then in the afternoon we popped off and had nine lessons so we barely hit our goal before our dinner appoint...

This week we've been grinding and finding so there isn't a whole lot to report to y'all to be honest. Just lots of lessons and stretching my Tagalog to the utmost limits it can reach.  New Years was crazy here, pretty much on New Years they have one goal around 11:55pm to 12:30am and that is to make as much noise as possible, which is actually quite fun I found as we were hitting pots and pans and we bought a paper trumpet thing that was so loud. Also I got a haircut so that was hype finally. I also hit three months into my mission, which is crazy because this month has gone so fast compared to the other two. Spiritual thought: Gotta include a little spiritual thought - It's hot and humid, I can't even verbally express the heat here, like it's consistently in the 90's. So whenever I'm melting like Frosty, I think to myself: Being hot is such a small price to pay for families being together forever. Anything compared to the price of eternity is so small....