Probably the
Craziest week I’ve ever had on the mission so far. Transfer week in the office.
The last one wasn’t so bad because the Millers (Couple missionaries) were with
us training us how to do things so we missed out on most of the craziness.
Anyway, so let me get story telling here…
First off,
this is just a little outline of the week so you can catch a glimpse of the
insanity. Monday: Office meeting,
Tuesday: Prep for transfer day, Wednesday: Exit Thursday: Transfer day/
Thanksgiving, Friday: Organize office, Saturday: Thanksgiving dinner/ P-day.
Monday begins
and we are all scrambling around to get everything ready for transfer day on
Thursday. We had an office meeting where we all met with President and Sister
Delamare, the APs and the office couples to basically strategize how we are
going to tackle everything including rides and such. Coding is a pain,
especially when President is coding on transfer day. Haha!
Anyway, Tuesday
is the day we just did a ton of office work.
The biggest problem was that we were out of money and a lot of people
needed money; you know the small stuff like, new landlords, new phone orders,
medical expenses…there were actually a lot of pesos that we went through the
last week.
Tuesday was also just a catch up day; the biggest thing that happened was that Elder Scanlan and I were assigned to pick up 3 of the 7 exiting missionaries. So we left at 4 pm and got back to the mission home by 9. Haha! Although it was quite a long time, we actually got to the mission home on time. Traffic was horrible. We started from the Office in Quezon City and went to Pasig to pick up Elder Cazimero because it is the farthest away. The distance is about from our house in Sacramento to Costco (about a 12 minute drive) but with intense traffic the whole way. In the end, it took us about an hour and a half. For those of you in Utah, it’s from Provo to Lehi. Haha! I am never going to complain about traffic in the States anymore!!! So, after spending about an hour getting lost and trying to get to the right place, we pick up one of the Elders and then head back to Quezon City to pick up Elder Sims. After spending a few hours in traffic and getting lost, we eventually find his apartment. The next was Sister Macaranas who is in the same zone but on the other side of town. So at around 8:00, we had everyone and went out to get dinner at McDonalds. They serve rice here in the Philippines! It’s so weird! We had a nice time and enjoyed them ending their missions.
Wednesday was
a great day; we didn’t even have enough time to go to the office at all. Haha! Well, let’s start at about 4:00 am when we
took Elder Brown to the Airport to go home. So, by the end of that I was already tired and
the day had just started. Haha! Then we
went to the mission home to have breakfast with all of the exiting missionaries.
We saw a video that had a slideshow of pictures of the missionaries. I was
getting trunky (homesick). Haha! Joke lang! Then after that we were able to go and do a
session in the temple. Wohoo!!! It’s been 6 months but I’ve finally been able
to go! There is no temple in Mindoro,
sadly…yet…haha! I told President
Delamare and afterwards he said, “You know, if you had told me earlier I would
have let you and your companion go.” Sayang! Awww man…my bad! It’s all good though. Life is good. Afterwards, we went to the War Memorial in
Manila with President, the whole office, and all of the exiting missionaries. I
sent a ton of great pictures! I loved
it! Haha! By this time it is about 1:00 pm. Man, what a day! Afterwards, we ran some errands, set up the
chapel, made sure everything is ready and in place for the CHAOS of TRANSFER
DAY!!!! This is also Elder Waite’s last day with us before he goes back out to
the field. He’s so happy! Haha!
Thursday. Transfer Day!
Schedule:
6:45 am - Pick
up the New Missionaries from the MTC (Missionary Training Center)
7:00 am - Breakfast
@ the mission home
7:30 am - Begin
introductions and orientation
*Note, the
Missionaries were actually a surprisingly excited and energetic bunch. They’ll do great things!
9:00 am - Transfer
meeting
I saw Elder
Hilbert again for the first time since I left Mindoro! He just got called to train an American! Haha!
I’m happy for him. It will be great for
his Tagalog. He’s a really good guy. I hear he’s been doing so well in the field
since he left Pasig. It was really nice to see everyone I’ve met since I’ve
gotten to the field. Elder Barrow is
doing great work as a Zone Leader in Cogeo right now. Elder Peralta is still a Zone Leader in
Antipolo. Big News…Elder Olvido is now a
Zone Leader in Marikina! Good for him! I’m so happy that he’s been doing great work
and is in a good leadership position. He’ll grow so much. A few of the sisters I met in Mindoro are now
training new missionaries so that’s awesome! Elder Wilde is training too! Haha! That
lucky duck. He’s the first one of our
batch to train.
According to
president, the wave of new missionaries should hit us around April 11th so a lot of older missionaries are going to
be training. My Zone leaders in Mindoro,
Elder Herr and Elder Duenas are still together in Mindoro for another transfer!
This makes 5 transfers for Elder Herr
and 4 for Elder Duenas. Haha! Man, they’ll have spent 6 months together as
companions. It’s great though; they are
both Fireballs and do such awesome work with the leaders in Mindoro. ^_^ I’m
so happy for them, but kind of sad I won’t be able to see them in the mainland
for another transfer. Actually, they’ll
be coming up for a day in the beginning of December so that’ll be great! I keep telling them that they’ll finish their
mission in Mindoro. Haha! They still have a good 8 months left or
something.
More Pasig
updates: Alice is now married and has
moved to Australia by the time you read this. The Ormunds are also moving back
to Australia because they were reassigned for work. The Pallisigue and Gomez
family are about 4 months away from getting sealed in the temple. WOW! Time
flies by so fast! They had better invite me to their sealing. Haha! I’ll write them again just to be sure ;)! Life is good.
10:00-11:00 am
- Office after transfer meeting
So, this
basically means I was in the office for about an hour trying to reimburse
everyone for rented jeepneys, taxis, lost phones, etc… utter chaos trying to help
a hundred missionaries at the same time. I’m so glad I can at least multi-task
a little bit. Haha! I felt kinda sayang (too bad) though because I couldn’t
go around and say hi to everyone I wanted to. It’s okay. I’ll see them again.
I’m getting
tired writing out the whole schedule. Haha!
I’ll just summarize for now. You probably didn’t need to know all of that anyway.
The thing is, what I write here I’m going to copy and paste onto my journal. XD
The rest of
the day was spent at the orientation/ training meeting for the missionaries
from the Provo MTC. Then we spent the
rest of the night trying to take the new missionaries to their apartments
around the mission. So that took a while. P-day is only 2 days away!!! I need a break! *Transfer Day happens every six weeks, FYI.
Saturday was
a nice relaxed/great Thanksgiving day! We
had a lunch/dinner thing at the Mission home with President and every couple
missionary in the mission. Since we have the PAO in our mission, it’s a lot of
couples. But it was good, the food was
delicious and I ate a little bit more than I should have. Haha! It was so good. But my belly was so full!!! Sakit sa tyan! (My
tummy hurt!) Haha! Man, but
you know it’s all good. ^_^ We had a
great day, nice amount of exercise. We have intense badminton games. Haha!
Sunday was a
great day for the work. We spent 2 and a half hours tracting today. It was a good time. I worked with Sam, a
branch missionary, who is getting his call this week. I taught him a lot of
things I knew about tracting. It felt
like I was training. Haha! It was a good day; we handed out many
pamphlets and made the presence of missionaries known amongst the people. The
only bad thing about this week is that we’ve been so busy we haven’t been able
to teach all but 4 lessons this whole week. Man, that’s crazy!
Wow! 3 pages long for 1 week….That’s pretty
intense! Anyway, that’s all for this
week. I hope you are all doing well! Okay,
I need to go now…it was nice talking to you!!!! ^_^ I love you and miss you all soo much!
Doing you Proud,
Elder Froude ^_^
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| Just a sample of how crazy traffic is in Manila. |
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| Filipino Santa! |
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| Philippine flag at the War Memorial |
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| President DelaMare |
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| Me and the Amercan flag |
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| Good to see these elders again! |
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| Thanksgiving feast at the mission home |
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| 20 years old and still relegated to sit at the kids table! |
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| Couple missionaries |
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| Tracting with Bro. Sam before he goes on his mission. |
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