Elder Roy's News: Second Week in the Philippines

Looking out our front porch here in Quezon City

Dear Family,

Hello~ I need Cam and Nick's emails pleaseee. THANK YOU thank you for sending the pictures... its great to see the babies growing up! You should send pictures of everyone, and everything, and possibly even my car. I wrote a letter, and I will send it tomorrow, some of the elders have been saying it can take up to a month to get back to the states.

Alright, so right now I am in the Quezon City 3rd ward area. It covers a place called Roxas (Row-haus) and Tatalong and being here has been a crazy experience. I can't believe its been 2 weeks!!!! It feels like I have been here forever. The people here are pretty nice for the most part. They like Elder Kmetsch alot because he is super white (Also Elder Kmetzch is going to be my trainer we found out this week) He has been here for 5 months.

Every morning I wake up here and I am pretty much already sweating, and cover in bug bites ha-ha... its fun. Just about everywhere you can see cockroaches, mice, lizards, rats, cats, dogs, and children, my favorite is the cockroaches =) However the babies are really cute here too. The language is going well... It;s hard to understand what everyone is saying for these reasons:

1. You always hear cars and motorcycles- if you don't hear those then..
2. You are hearing loud music everywhere because a lot of people like to sing on their karaoke machines. If you're not hearing music then...
3. They are talking really fast and quiet-so you then tend to zone out

There is a lot of good food here, and the bakeries are amazing. But-there is also a lot of food that I don't find appeasing to my pallet, my pallet is pretty refined:) The first food I tried that I didn't like was liver, after liver was squid, and I'm just getting sick of gulay, we have had it just about everyday, and I just can't have it any more. Although Elder Barba makes me eat it.

There's another problem I have had, I am gaining weight here, when we go to any member's house they like to feed us, and they always offer more after you finish, and I am afraid I will offend them if I say no to more, so I always end up eating a lot.

Being the new guy you get chosen a lot to say prayers, its fun.

There is probably more I could write, but I can't think of anything. Oh- I got a story:

We were walking on the street, and there was another Caucasian male, so we talked to him, and he said he served a mission in England, and he is here in the Philippines with his girlfriend. He asked for an English Book of Mormon, and a Cebuano one for his girlfriend, so we gave that to him today.

Picture time. Starting with one from the MTC that I didn't get to send. This computer is only going to let me send four at a time maybe only 3...the pictures are taking forever to load.

Today we found out that Elder Dalisay and Elder Barba are going to be transferring, and there will be a new zone leader coming in to be companions with Elder Niar.

Oh- also I forgot... what ward are the Flores family from? More news soon.

Love-Elder Roy