Belated Birthday?

Dear Family,

This week has been full of temptations, haha just kidding.  But we have had an unusual amount of people try and talk us in to doing karaoke (filipinos love karaoke).  On of our investigator went through, "its not in the ten commandment",  and "god wants us to be happy".  Apparently you need karaoke to be happy, who would have thought?

This Sunday was also pakio (i don't know how to spell that) sunday.  He is a boxer that filipinos love, which mean no one, even members, went to church.  There were throngs of people surrounding tvs in the street.

Other then that I continued to celebrate my birthday, which was great.  On Tuesday my district bought a cake for me which was fun and I got package, on Wednesday on of the members in our ward cooked sweet spaghetti (which is what filipinos eat for birthdays), and on friday we had more cake, which wasn't for me, but you know I can pretend haha.  

Its been a good week, I really love this area.  I hope you are all doing well.  I love you all so much and am praying for you.  Keeping being awesome!

Sister hancock

Salamat Kaayo!

Dear family,

Thank you for all of the birthday wishes.  Sorry if my responses were shorter.  Just know there is a lot of you, but I love you all so much.

So, so far my birthday has been really great.  I woke up this morning at 530 because there was this crazy thunderstorm that literally shoke our house.  There was thunder literally every 30 seconds and the light outside was really creepy, like twilight zone light.  There was shoots of "the second coming is here" and "china has finally done".  But now the weather is normal, so you know we are all fine.  Lets see after that my companion decorated my desk, I decided I hated hair fall so I got a really quick hair cut from my companion, ninyo (the one that got married) made us breakfast, they gay man we take some of our laba to gave us flower pens he made, and now all of you email me.  Thanks to all of you for making my birthday so great!

Sooo, work this week.  Well I thought I would tell you about one of our investigators named malou.  First off in Filippino culture they really like mixing languages, I didn't really understand it when I got here, but then you grandually adopt things from the culture you live in, and now I love it, I have a really hard time speaking straight english.  Anyways she is native chibracano.  So during the course of the lesson she literally mixes 4 languages chibracano, tagalog, bisaya, and english.  Every other sentence is a different langues.  It keep us on our seat.  You never know whether you are going to understand a sentence.  She is really nice and really love missionary and asked us to sleep at her house like 20 time, and we had to tell her like twenty times it wasn't allowed.

We also have this really crazy less active old man that we teach that literally text us 5 times a day the craziest message.  It keeps us laughing through out the day.

Other then that we went on splits this week, and I went with sister T which was fun.  And sorry I have to cut this email short.  But I love you all so much and hope live is great for all of you.  Know I love you and am praying for you.

Sister Hancock

gialsa ang balay?

Dearest loved ones,

How are you?  I hope you are happy and finding joy in the journey.

This week has been really good.  We have a crazy CSP this week.  Get this, we literally moved a house.  No we did not move people from one house to another, we literally took apart a house, took the roof and the walls and moved them to a new location and then built the house again.  I have built a  house. actually I didn't really do it because filippinos don't really like letting sisters help so most CSP just invovle us trying really hard to help and the walls and roofing getting taken away from us and us just ending up watching.  But it was really cool, only in the Philippines...

Sorry to leave you all on the cliff hanger last week about Analyn,  So I have some bad news and some good new.  The bad news is she decided not to be baptized, sister mccurdy and I thought it was a permenant decision, until she came to church this sunday, and now I am really hoping she continues in Manila.  She has gotten her answer, and has told us several times she knows its trues, hopefully she is just will to make the sacrifices necissary.  The good news is the day after analyn dropped us, we found this really gold investigator.  Like she asked a ton of questions asked us if we had a book, told us she wanted to learn more about mormons for a while, and at the end of the lesson committed to baptism.  We have only taught her once, so I might be counting my chickens before they hatch this time, but she really seems to have so much pontential to me.

Other then that I am doing well, I am really happy and really love the ward I am assigned to.  We are having a thanksgiving devotional today, so happy early thanksgiving to you all.  I love you all so much, and miss you all, have a good one!

Sister Hancock

Happy Holidays

To my wonderful family,

Well this week was full of holidays here.  On tuesday consolacion had their huge fiesta, so all of consolacion was involved.  Mostly fiesta are just a lot of eating and drinking, and candles.  Then there was halloween, there were trick-or-treators in the area that I was teach our last lesson, because it is a richer area.  Its really cute, the say happy halloween, trick-or-treat in a really cute accent, I love filippino accents. Then Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 were all souls day and all saints day.  Which involves a lot of people going to cemeteries and getting drunk as well haha.  But it also means everyone is busy which is really unfortunate for missionaries.  So some days were harder to work then others, but I am telling you it was quite the party here haha.

Well updates on analyn, on tuesday we had a really good lesson and she commited to baptism, the on friday we found out she is moving to manila on november 18 and she isn't sure if she wants to get baptized before she is moving.  So no one really knows what is going on, but I guess I will just have to leave you on a cliff-hanger and you will have to wait for next week....

As for me, i got sick this week, but I feel fine now.  I just literally have no voice haha.  It was funny we were singing a hymn for companionship study and sometimes literally no sound came out, so I just had sister mccurdy sing by herself, and I laugh.  But hopefully my voice comes back eventually haha.

I love you all so much!  I hope that you all are happy and enjoying life! Love you,

Sister Hancock