March 9: Mission Tour

Hey Dad and family!

Hows the fam?! Things are going great here in Dasma! sorry I dont really have any wild stories this week, it was a regular, normal, same ole, same ole week for a missionary here in the Philippines! Oh but I do need to ask you guys something. So on Wednesday, I recieived a package from Maddie (yay) which was sent on december 12 (ages ago) I only just got it because it was in customs for like a month, they opened it and everything because it was fairly large, luckily thy didnt take anything, but they did charge me 3444 pesos for the customs fee, which is about 80 dollars, and I have to pay it to the mission office on wednesday, so I was wondering, should I withdraw the money from my wells fargo bank card? or should I pay for it using mission funds? if I pay for it with mission funds, I get a docked support fund every support cycle for 3 support cycles, which means I will have less money to pay for food and transportation and other necessities. I was thinking taking it out of my bank card would be better, but what do you guys think?

 

anyways, besides that, its still really hot here, but it did rain on wednesday! maybe rainy season is comin early this year (hopefully)

I wrote some letters to Ben and Sam and I'll send them out on wednesday so tel them to expect them! yay!

 

Ben is just getting cooler and cooler  holy cow what an animal, playin lacrosse and showin fools up! thats my brother out there!

Sam is still doin his thang, ballin hard, how many girlfriends does he currently have? dang whata stud

the house looks awesome! I'd like to see a picture of the inside when its complete! I'm excited to come home to such a changed house ahaha. Niles sounds like same ole Niles, and I hope Jasmine and Kitty are doin their things too! I miss all the animals ahaha.

Oh my I almost forgot! ON wednesday we had this thing called mission tour, which is when an area president from the 70 comes and tours all the missions in the philippines! so Elder Neilson of the 70 and the Philippines area presidency came to the cavite mission and we had a huge devotional that lasted like 5 hours where we got to hear Elder Neilson speak about missoinary work and other things and also from President Tye and Sister Tye and Elder Neilsons wife! It was a great experience and very spiritual. it was with about half the mission too, so there was a lot of people there (he did two, one the next day for the other half of the mission).

that is about the only major happening this week.

I haven't tried any new foods lately, but I'm always open to new ones! I'll keep you guys posted.

that spider was about the size of my hand! and they get bigger!

ahaha 8:00 is usually a last-lesson appointment because curfew is 9:30 ahah, so its a convenient time for us missionaries. I do look very forward to Mother's day when I will be skyping (yes it most likely will be on mothers day!) I'm excited to see you guys again! 

Have a great week all of you, I love you guys and miss you! Stay golden Lasley family.

Now I'll send some pictures!

Love, your son,

Elder Lasley! :)

 

 Me and a Cow

 Sunset

 Always try to be Christ-like

March 2 2014: Basketball and Service Day

Family! Hows it going?!

This week was honestly a pretty wild week. mostly just like 1 and a half days but it was still crazy. the craziest day was by far tuesday. but I'll start with monday because its the first day of the actual week. 

 

so after I emailed you guys last week, we went to a big mall called SM Pala Pala and bought me a new camera! I got this super nice Sony Cyber-Shot. dang its nice. its very nice and everyone i show it to is pretty jealous. after that, we went to a nice restaurant called Shakeys because it was Elder Matinas birthday last Friday! we each spent like 300 pesos on some bomb food. then we bought a basketball so we could start playing basketball everyday! then we went home and whatever yeah okay so TUESDAY. So we woke up about 30 minutes early to go play some ball! so we played, you know just shot around for a while, then I decided i wanted to try and dunk, so just to warm up I jumped up and grabbed the rim and SNAP the rim broke. the welding literally broke. so the rim was just hanging there in the backboard. so we got the owner of the court guy and we had to take the rim down and go find a place to get it welded. this took like 45 minutes. we finally found a place to get it welded, where it was free, and while we were waiting there for the welder, we started talking to the people around and actually found a less active member! too bad it wasnt in our area though ahah. anyways, that all ended t around 9, and we went back to the court and screwed the newly welded rim back into place, then went home to get ready for the day ahaha. so later that day, while we were proselyting, we were just walking and all of the sudden, this old guy just stops us and starts yelling at us in broken english/tagalog. he starts like chastizing us and telling us that missionaries should go into every house they see and preach the word of God to every single person "no matter if theyre poor or rich" and we just nodded our heads in agreement the whole time this guy was just yelling at us. then finally when he was finished, we gave him a pamphlet and said we would come back the next day ahahah it was pretty weird. alright so next, a little bit later, we were on our way to another appointment, this like 20 year old guy who we had met a few days earlier called us over to him. he and a couple of his friends were just chillin, eating lugaw (rice soup kinda thing) so they gave us some and then invited us to their house. so we walked with them to their house and they let us sit down in there front yard. then they walked away and came back a moment later with this lady wearing full on muslim atire, and a man wearing a muslim type thing. they sat in front of us, asked us our religion, and then IMMEDIATELY started bashing us with weird doctrine and were just hatin on every Christian everywhere, we just happened to be their target. it lasted for about 30 minutes, and every time we tried to say something, they interrupted us and started talking about some other "false" belief of ours. after around 30 minutes, Elder Matina tactfully ended the conversation and said "this is more of a one sided arguement/debate then a sharing, so were going to leave. but thank you for your time." so we got up and left. while we were leaving they said "bukas ulit!" which means "tomorrow, again!" and we just shook our heads and walked away in shame. but not actual shame because I mean, God was on our side because we didnt do anything to bash any other churches, we simply attempted to state our beliefs. That's why LDS missionaries are so much different than other churches missionaries! I'm proud to be a member of a church that doesn't bad mouth other religions, and never has.

 

Then on wednesday, it was mission service day! so the whole Dasmarinas zone, about 35 missionaries, all went to a city super close to Tagaytay called Alfonso and cleaned a dragonfruit field! we used little like scythe things, kind of like a sickle, and just hacked away at tons of weeds for about 2 hours. dragonfruit is super weird! it wasn't ripe yet, so we just got to see the plants, but they're cactuses! dragonfruit grows on a cactus! hah weird. 

the rest of the day was totally normal.

 

oh also, on wednesday morning, I DUNKED. I legitimately slam dunked! I have it on video, so i'll try to send it to you!

anwyays, thats about all of my week. 

thats awesome that Harrison's going to Germany for his mission! I bet he flipped! Germany is like his favorite place on the face of the Earth ahaha. hes already been taking German now for like 3 years too! that should be awesome. I'm gonna write him one of these days!

Ben and Sam are still being awesome! I wrote Ben and Sam each a letter, they should get there in a week or two! 

I would still like those pants, but no rush, let mom do her sale thing ahaha.

Flag High second place in state? holy cow! I wish I could've been at that game oh my gosh. how wild! too bad the next Mike Bibby had to steal the championship from them. dang, since 1975 still.

I'm gonna write Grammy an actual letter and mail it to her! I really hope she starts improving.

that's awesome that you guys went to the temple dedication broadcast! I'm jealous!

Yes we do have jeepnies here! I dont really like them ahaha. we mostly just walk though, lots and lots of walking. but I havent lost or gained any weight, weird. aahaha.

anyways, that's all for now! I'll send some pictures now. I love and miss you guys! 

Love,

Elder Lasley :)

Family Home Evening

Elder Tinasas

My District

Selfie

Cool Photo

Giant Spider:  Big as My Hand

 

Feb 23 2014: My Pet Goat

Hey Dad! and the rest of the family!
Sounds like things are going great in Flagstaff, lots of trips to phoenix for sports, basketball and lacrosse! thats awesome. I'm still impressed that Sam and Ben are doin so awesome at their own individual sports, I wish I could be there to watch some games! Just make sure Sam is still playing basketball when I get home and that Ben plays lacrosse his senior year too, so I can watch them! To answer your question about the camera, I haven't bought one yet, but I am planning to later today! We're going to a bigger mall later after we email and they have this huge place called CyberZone witht literally anything technology related, so I will buy a pretty nice camera. I agree, if I just bought a cheap one, I might have to buy 2 or even 3 more by the end of my mission, but if I get a pretty nice one, it should last me the rest of my time here. Dont worry about putting money on my card or anything, I have plenty of spending money, but I may need to withdraw 2000-3000 pesos (dont worry thats only about $60) to help pay for it. We'll see!

The beach last week was actually a blast! I thought it was going to be disappointing because we couldnt actually do much beach related activities, but I hung out with two new missionaries from our zone, Elder Erickson from Edmonton (yeah Canada!) and Elder Hansen from Washtington, who are super cool guys! We just beach combed and messed around in the ankle deep water ahaha it was fun. I had them take a lot of pictures so they can email them to me and then I will email them to you next week! the trip to the beach was about an hour long van ride, we had two vans for about 40 people, so it was packed beyond belief. Not a very comfortable ride as you can imagine. we first tried to go to a more famous beach, but to get there, you have to cross through a Philippine Marine base for some reason, so when we were trying to cross through, we got stopped and told we couldnt pass because there were too many undocumented foreigners (obviously we didnt have any ids or passports on us), so we had to go to another less popular beach, but it was still a blast. we were at the beach fro around 2 hours, then another hour long bus ride home. You guys should look up pictures on google images or something of the beach we were at! its called Ternate beach, Cavite. check it out!

 this week our work was better than last week, but it still wasnt great. Honestly we just dont have enough ward missionaries work with us! For my 4 and a half weeks so far in this ward, we havent had one ward missionary work with us, and its really starting to effect our work. The reason is because we need at least one other man over the age of 16 to be with us for us to teach a lesson to a female. and many of our planned lessons are with single females, or families where the husband is rarely home. but nevertheless, we work hard and find people to teach! We focused a lot on finding through our own efforts this week. Just talking to people outside there houses, or along the street and tactfully turning it into a gospel centered conversation. its quite a talent ahaha. So we've started building a solid pool of potential investigators.

 I dont really have any other stories to tell this week, it was a hard week for work, but we will turn up next week and I wil have stories for days hopefully! I did receive the valentines day care package little thing with cheap candy, but I have not yet replied to Bens letter! I'm actaully planning on sending something home with it so it may take a while, but Ben will be very happy I imagine. so tell him to be patient! I miss him too! I mean I miss all of you guys, but I feel like I havent talked to Ben in forever, and we used to talk a lot ahaha. alright, I have to go here pretty soon, but I'm gonna send some pictures that Elder Matina has from his camera so you'll actually get some pictures this week! I love you guys and miss you a lot! Stay golden lasley family.

 Love, Elder Lasley!

Elder Lasley and a pet goat

Feb 16 2014: Dockers and the Beach

Hey Family! I wish it felt like Flagstaff Spring here! it mostly just feels like Dante's Inferno. Its pretty freakin hot right now, and the hottest month of the year isnt even until April :( I'm not looking forward to it. literally you step outside and start sweating. immediately. This week was crazy busy! On tuesday we had a zone meeting, with our whole zone, for 3 hours! Elder Zacarias, my fisrt companion, is in our zone, so I got to see him, it was pretty cool. then on Thursday we had interviews with President and Sister Tye! It was great to see and talk weith them. During my interview with Sister Tye, she noticed my pants didnt have a defined crease in them and said "Are those dress slacks? because they look a little bit more like Dockers to me. I dont think Dockers are allowed" and I was like "Oh I was not aware of that. Dockers are all I have!" and she said "if its okay with you, I would ask you to buy some real dress slacks" so I just said "okay, yeah I can definitely do that" I was kind of shocked to be called out like that. anyways, then yesterday, Sister Tye texts me and says "I was looking on the missionary website online and actually it doesnt say anything about dockers being unacceptable so dont buy new pants!" then she apologized to me for calling me out and she felt really bad and I was just like "Sister its completely fine, I totally understand dont worry about it!" ahahah it was funny. then she told us that Elder Matinas mom called her a JOY on a blog comment and I said well you are a joy sister Tye! boom brownie points. its safe to say she loves me. I mean she loves all of us missionaries, but me a little bit more probably. just kidding :) ahah thats funny that you guys and Elder Matinas mom are chattin a little bit! She told Elder Matina in her email to him that she read my blog a little bit then looked us all up on facebook ahah mission moms are all the same! Me and Elder Matina get along great. We're about the same age, we both like sports and stuff and we have a lot of the same interests! No lie, hes a little bit better than me at tagalog, but its okay. but I'm getting better everday still! I knoiw how to say "good morning" in three filipino dialects! ready? Tagalog: Magandang umaga! Ilacono: Naimbag nga bigat! Cebuano: Maayong buntag! yay filipino dialects! and I'm still in the process of learning good morning in another dialect called Waray. Now i have a funny story about one of our investigators! his name is Vincent! and hes like 40 i think. anyways, we taught him on saturday afternoon and invited him to come to church on sunday at 9 am so he said he would come. when we got to church on sunday, we didnt see him, so we were kinda sad. anyways, after church, we were in our ward council meeting and then elder Matina looks out the window and sees him standing outside the church. so we rush out of the class and go talk to him! so he says that he woke up at 6 o clock in the morning but he thought to himself "church doesnt start until 9, I can go back to sleep and wake up again at 8 and be fine" so he went back to sleep and when he woke up again it was 9:30! so he hurried and got dressed and came to church at around 10:30. but he couldnt fine us or anyone he knew so he asked some guy what he could do, and the man he asked told him that there was another sacrament meeting at 1, so VIncent went home, ate lunch and cam back at 12:30, which is when we saw him. so we talked to him and said by all means he could still go to church at 1 just we wouldnt be there, but he said that is just fine because he wanted to attend church so badly! so he weent to church at 1 until 4. ahaha it was awesome! He is a great guy. oh and today we have a zone activity! we're going to the beach. but we arent allowed to swim. its kind of sad. but the beach is still fun! but I felt like the ocean will just be taunting me the whole time :( anwyays, I will take pictures! just kidding because my memory card is broken :( I may use some of the money I have to buy a new camera. is that okay? because I cant live without taking pictures! theres so much to take a picture of here! it will be like the only thing I've bought in like 2 months. ahaha. now for a small scoop on my new area! the area itself is much smaller than Bacoor, but the city of Dasmarinas is much bigger! in the whole city of Bacoor, there were 4 missionaries, in the city of Dasmarinas there are 10 or 12 I think? so each area is much smaller! so we spend a lot less money on transportation, we just walk everywhere. my calves are getting YOKED. ahahah. we are farther from the mission home then I was in Bacoor, so we rarely, rarely go there. actaully i havent ever been to the mission home. the mission office and the missoin home are in completely different cities! you probably meant the mission office ahaha. in my opinion it is much prettier here than it was in Bacoor! and the people are just as friendly. so I like it here a lot better than I did Bacoor! anyways, its about time for me to go now, we have an hour bus ride to the beach ahah. I love you guys and miss you tons! stay golden, Lasley family. :) Love, Elder Lasley