Week #18: FINALLY Transferred to a new area. So exciting!

Hello!

So now I'm in Bangui. It's located in the mga bundok. North of Ilocos Norte. It's always raining here. The church membership here is mostly old people. So many old ladies like working with us here and keep on referring us to their family members. So we're probably going to have a lot of baptismal dates for old people by the end of July. It's good for us because we can fill our schedule with old people during the day time and young people during the night. That was the biggest challenge in Santa Ana, filling up the schedule during the day.

Anyways, it's kind of weird training again even though I didn't finish training Elder Bulseco. He's training too! There's a picture we all took at Laoag. It's basically a family photo without Elder Polgo. We call Elder Polgo father Abraham because he trained so late in his mission. And from his son he has more descendants. Very quickly too. Anyways, my new companion is Elder Clark. He's from Davao. But not really. He's from Seattle Washington. It's gonna be an interesting experience for me because I have to teach him Tagalog now. My Tagalog actually improved alot. I can understand and speak almost fluently. It's like my skills improve every transfer.

So in Bangui, we have a brand new apartment and we're 4 elders in the apartment. We're staying with the District Leader Elder Wright and Elder Gamboa. Elder Gamboa is Ilocano from Tarlac. He's fluent so I'm going to learn as much as I can from him. I only know a few things to say like: Ilocanonak ngem ... hindi marunong mag-ilocano ... ngem kayatko nga agisuro ti ilocano. That's about it.

While I was in Laoag, I got to work with the office elders. They didn't do much work. My temporary companion was from Visayas so we spoke Tagalog only so I guess that's how I really improved my speaking skills. We actually spent one whole day finding because the office Elders were too busy taking care of the incoming missionaries. I actually got to play basketball with the new missionaries one day. It's nice being in Bangui too because I get to withdraw in Laoag. The welcoming day for the new missionaries was nice. We had a huge dinner afterwards. The cultural hall was super decorated that it looked kind of like a debut so I told President Barrientos it was his debut. It was actually his birthday too. Well how about that.

Anyways, I hope you are all doing well. Work here is fun. Take care and I love you all!!

Elder Morales