Elder Christopher Egan: "Spider Toys and Fire ballls"

Hello everyone back in America! So the earthquake had absolutely zero affect on us up North. So the only request I can think of is maybe a little air pump that I can use for the soccer ball I just got today. Man, I have an aunt and uncle Funk now! Magandang maganda iyan! Actually I didn't get anything about soccer from dad which is really kind of surprising. You might want to check and make sure he's feeling alright. My companion is doing awesome now, it was really just a migraine and a cough that he had for that one day. Thanks Mia! Is there any other times you get teary besides when seeing my friends? It is kind weird, but in a good and really touching way. Keep telling me how you are, I love to hear about you all as well.

So the first thing to mention this week is I had a Filipino haircut. They absolutely do not understand what it means to keep it longer in the front and especially in the back, whether you say it in English or Tagalog! So that explains why my hair is so short in the pictures. Here's a story for Kolsen. We were teaching a less active member and a bunch of kids were sitting around listening to us and this giant spider (that's how Kolsen would describe it) crawls over towards one of the kids. She picks it up like it's toy and starts pulling the silk thread out and wrapping it around her finger while the spider starts crawling up her arm. No big deal.

So this week has been a little up and down for us. We started out really good for teaching lessons and just these last two days, we've only been able to get one lesson per day. One thing that's been a big blessing is the amount of referrals we're getting. It's amazing how all you need to do is ask someone if they know somebody who's having a hard time with life right now and there's always someone. We hope that these new referrals will turn into some really solid investigators.

So we had a combined zone conference in Vigan this last Thursday and heard from the Psychiatrist that works with the entire Philippines Mission and is going to go around the world working with missionaries. She has an amazing story. I can't tell it as good as her, but basically she went her entire life with a severe case of dyslexia and nobody ever knew. She was valedictorian of her graduating class from Chicago Illinois University and she can't read. She literally memorized textbooks word for word and takes about three times as long to read a sentence as it would normally take. She told us that we all have our different trials and struggles, but it's up to us to figure out how to deal with that and to see if we can use those trials to learn and grow and improve our talents and abilities. That was some good stuff to hear. It makes me feel a lot more confident in my ability to speak Tagalog knowing that I can actually read a dictionary if I don't know a word.

Funny story for this week is brought to you by one of the greatest missionaries in our apartment, Elder Knowles. One thing that is really common in the Philippines is matches. Everybody uses them and you basically get them for the price of dirt. So the Zone Leaders in our apartment took a box of matches and broke off the ends of them so there was only the little end that you strike the match with. You can strike the match and then throw it at the same time to see a cool little ball of flame fly across the room. It's all fun and games until somebody gets burned, and then it's hilarious! I didn't know how to do that so I asked Elder Knowles to show me. He didn't throw it very far though and it ended up landing on my companions foot. He made some pretty funny sounds and tried to shake it off, but it ended up just burning a nice 1 inch round hole in his foot (no it isn't literally a hole just a little charring). It was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life, except for we felt really bad for Elder Lynn. He has a second or third degree burn (yata) but he's a really good sport about it.

Well time's up already. Mahal ko kayo lahat!

-Elder Egan