Week 18: Dasmarinas

Hey family! I'll reply to Dad’s letter today because I feel like I usually reply to Mom’s letter.

Sounds like things are going great in Flagstaff, Arizona! Speaking of Ben and Sam’s basketball, I played basketball this morning with a couple other missionaries and some local teenagers. It was super fun. My companion, Elder Matina, is pretty much unstoppable, being 6'3" 260lbs, he’s a pretty good post player as you can imagine. He's Shaq and I'm Kobe! Also, I am extremely close to dunking. Every morning for personal exercise, I'm going to start doing some calf raises and squats and get my vertical back up to where it was during track season, 36". Give it a month or two, I'll be dunking. :)

You know, we actually don’t have the Ensign here, we get the Liahona, which is like a mix of the Ensign, New Era and Friend, so I haven't read that talk yet, but I hope too! I love President Monson, he really knows what he doing haha. That last part of the quote, the part about us being the Lord's hands, is actually the Cavite Mission's mission theme! Sister Tye picked it when the mission was created back in June, I think it's actually an original quote by the big bad Gordon B. Hinckley himself. I really like it, it’s a great quote. It definitely is very important to always strive to serve others, no matter the circumstance! Every member a missionary also!

This week has been great, hot, but great. Like extremely hot. Very very very very hot. From 12:30 to 3 it’s literally so hot we can barely step in the sunlight. The moment the clock turned 12 we started sweating and didn’t stop until the sun went down. Brutality. 

But we are starting to find more investigators and some less actives in our area also! We still don’t know the members super well, but we should start getting to know them better because we have like 4 dinner appointments this week! Last week we had NONE. We starved, I probably lost weight. Maybe. I probably lost weight just from sweating so much actually. Then combined with little food, I honestly may have lost weight! Crazy. Anyways, we found 3 families this week who are interested in hearing from us, it’s awesome! During the lesson, the father in one of the families was like "there are so many churches and I just don’t know which one to attend! I feel lost. So I started thinking maybe we don’t need religion to save us. But then I had a talk with my sister and she said that having a religion and a familiarity with God in life is very important, so I said I would continue looking for the right church. That was 3 days ago, and then you guys show up at my door!" 

That was an awesome spiritual experience. We told him that his situation sounded a lot like how Joseph Smith felt, and he exercised his faith by praying to God, asking which church was true. We invited him to do likewise! It was sweet.

Oh also, last night, we were walking around an area of ours that we hadn't really done much exploring of yet, and saw this white guy talking to 2 teenagers (Filipino obviously), so we decided to go practice our English speaking skills and talk to him. Turns out he was Dutch, from the Netherlands. But he has a house here in Dasmarinas because he’s getting old and the winters in the Netherlands are pretty freakin cold I guess, so he’s here for like 6 months of the year. Anyways, we were talking with him a little bit and he started gettin pretty weird, sayin stuff about the "young girls" here in the Philippines. It turns our he was actually a 58 year old Dutch man trying to get with 19 year old Filipino girls. So we got outta there real fast. Very uncomfortable situation.

Oh also, I forgot to mention last P-day, I got my birthday package! And it was awesome! Thank you guys so much! Especially Ben, those Pink Dolphin shirts are dope. And I can’t believe you guys got me the Blvck Scvle Philippines shirt! It is tooooooooo cool! Thank you guys so much! Most of the candy I gave away to members in Bacoor because actually I received the package on my last day in Bacoor, about two weeks ago. I'm sure they were happy about the candy though! But I saved the Lindt chocolate obviously. ;)

Anyways, that’s about all I have to say this week! Mom about the Chino pants, my size is 31x32, 31 inch waist and 32 inch length! And a khaki/tannish pair and a black pair would be awesome. Thanks! 

Also, something’s up with my camera, it hasn’t been working too well the past couple of days, so I'll keep you guys informed on that. 

But I love you guys, I really do! And miss you all too.

Love, 

Elder Lasley! :)