Kumusta po Kayo

Monday, March 2, 2009

Dear Pamilya ko,
I'm not sure how to pull up the pictures, if you sent pictures, and I'm not sure how to send you pictures (did we pack the camera cord?) I'll probably just mail the card. Thank you so much for sending the sheet music, mom, it's perfect! I usually get 10 or 15 minutes a week to play - but I enjoy it. P-Days are by far the busiest days here, the actual Prepearation part of it is only a few hours. We went to the temple this morning, had personal study, and lunch, and now we wash our clothes, head to companionship study, dinner, class and planning. Writing letters is only allowed on Mondays here, I'm sorry I can't keep a running letter, Mom! But I'll try my best to write once a week. I can print your letters off and read them here, and anyone can email me, but I can only email family. Plus, besides emails from you, dearelders are probably better, because I don't have much time in the lab.
Dad, how are the Burrells and the Thomas' Family and the Borges family? I'd love to get some notes from your talk at the institute, and I'm dying for family history stories. Any stories, as many as possible, and especially the ones you included in that Sunday lesson a few months ago. Glad to hear the excercise is going well, mine too. Kind of. . .
I've only gained 3 pounds so far. We have gym every day, and the first week, I was running and doing push-ups and sit up-s. . . and yoga. . . but after that, volleyball started looking better and better. But I've started running again. My companion plays a lot of volleyball and 4-square, which I didn't really think was a real game, but it's quite the thing to do. I played it the first few days, and it's just like grade school 4 square, except the squares are a lot bigger, and the ball is different.
Sarah -- you're week looks great! Every second is planned out here, except for 3 or 4 hours, and we take time at night to plan every second of those hours.
On thursday we had a language task where we met up with an investigator to take him to church in a jeepny (I don't know how to spell it) Our teacher, Bro. Perry was our driver. We got to know the investigator, Sam, and followed up with his reading and praying in Tagalog. It was a great conversation, even though there were a lot of awkward silences as we were piecing things together in our minds. We started early, and we ended up talking for 15 minutes with him. By the time 10 had passed, we'd run out of things we knew how to say, and when our teacher walked past we said Tapos na! Tapos na! (finished), but he told us to patuloy (keep going/continue) so we had to resort to talking about the size of the church-house and the number of members. We felt pretty good about our teaching appointment with Sam in English after that about Lesson 2, but it really highlighted things I need to work on -- learning investigators concerns, teaching to them, involving them with questions, and building the lesson around the commitment.
Okay, I forgive everyone that writes spacy letters on this LDS. mail thing. The flashing time in the corner is really scary, and there's so much that has gone on this week. I'll write a letter this afternoon, promise. Thanks for your love,
Mahal ko kayo,
Elder Peck