Elder Dustin Watkins Philippines Angeles Mission: Week 17: New Year Celebration, A Baptism, and Answer to Prayers

I post this letter in its entirety with a bit of hesitation ;) teehee. Those familiar with the Church's standards will understand why...

Sup Family!

2014! Wooo!!! Hope you all had a great New Years, as mine was fantastic :)

On New Year's we had a curfew at 6 because it gets pretty crazy here I guess...Plus no one is really apt to being taught then anyways...
So we returned home early, bought some ice cream and cat fish to celebrate. On the way home I nearly fell out of the Jeepney and could have died, but minor details na lang...upon arriving at the house, we prepared for the party for us 4 elders. We played chess ha! it actually was super fun, and of course, yours truly, was undefeated champion. After that, we played our own rendition of blackjack/poker; each of us bought a 50 piece bag of sweets to use as bets. Of course, I came away with over 125 of the 200 total candies. As Dad knows from Mexico, I own at blackjack. Then we stayed up to watch the fireworks which are ten times better here. We just watched from our deck and it sounded like a war zone. Here in the Philippines the only thing that matters is how loud the fireworks can be. And there are stands everywhere to buy them and they are super cheap. So everyone has them. Overall, it was a great night with the elders and night of relaxing.

Then, back to work :)

We have one planned baptism this month on January 14th. Her name is Sister Dohinog. She has a really difficult time understanding so we try to teach as simple as possible... but she has attended church a ton so at least she has the desire...
Transfer date for this month is January 15th. Normally upon finishing training, the trainee (me) stays in the same area, but there is a good chance that Elder Gomez and I get transferred. The Zone Leaders hinted at an area getting white washed (both missionaries get transferred) and we feel it will be ours. So in 9 days I could be moving to a new area in the Pino Islands! :) We'll see though as anything, of course, could happen.

So one story of the week - We met this girl named Yuri Suzuki at the plaza this week. I was actually with Elder Gordon. He's 4 weeks into the mission and really nervous to talk to new people. So I just started pointing at people and we would have to go up and talk to them. Haha - two Americans, one a 6'6" redhead! Anyways, we were just doing it mainly for practice then this girl actually became really interested. Come to find out, she lives in my area. So we got her barangay, or neighborhood, where she lives. Later in the week we tried finding her house and could not! No one could tell us where she lived! I said a silent prayer asking to find her house. I felt we should go down this street that we had literally walked like four times. We asked a random guy and it happened to be the barangay captain and he lead us straight to here house! Crazy to me that my silent prayer was answered so fast and we 'happen' to ask a guy who know where she lives after asking around 15-20 people who didn't know...cool stuff :)

All in all I am doing great, improving in the language and still loving the mission life :)

Love you all
Have a great week :)
Elder Watkins