Where in the world is Sister Hancock? (Guess before you open)

Dear family,

If you guessed Ubay, Bohol (which I honestly don't know how you would) you are right!  Ubay is, obviously in Bohol, and is super super bukid, which I guess is kind of comparable to the country. There are a lot of rice fields and carabou.  It is also sooo pretty here, I have already fallen in love with this area.  My new companion is Sister Tiniacavaraba, Sister T for short.  She is from Fiji and cracks me up all the time, she is great. I actually met her before when I went to the MTC for a day with LJ and Kaylie (she was Sister Clegg's companion)  She is also super bisdak (good at bisaya) which I am grateful for because you definitely learn more bisaya if your companion is good at it.  She is so bisdak that people always ask her if she is half filipino then when they ask I tell them no but I am.

Lets see my experiences in Ubay so far, well we ride motorcycles everywhere and sometimes it is interesting trying to fit 3 people on the same motorcycle, but I love motorcycles haha.  No one tell mom but I want to get a motorcycle when I come home, they are so fun.  But it was definitely interesting learning how to ride a motorcycle in a skirt at first, now I am pro though so no worries.  I have changed so much since my mission, I am a coke drinking, motorcycle riding girl now hahaha.

Our ward is actually an unofficial group that meets in my apartment for church.  On Sunday there were eight normal members at church, then counting the  missionaries the kids and the investigators there was a total of 20 people.  Not strong in numbers, but you know strong in spirit I guess.  I am excited though, it will be a really cool experience.  I will probably have to give a lot of on the spot talks and teach classes all the time, but it will be great.

So one of the picture is me drinking straight from a coconut, which was quite enjoyable, and then the other one is houses that you commonly find here.  They build their house on the shore and have those walk-ways for high tide.  The walkways are pretty sketch actually and you always have to walk really slowly other wise you might step on a rotten bamboo stick and fall through.

Missions, Marriage and more (i hope you guys appreciated that I was creative in english this time)

Dear Family,

Haha thank you all for putting read Kelsey's email first, however I honestly didn't read any of your headers until after I read kelsey's email because I was so confused by what she met... Even after living in the philippines I am still as blond as ever.  But she is engaged!  That is so weird, but so cool.  Someone should tell Brandon he needs to email me if he is going to be my brother soon.  I am sure you are all freaking out because I know I am!!!

So this week has been good.  Worley's interview is this week which is exciting, and transfers are also this week.  I thought I was going to leave this area, but now they have plans to split my area because they want to make a branch in cordova in a year or so (which is very ambitious to say the least since we pretty much have no members in my area).  So I might actually stay and kind of open an area, we will see what happens.  But either way I am excited!

Also we found a new less active this week whose dad was apparently the first person baptized in cebu, so you know that is pretty cool.  (I am pretty sure that the Philippines is the only country where while you are tracting half-way through the lesson people say "oh ya I was baptized as a mormon before, then I back slid."  They always say back slid in english, its funny.  But that has happen twice while I have been here.  We also have to do this thing right now where we are looking for address unknown, which means we look for less actives who have been lost because they moved or something.  Anyways sorry that was a random tangent.)

Oh also apparently filippino's consider mayo a filling, because I think I have already told you how they have bakeries everywhere and you can just buy fantastic bread rolls at any time.  Well anyways I was buying bread and I asked the "what is filling", oh a word I don't understand that is normal, so I was like sige I will try it.  I bit into it and I got a mouth full of mayo, it was awful.  So if you all come here look out for that haha.

Anyways I love you, I know this church is true and I know the gospel blesses our lives so much so keep up the good work!

Sister hancock

pwede ko mosulat sa bisan unsa ug wala mo nakasabut, nindot! naa ko'y tanan gahum

To my huge loving family,

So secret out, the only reason sometimes I write my subjects in bisaya is because I can't really think of anything cool to say in english and knowing bisaya automatically make me cooler. I can't wait for the day when I can put "I speak the language of bisaya fluently" on my resume, and then the employer responds "what I have never even heard of this language, she is so cool we are going to hire her instantly".  Or that is what I keep telling myself will happen since there is pretty much no use for this language I have put so much time and effort into after my mission.

So sorry if the email is slight more boring then my other emails.  Sister Salima continues to feel very sick so I have had plenty of time to clean our apartment and you know do language study and... I don't really know what else I have done, just try to use my time productively I guess haha.

But we do have some good news from this week that I will share with you.  We dated Worley, you know like the missionary way, like gave him a baptismal date, geez guys.  So his planned baptismal date in the 27 which is sweet and he is progressing nicely.

We also got to teach the Matas familys father this week.  They want to be baptized but they need the permission of their father/husband to be baptized so we are focusing on teaching him as well.  He is really great.  I was kind of scared to teach him to be honest but it was a really awesome lesson.  He has a ton of questions which I like in an investigator, but it also scares me sometimes because they could start using tagalog halfway through and would have no idea what they are asking, (he actually did that but then realized we didn't speak tagalog haha, I just thought during that that I really need to work on my bisaya, but no worries all of his questions were answered hopefully acceptably.)

As far as living in the philippines update, so when I first got here I would always wake up at 530 in the morning because its so hot so I tried to train myself to sleep with out a sheet, I have no accomplished that but now I wake up at 500 in the morning because it is so hot.  Oh and we had a brown out yesterday (which means there was no power at all until 5), so church was kind of interesting because the piano didn't work so we sung acapella and I couldn't hear a single word any of the speakers said.  But I guess thats life in the philippines.

Anyways I love you all so very much.  I wish you all good health and good summer fun.  Love you tons.

Sister Hancock

Dugay na

to my beloveds

How are you?  I hope summer weather is treating you well.  Here in the Philippines summer just ended and everyone is going back to school, which is nice because it is still hot, but not as hot.  We have rain occasionally now.

So you are probably all think I died in some crazy tropical storm and that is why I didn't write you but actually we just had a temple trip today and whenever we have a temple trip they move our p-day to Wednesday, but don't worry all will be back to normal and I will be emailing you next Monday.

It is weird emailing you now because I feel like so much has happen, I don't even know what to write about.  So we had Nikki and Alyn's baptism this week.  It was really great haha but when we got there the font was extremely dirty so we sat their waiting 3 hours for it to start haha, but the good news is they got baptized anyway, and here in the Philippines you normally wait about an hour for it to start anyways so I guess that is not to bad haha.

This week was also Sister Salima's birthday, so of course I bought her a cake, and she said it was her first time ever celebrating her birthday.  But she really enjoyed it so that is good.  She has also been super super sick for the past week, but still always just wants to work so we have still be able to teach just not as much.

Worley has also agreed to get baptized but we are waiting on his work before he can be baptized, he never came out and said this, but we are like 90% certain that as soon as he becomes a member he will be fired from his job because his boss is catholic so we will just see what happens with that.

Also the toting family came to church this Sunday which was way exciting, they have also agreed to be baptized so hopefully they continue progressing!  If thing go like normal I probably won't be able to see either of their baptisms because I will be transferred, but I guess we will just have to see what the lord has in store for me... I am hoping its bohol haha.

Anyways I love you all and hope your summer is full of fun activities.  Until monday,

Sister hancock

P.s sorry I would have emailed you pictures but this computer is weird.  Sunod na lang.