Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Email from February 7th, 2011

Hey Guys!

That's so disappointing that there was nothing on that card.....I know I sent the right one! :( I only have 2 other ones, one is empty and the other one is in the electronic photo frame. It's weird that there is nothing on it....I'm not sure why that is. It had pictures of me and my mga kasama and the other guys from my district. One of them has a picture of the seven of us holding a philippino flag in front of the temple. Yes, I did get the package, thank you so much for everything. I haven't opened Theresa's letter yet. I'm going to be sending her a letter today and I'm hoping to get out a package for her for V-day. But I have to find out how before 6:00....

So to answer your question in the last dear elder....Elder Tomasi (Tongan boxer) is 21 years old and he boxed in both Beijing and Sydney for the Olympics. He is really kool, him and I are the only 2 in our district that are not from the States. He is sick now though. I have been taking quite a few pics while here. I'm going to send the card as soon as I get the other one back. And yes, I did buy the simplified hymn book. I'm going to be playing this Sunday in sacrament.

This week has been pretty good. I stopped getting up early now because I find I'm too tired during the day. But Tagalog is still coming along really great. I'm starting to use it more often, but I'm finding it a little hard to form sentences, but I think that's just because I don't know enough words. One goal that we made as a district is to learn 20 new words a day and to try and have them memorized by the end of the week. Another goal is to try and only speak Tagalog from the time we wake up till 11:30. And if we don't know the words we have to use the same Tagalog sentence structure. Their structure is different from ours....In ours we would say "I am going to the store". In theirs that would be "Going I am to the store".

Anyways, enough of that....We had a lot of role playing last week with lesson 1 in Preach My Gospel. We taught a TRC which is where we teach a fake investigator, and we did really good.

Last Tuesday, we had Kevin R. Duncan of the Quorum of the Seventy and his wife give a talk. His wifes talk was about how important it is to teach by the spirit, and how we should talk to everyone, because no effort is wasted. Kevin R. Duncan's talk was about how God loves and knows all of us better than we know ourselves. He also went in to detail about how important questions are while teaching, to find out where our investigators are at.

Well today is the last day that the older district is here, so we will be the oldest Tagalog speaking missionaries in the MTC, which is weird because I feel like I just got here.....The Zone leaders are Elder Masterson and Elder Leusa, who is from Australia. They are both awesome guys, I know they are going to do an awesome job. It's really too bad that the older district is leaving. There are only going to be 13 guys from our zone now....and there used to be 21. We're only getting new missionaries in 3 weeks.

Last night what we did was because the older guys are leaving, we sat around the residence hall and sang mga himno (hymns) in Tagalog. It was really spiritual. I got some of it recorded on cassette. All 21 of us singing. It was really awesome! The last song we sang was "God Be With You Till We Meet Again". Then Elder Taylor, the ex Zone leader gave a prayer and we went to bed.

Anyways, to end this letter I have to let you guys know that I can't bring silk ties to the Philippines because they will all get ruined.....so I have to send some back. I traded a few ties for other ties. Anyways, I need polyester or microfibre ties, so if you find any lying around please send them :) I'm going to be sending all my silk ties home the day I leave the MTC.

Oh, and please say thanks to the Glowas and Blakemores for their awesome Dear Elders for me! Thanks guys! I love you!

Elder Chris Gagnon

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