I ate balut! General Conference was awesome! Too many roosters! A letter from the Mission President

Kamusta kada usa!

Guess what?! I ate balut! hahah There is a reason why they only serve it at night time. It wasn't too bad, just kinda cruchy... hahah it mostly just tastes like boiled egg. This week I have also eaten squid, stingray, crab, fried fish, and as usual, lots of rice.

It was so awesome watching General Conference this weekend! It is a week later here and we just watch recordings. Because of the time difference we can't watch it live, but it was so awesome hearing from the General Authorities and our Prophet! And it was in English so I could understand it! haha (They had Cebuano in another room.) I know that we are so blessed to have a living prophet on the earth today. I wish I had more time to talk about some of my favorite talks, but I don't. SO if you missed a session go look it up on LDS.org! My favorite one was Saturday morning session! And I know before my mission I often missed that one, but it was awesome so go watch it! Or read some of the talks. You'll thank me later. :)

 Some one liners from Conference:

•             “The journey of discipleship is not an easy one” – Larry R Lawrence

•             “Are we making our discipleship too complicated?” – President Dieter F Uchtdorf

•             “The more we walk in this path of discipleship, the more we desire to learn the word of God.” _ President Dieter F Uchtdorf

•             “Exaltation is our goal; discipleship is our journey.” – President Dieter F Uchtdorf

•             “Our core, the center of our lives, must be Jesus Christ and His gospel.” – Richard J Maynes

•             “Our lives must be centered with exactness in Christ if we are to find true joy” – Richard J Maynes

•             “As missionaries, we must be righteous, follow rules, and be prepared for difficult situations.” – M Russell Ballard (and we are all missionaries so this applies to you all gihapon)

•             “Our Savior is able to comfort, heal, and strengthen all men and women everywhere, but I believe He does so only for those who seek Him and ask for His help.” – Dallin H Oaks

•             “It is essential that we read and study and ponder the scriptures.” – Thomas S Monson (Prophet)

•             “We do not strive for conversion to the Church but to Christ and His gospel.” D Todd Christofferson

We have 2 new investigators this week! The Labador Family! They are an old couple, but have so much faith! I'm so excited to share the gospel with them, we have taught two lessons and have a return appointment!

I've been doing well! My companion and I get along great! It's humid as ever! It's so funny walking down the street. Because we are two American's we get lots of stares and catcalls and people trying out there English. Things like "Good Evening", "Hey Best Friend", "I love you!", "Where you going?" and things like that. It's so funny because of their accents and then we respond in the language and they are always so shocked, and say "Oh Bisaya!" and just the looks on their faces are priceless.

I am a giant here. But that's not new. haha I have to duck and slouch a lot to fit in little houses and tindahans. So sorry mom, but my slouch has gotten worse. haha

There are roosters and chickens EVERYWHERE. haha because everyone here gambles on Cock-fights. And we woke up at 5:30 this morning to go jogging and all of the roosters on the island were cock-a-doodle-doo-ing. And I swear it sounded like something out of a horror movie. Chickens could take over the world. But like we will be walking down the road and people just have roosters tied to a tree or bush or gate. They are more common than dogs. And there are a lot of those too. haha

Anyways that's just a tiny bit of my life right now. Wish I had more time, but I've been good about writing in my journal so I'll have lot's of stories when I get back!

Watch Conference!

Amping!

Sister Healey

Note:  Balut is a partially developed duck egg that has been cooked for 18 minutes.  You poke a hole in one end and suck out the broth then crack open the egg and eat the yolk and partially developed embryo.  It's considered a delicacy in the Philippines. (Gross!!)

This is us trying to get a group picture but the Filipinos are so funny, they all smoosh together and fight to see who can get in frame for the picture, so we all just get closer and closer to the camera... 

and this is how it turns out. haha

The charcoal is from FHE after a game of "concentration" haha its kind of like signs but its fast and you can't mess up on passing your sign otherwise you get a mark on your face. It  was fun and of course they picked on us.

Rice fields

Sister Healey and Sister Newton with Zeniada Abrigo.

We received a really nice letter from Maddie's Mission President. President and Sister Maurer take great care of the missionaries and have a great love for each of them.

Brother and Sister Healey,

I just wanted to send you a quick note regarding your daughter. Sister Maurer and I spent an evening with Sister Healey and her companion on Saturday night. We visited their apartment and actually ended up taking them to church for General Conference.

She is doing great. She seems to cope well with the Philippines and the adjustment required. She certainly is excited to be a missionary and I can see that she will indeed develop into one of the finest missionaries. Thanks for sharing her with us and the people of Tacloban. Her attitude and desire is simply great. She doesn’t seem to have any home sickness, which is always disappointing from a parents point of view, so is generally happy to be here.