Saturday: packing madness. literally, so crazy. since i couldn't have a carryon because of my violin, i was overweight. i had to send some stuff home and give some stuff away. it was so fun packing and spending time with my sisters. it got to a point though, where i went to go weigh my luggage for the billionth time, and before i put it on the scale, i said ''the church isn't true if this weighs over 50 pounds.''
it weighed 49.8. THE CHURCH IS STILL TRUE.
The girls i hosted, like when you get dropped off at the curb, there's a missionary there who takes you, yeah. those girls loved me. i visited them every night from wednesday until i left. they would wait for me and when i got there just stand up and hug me. they were SO sweet. I loved them and I hope they are doing well now.
Sunday: it was a perfect ending to my MTC experience. For real. My district... awh i miss my district. I pray for them every night!! What ablessing they were to me. We had an incredible sunday school lesson, beautiful sacrament meeting where us who were leaving performed an ''abbey hafen- danai sirrine'' rendition of the efy medley. we couldn't get the actual song so we just made it up. violin/piano/singing. it was so beautiful. then that night the elders gave us all blessings. oh my goodness this was so special. I love our elders so much. my blessing was so sacred and brought me a peace that i hadn't felt in a while. i had been so nervous about leaving the mtc, and after this blessing, i felt SUCH peace. and that peace has lasted me clear up until now. I can't even explain how beautiful it was, to see our 18, 19, and 20 year old elders give us sisters blessings and exercise their priesthood so beautifully. it felt like Dad was giving me a blessing and that brought me such peace. ps- i love you dad and the minute i get home, dec 2014, i want a fathers blessing from you :)
in our lesson on sunday, sister donahoo, wife in the branch presidency, said at the very end of the lesson ''i wish your parents could see you right now. they would be SO proud.'' and BOOM all of us start crying. our branch presidency stood in place for our parents those 6 weeks at the mtc.
Monday: wake up 4:50 am and work like a boss. we got our room cleaned and everything packed. we ate breakfast and hopped on the bus at around 8am. got to slc. called my beautiful mother and what do i hear on the other end???? 12 year old abbey on the answering machine saying ''hi this is the hafens blah blah blah'' hahah thanks a lot mom. because of that, when i called dad in portland, i had NO MORE MINUTES LEFT. haha. no, talking to mom was so wonderful and it really did just feel like i was calling you from my apartment in slc. seriously. it was so normal and SO great. i love you momma.
from slc-portland, i gave this guy a BOM. it was so scary and i about dumped my pants on the plane, buti did it. no regrets, yo. he was super cool, i mean he was from portland ya know. haha really though, it was great.
portland-tokyo. tokyo-manila. yeah sure, i'll fly for 24 hours straight. anyway.
we get to manila, get our luggage, and are guided by this church lady to the street outside the airport. its like 10 ish pm and its busy as heck. and there, in the middle of the philippines, are like 18 white kids in church clothes. hahah. it was so great. we then were told vans were coming to get us, and we were then left on our own. we waited TWO hours with all our luggage and then this filipino in a chruch shirt comes up and says as he's running "they're coming!" and then runs away. k sweet. so we wait and then these vans pull up and these filipinos just start shuffling us places. our driver didn't say anything so we just followed him. i just get in this van with someoine i dont even know and us missionaries just go with the flow. the lord truly watches over his missionaries, because normally this whole sitch would have been a really bad deal. haha. anyway, we pull up to this wayyyy nice hotel with all these security dogs and stuff. we get out, get our rooms, and go to bed. and then oh wait, an hour after we get in bed, 3 am, ding dong. they brought us breakfast. in the middle of the NIGHT. rice, eggs, and who knows what kind of meat. i was rooming with another sister from another zone, and i asked her to check if the alarm was right. she did and we go back to bed. then i wake up at 5:30 and we have to be down there in 15 minutes and i have to shower. sweet, the alarm DIDNT GO OFF. awesome. i wake her up and we kick it into high gear. we made it down there on time, got in the vans, headed to the ariport, and got on the plane to cauayan.
as we arrived in cauayan (wednesday afternoon) i just felt so good. i knew that this was my mission and this was the place. these are the people and i am the missionary coming to tell them the good news of the gospel. the good news that Jesus is the Christ and that he loves us and knows what we are going through. we got to the misison home, and that was way fun. we hung out (in what we didn't realize then was like the nicest house in the world with AC and couches, haha). we had the transfer meeting, and i played i know that my redeemer lives on the violin with some sisters playing piano and singing. they looooved the violin and i realized it was worth it lugging that around for 24 hours straight through security and almost breaking my back. haha. they flashed up pictures of the new companionships, one by one, and so when mine finally came up,. i didn't even pay attention to where i was serving or who my companion was! she came and got me we sat down. i'm thinking shoot what is her name! hahah, anyway, the meeting ended, we grabbed my stuff, headed outside, there were jeepneys and vans everywhere parked for us and we headed to our area. It was raining but we got there safely and got our stuff all in. we unpacked and i don't really remember what we did the rest of that night. haha what i do know, is that after we got everything done, i sat down at my desk and started praying with my head on the desk and fell asleep. hahaha then all of a sudden i feel my trainer grab my shoulder and tell me i can go to bed. we laughed so hard about that last night, it was so funny.
i survived the first night and was woken up beautifully by a HERD of roosters next door. i love that i have a personal LIVE alarm clock every morning from about 3:30am- until noon. it's so great. i am SO LUCKY!!! hahah, really though, whenever i hear a rooster during the day, i want to die. it's like when someone's iPhone ringtone is set to what you use for your alarm, and when you hear that go off in public you want to die. Same feeling really. Thursday we had appointments and just did the dealio. Oh haha i forgot. by this point i didn't realize that in the transfer meeting, they said that my trainer and i are opening up a new area. and we both were transferred there. i think that is what grant called a "double transfer". so we dont' know anyone and we are just starting fresh. it's nice though, because the sister we live with, sister suaybagio, has been in Alicia (the area us 4 sisters are in) for 7 months now. So we have been doing a foursome to all our lessons. it's nice cause she knows everyone and we already have all these investigators, recent converts, and less actives to work with.
My trainer, Sister Acoba, is wonderful. Seriously, so christlike. she leads by example and is so good to me. i love her and am learning so much from her. she was put with me for a reason, and i am so grateful. we are scared to open up this new area, and we are having to completely rely on the Lord. this is going to be hard, but we are capable. She is so good at teaching and always relies on the spirit. she is 22 and from the Laog philipines misson (north of here). she speaks illicano along with tagalog, which is nice, because people here speak illocano as well, so she's got the ''in's''. She just finished nursing school before she came on her mission, and has only been out 5 months. and i am the 2nd person she has trained. she is incredible and is such a good missionary. I LOVE HER. and will forever be in debt to her. she always tells me my tagalog is so good. haha.
thursday night, we had a dinner appointment at Nanai Collong's and by the end of it, i was literally falling asleep at the table. i started just saying a thousand prayers to help me stay awake. hahah. Dad, this whole narcolepsy thing is getting reallllly old. i have to write in my journal in the morning because at night, i try to write, and i just get all these scribbles. it is so funny to look back on. haha. oh also on thursday we had zone meeting, which was wonderful. it was so good to see people from my MTC district. sister maddock and eld tribe are in my zone and i think my district too, so i love seeing them all the time. they are both like 3 computers away from me right now! so backtracking to my first lesson. brother clyde. 9 years old. he got baptized on saturday which was SUCH a tender mercy from the lord. anyway. i will never ever ever ever forget clyde. he is so sweet and so smart, and teaching him gave me strength when i really needed it. children talk slower than adults, so i really could understand the things he said. it gave me an assurance that i AM capable of learning and undestanding the language. i CAN do this, it iwll just take time.
Friday: weekly planning day. it is CRAZY how much time missionaries put into each individual person. we plan for each person, pray for them, and schedule what we need to do for them. we have SO SO SO many less actives, it's crazy. that is like 75% of our lessons, LA lessons.
Saturday: CLYDE's BAPTISM!!!!!! YAY! it was SO fun. I left my violin with the mission president at the mission home. and was so sad that i did, come the day of the baptism. we are getting it soon though, for a big cultural event we are having. i'l expain later. anyway. CLYDE. it was so awesome to have baptism. his grandma just reactivated and was the one who introduced him into the gospel.his dad died when he was just 6 and he is such a smart boy. he knows all the answers and is almost done with the book of mormon. his baptism was beautiful. prior to the baptism, we found the small sized baptism clothes in a bag just hanging out on our front porch, and we washed it and miraculously it was perfectly clean and DRIED in like 3 hours, just in time for the baptism. we sang (us 4 sisters. Me, Sister Acoba, Sister Bates (i knew her in the mtc), and sister suaybagguio). man. i love this work. he bore his testimony after and it was so sweet. he is going to be a future leader in the church, i can just tell. he is so smart and loves the BOM.
Sunday: Man. The branch pres announced us in sacrament, and then had us come up and bear our testimonies. i was myself and of course made everyone laugh. the members are so loving and they are so good to us missionaries. i met some of them on saturday at the baptism and at the coordination meeting. haha that reminds me, saturday, there was a primary party, and in the cultural hall they were just BLASTING Taylor Swift, justin bieber's song 'boyfriend', ''star ships were meant to fly...'' and Payphone. it was so funny. seriously, BLASTING it, and all these primary kids are running around, eating treats, and its just so funny how different things are here. So different, and I love it. So in sacrament meeting, i guess i started falling asleep and these little kids apparently were laughing at me. Sweet. HAhaha, man i hate that i just fall asleep everywhere. i can't control it!
k i'm sick of just reciting off all the things we've done. i want to just WRITE about WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING OVER HERE TO ME, ABBEY HAFEN, LITTLE RED HEAD BORN AND RAISED IN SANTA CLARA, UTAH, JUST CHILLIN IN THE PHILIPPINES. YEAH SWEET OKAY.
Seriously. it's madness. i am adjusting MUCH better than i anticipated. i won't send you pictures of my apartment, because those pictures will be something maybe we can laugh at later. for now, it just won't be that funny. it was disgusting. we deep cleaned for like 5 hours today and it still is disgusting. but it really does not phase me, i don't understand how i haven't freaked out yet over how gross it is. well, i do, it's because i'm here with a purpose. to invite others to come unto christ.
anyway.
we take tricee's everywhere (i'll try and attach pics) and it's so fun. they are motorcycles with little side cars. i take a bucket shower every morning. yep. no AC, but sometimes, if you're lucky and you sweat SO MUCH, and the breeze comes, it's kind of nice and yeah. haha. i washed my clothes by hand this morning for like 3 hours and we made rice for dinner, of course. what else? oh yeah.
everything is becoming normal. like, when i take a picture, i look at it and think, ''man, this isn't even a cool picture. my family won't even think this is cool or be able to see how pretty it is.'' seriously.
ants everywhere. like, remember when on the Sandy Princess, when we would leave some food out and ants would swarm it? yeah, thats like everywhere times a thousand. especially the church builidng. but yet no one cares. i dont even care. spiders like 4-5 inches in diameter.
man. it's been such a culture fix for me here. we dont need HALF the things we have in america. people's houses are SO clean here, it really is crazy. and they are so happy. everyone jokes and laughs, and the day that i can be funny in tagalog will be the best day of my life. maybe i will focus my language study on jokes instead of other stuff.
i love it here in the philippines, and if i'm being totally honest, i don't want to leave. yeah, i get waves of homesickness, but i think of leaving, and i think HECK no. I have things to do here, and if i left now, i would feel so unfinished and so empty. i walk around and i just think ''what the hey. i am in the philippines. and i am SO happy''
the language gets to me every once in a while. i just feel like an idiot when i speak tagalog, and i feel like an idiot when i don't. it's a horrible feeling. but i know i can do this. i just need to shake off this pride i have, speak tagalog, and not be afraid of messing up.
i didn't ask myself the forbidden questions the whole time i've been here, until yesterday.
why philippines? why tagalog?
i could be used SO MUCH MORE effectively SOME where else. I am wasting the Lord's time here, trying to learn a language, trying to fit in. But then i realized. what do i tell less active after less active, investigator after investigator; "god loves us and is aware of everything we are going through. we MUST have faith in him. through him all is possible." WHY do think this doesn't apply to me?!
It DOES.
.......................it better, or else there's no way i'm going to be able to do this.
Really though. i was called here for a reason, but when i sit there in a lesson and they're going off about something for like 5 minutes, and i have no idea, it's easy to think why am i here. will i ever learn the language. will it ever come. will i EVER be able to help soemone.
are there people really here, prepared by the Lord for ME?
i sit here, in this little internet cafe, filipinos surrouding me, motorcycles zooming by, and tears fill my eyes. I am a missionary and this is going to be hard. I won't fit in for a while. But the other night, as I led the lesson, in tagalog, words came to my mind and I was able to say things from my heart. I added in english here and there, but the spirit was there. My trainer had chills go up her arms and I continued to bear testimony of what I was teaching.
I love my Savior Jesus Christ.
That's all for now. i seriously wrote so much, i hope i remembered everything.
with love,
sister abbey hafen
Oh hey Manila!
What up I'm in a van just doin my thing.
Walking at night to an appartment on the side of the highway.
By the Bukid aka rice field on our way to a teaching appointment.
From inside the tricee.
Bates Suaybagio Clyde, baptizer is Elder Berrends district leader.
Walking the streetz.
Bates, Acoba, Suaybaguio, Sherly, Me. She is the greatest investigator of all time of course her Grandma is methodist and won't let her get baptized.
Right after one sister we taught told me I would get skinny here in the Philps. Sweet, just call me fatty next time hahahaa it was so funny, but they mean it as a compliment.
Laundg as in laundry, not lingerie.
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