Jul 22, 2018 Old Sagay

maayong aga everyone!!!!

wow i made it!! so we flew to Bacolod last wednesday and went through 2 days of training and met our new companions and all headed to our areas!! so i got assigned in Old Sagay with my trainer. Its the northern most part of the island so we teach on the beach which is SO NICE!! ah its so pretty. i love the beach. but the poverty is so so crazy. the houses that we teach in and that these cute filipino's live in, are made out of cardboard and sticks. it is SO humbling being here. I had a few moments where we'd be sitting inside these homes and it would just hit me how insane it is. we are so so blessed. 

here in Old Sagay, they speak a mixture of illongo and cebuano. so its been kinda challenging to try adn speak and understand everything because its not the language i learned in the mtc hahah but its slowly becoming easier!! 

Sister Melgaso is my companion!! Shes filipino and so sweet. SHe doesnt speak a lot of english so its hard to communicate sometimes and its been hard to learn much of this language cause nobody relaly knows the english words for anythign hahah but im learning a ton from her about how to wash clothes by hand and shes teaching me how to cook all the filipino foods so its way fun!!!

so much has happened since i last emailed!!!
some fun highlights:

-the last day in the MTC in manilla, they gave us all balut. balut is like a half developed chicken embryo in an egg and literally looks so disgusting. long story short I ATE IT thanks to the elders hahaah. never doing that again lol. ask me later how that went down but for now ill just say my district was 30 minutes late to our departure meeting because of that lovely turn of events.

-our first night here in old sagay i woke up a million times throughout the night adn made the mistake of opening my eyes to see all the little creatures that come out in our apartment during the night. lets just say if i wake up in the middle of the night again, im keeping my eyes closed hahaha. ignorance is bliss.

-the kids here are so cute!!! they all just latch onto me and hug me and its so so adorable. for most of them, im the first american they've ever seen. and i just love it. they teach me the language too. they'll point at things and teach me the word for it and quiz me. ahh i love the kids.

-its so so so hot here. the writing on my nametag melted off. like insanely hot. definitely took air conditioning for granted.

-everyone hear calls me barbie hahaha. its so funny. and nobody here has cars, they all have tricycles which is basically a motorcycle with a side car attached. so thats how we get everywhere. but they all honk at me when we walk down the street and will like run over from across the street to shake my hand. its so fun being the only american in the whole town hahaah i feel like a celebrity. 

-there was a typhoon yesterday!!! and we walked through it!!! i thought texas thunderstorms were big. lolol it was crazy. but good thing i love the rain and it made it way less hot!!!! 

oh and i had my first baptism on saturday!!! it was for a 14 year old boy named MArk Joven. Hes so awesome. After he was baptized he got up and just cried and cried about how happy he was to have listened to the missionaries and learned for himself the truth about Christ and His gospel. It was so sweet. makes all the hard things worth it just seeing how happy this gospel makes other people. and how selfish it would be for me to have somethign like this gospel that brigns me so so much happiness and peace to not share it with other people :)

so here in the philippines they have a lice problem. so as soon as i walked into my apartment, the first thing i noticed was that my bed was just crawling with lice. like crawling. (maybe getting lice as a kid was a blessing in disguise so id be ablet o recognize it here). but honestly i can handle showering out of a bucket with freezing water and i can handle the heat and washing my clothes by hand and cockraoches as big as my palm and leaking cealings and all that, but i really could not get into a bed knowing that it was infested with lice. so i went inot the other room and i just prayed and was like heres the deal. i cant sleep with lice. as soon as i finished praying i went back into the room, and no joke all of it was gone. it was such a blessing and such a great reminder that gods still watching out for me all the way over here in the philippines. 

so that was definitely reassuring!!!

but I was reading in the Book of Mormon the other day when I was having a hard time adjusting and was struggling, and I was reading in the book of Ether. Like the bible, theres different books in the Book of Mormon. And it was the story of the Brother of Jared who had to cross the sea and build a boat. and they prayed and asked for help to guide their ship to go where they needed to go because they had no way of steering. and so God sent super strong windds to help push their boat in the right direction. and because of those winds, their boat tossed and turned and they were scared and didnt know what to do. But it was for their benefit. so even if things get hard, I know that God is helping me out even if i cant see the help right now. And im not alone in this work :) 

Im so grateful to be here!!! this is seriously so perspective changing. and something i will probably talk about for the rest of my life.

I miss you all and hope everything is going well!!!!

Love,

Sister Johnson

HELLO!!! wow i made it!! im in old sagay!! its actually just insane here

so old sagay is the northern most part. and it is soo so o sooo poor. and they speak another dialect here so its not even the language4 i learned which is so hard and now when i get transfered im gonna know nothing all over again casue everywhbere else speaks illongo. so thats been really frustrating.

and then since its on the ocean evertone just eats seafood/ so thats alos unfortuante.

and its so so so so s os osososososososo hot. like unimagineabley hot/ like unlike anytghibng i could ever imagine hot. i just sweat constantly. we come back at night and our clothers are dripping with sweat. 

the fist couple days were honestyl super hard and i just wanted to leave basically the whole time hahaha i was miserable. but im alittl emore adjusted now and its not so bad. im kinda adjusting to the heat.

but yeah so we got off the airplane and the missionaries were there to pick us up aloong with president. and then they took us to the mission homewhich is SO NICE and we had training all day and then we went to sisters jousing with the missionaries who serve in thea rea with the mission home. like central bacolod. their place was disgusting. and thats where i took my first bucket shower! THEN THE next day we went fir more training and thats when  we met our trainers and learned our areas tghen we all ate lunch abnd then left! it was so sad tio leave my distrit. i miss them and sister amataga. but we had a 2 hour bus ride and then rode a triciylce to old sagay!! tricycles are so fun. its like the thing hagrid drives in harry potter with the motercycle and side car. its so fun. abnd we have wind so for like 5 minutes out of the day im not duying of  heat. 

also my nametag melted. like all the writing on it melted off/ so they're sending me another one

 havent gotten any packages yet. i dont really know how that all works. but we're going to bacolod in a coupel weeks i think so i can cgheck. my comp is stl so she has meetings there once a month.

i wish she spoke better english so i could learn more/ i feel like im not learning anything cause i ask what somethign means and she cant explain it in english so i wind up just confused all the time

yeah itll be okay im sure. its jsut been an adjustment.

but i spoke in church yesterday!! and that wasnt hard. i can easily just speak and testify and stuff when its just me talking. whats really hard is when its not about the gospel and jsut conversational stuff and when its like a discussion cause i cant understand them. but oh well. itll come. 

mission president surprised us at our apartment uesterday cause hes starting cleaning checks and making sure all our apartments are liveable. suupposedly we may be getting a new one cause ours is too gross. im so thankful for president cause hes tgeh one getting us washing machines int he next  mobnth and making sure we actulaly can surivce in our apartmets. and sister bell and her husndam came and it was OS ncie to talk to anuother american. i lvoe sister bell. theyres senior missionaries and sister davis is here too and she claled me last night and just asked how i was doing and it was os ncie to just talk to them in english adn understand and talk to them. cause they get it. sis melgaso is super poor and is just used to this. so she doesnt really understnand. and theres only 8 american sisters in the whole mission. and 4 of us arrived this week/ so they arent used to americans and how we act and stuff and how its really differetn from home

lol no showers. buckets. with freezing water. but honestly i appreciate thef reezing water cause im dying all the time. and we wash clothes by hand and there was a typhoon yesterday and it floods all the time. but we had a baptism on satuday for mark joven. hes 14/ super awesome. the mission goal is weekly baptism sand they happen. we have baptims planned for the next 6 weeks. and jsut yesterday when we taught we had 4 people commit to be bapotised. so its super easy honestly. and when we teach someone the houses are made out of cardboard and sticks os everyone hears everyothign so everyone form the little town gathers around adn we get like 20 bew investigators daily

and honestly the bucket showers the least of my converns hahaha. its not even bad. but as soon as i get this language i do think im gonna love it. cuase the people are sluper sweet. and i wihs i coul dtalk to them. 

but its fun cause the members liek the youth just lvoe the missionaries. and tehy all just follow us around and come to our lessons with us. so at somet times we'll have like 8 teenagers just following usa round adn teaching with us/ its nice. and they're super ncie to me and help me learn too. one of them her name is charmane shes 17 and speaks okay english. shes helping me alot. wh enever they're all talking she stops and tries her best to explain in english what they're talking about so i feel inclluded. i really like her. abnd last nighta s we were treking through the typhoon i was just talking with her and she was teaching me tongue twisters in illongo and they were all sayign if i got it wrong 3 times id have to eat balut and it was just funny. they said it was the best sudnay theyve ever had cause im so funnt apparenly. its really cute

nah its about a 15 min trike ride to a real store. but we can buy small things at the market and stuff.

but sis melgaso is nice! her fam is super poor so she cant ever email her fmaily cause they cant afford to go to internet cafes or anuytibng and they dont have phones os they just write letters. so i think thast been really hard. but she goes home in 4 months os im probablyt her last companion. and she said after she leaves im probably going to train so i dont eevvne wanna think about thtat cause thats terrifyuing so im justl iving day by day.

and if i just hink about each day and i can get through 1 day then im fine. cause we are busy so thedays do go by fast. and i gp tp ned at like 9:30 every night. 

ah thanks parentals. i love yoU!!! itll get better. and the whoel mission ismeetng up next month cause some general authroity is coming so ill get to see all myfriends who are all going through the same things as me so thatll be fun. im super excited for htat

yeah we alwasy have people to teach. we had like 20 investigators at church. we have a class solely for investigators during 2nd hour. church starts at 9 but sacrament meeting is third hour to account for filipino time so peopel are all there bu the time we have sacrament meeting. but yueah our schedule is so full with a new person to teach every hour and our backup plan is full too with people. just yeastyerday we taught so many people. its crazy

yeah paper. its good. i cant keep up w all the investigators. thers too many. and they all have complicated names. butmy fav is the rodriguez family. they are just so cute/ they have the cutest kids who just lvoe me. and the cute little boy loves my camera. he takes pictures iwht it all the time. im gonna prrint out some pics and give it to them cause filipinos LOVE pictures but they cant afford to have a camera or to print any out. 

they said they wanted to get baptized last night. so thats exciting. we asked the family if they watned to be baptized and immediately the little boy goes "okay lang" which is the equivalent of like yeah sure. and it was just cute.

ah thanks father!! i appreciate the prayers :) theresbeen a lot fo times where the scripture you always say about angels bearing you up pops in my head and thas nice. one time i was treaking thorugh the mud for like an hour to get to this one house and i thought of grandpa johnson treking with me and i couldnt help but just laugh cause i imagine he wasnt a huge fan of the long hike either hahaha

this is our apartment. think of me living in here. its a good time. its a hike to get back there tho. the chapels like a 5 min walk away tho so thats nice. but its kinda growing on me. and then yesterday when it was pouring and president ansd his wife and the bells showed up they were not thriled with the hike back through the mud. and we have to cross a little bamboo bridge. its fun. i think thats part of why we need a new apartment hahaha. the entire male species in old sagay are like in love iwth me tho hahaha they all tell me im beauitful all the time. and want to talk to me 24/7. im legitamately th eonly american in the entire town. its so funny.