Looking at chores from a different perspective

Last p-day I got really disoraged.  It seemed like just a chore day with shopping and then doing laundry by hand for a few hours.  I thought "how can I ever do anything fun if I just do shopping and laundry every p-day all day?"  Later that night we taught an investigator who does laundry as a job.  She was telling us how hard it is for her to do laundry all day.  She is a little older and her work is physically demanding.  It made me think that I can't complain that I have to to my laundry by hand for a few hours one day a week when other people have to do so much more. 

     On Tuesday we had a zone meeting in Narra.  It is a 45 minute bus ride from where I am now.  The vans drive so fast going freeway speeds on a road that I can't imagine being more than 50 in the U.S.  I got so sick because the road was windy.

     We played basketball for exercise on Wednesday.  It was good because philippinos are short.  I didn't have anyone towering over me while I was trying to shoot or pass the ball.

     On Thursday we traveled to a place in our area called Malatgao.  It was about 50 minutes by tricie (a motorcycle with a big sidecar).  I love riding the tricies around.  In Malatgao there are a lot of woodworkers who make doors and benches, chairs and cabinets.  It seems like for work a lot of people do things the old fashioned way.  Cutting grass with a sickle and things like that.  A lot of their work would be a lot easier if they had all the machines and stuff we have.  We visited a few families and taught them.  It is hard for these people because they live so far away from the church.  About once a month we do a special sacrament meeting for them in their area.      

     Saturday we went around trying to teach.  It can be unfulfilling a lot of the time when the people we are trying to teach are either not home or they are hiding (common problem for missionaries in the Philippines).  We did teach one lesson to a family that I think might progress.  After the lesson we gave a blessing to one of the boys in the family who I guess is struggling with his asthma.  We give a lot of blessings here.  I have already participated in two blessings for comfort and two for healing.  I haven't given any of the blessings because they wouldn't understand me very well.

     We went around teaching with a 19 year old recent convert named Rodel.  He is mentally slow but is such a nice person.  We are working on getting his whole family in the church but his mom is kind of weird and his sister doesn't take it seriously.  

     Walking around every day my pants get so muddy.  Palawan is the booneys for the philippines.  People are very poor but they have enough to live.  The weird thing is that they have some electricity, cell phones, and maybe a tv in their bamboo house.  The power lines here are strung up in a lot of places on no more than a long stick.  As missionaries, we don't live in a bamboo house.  We live in a pretty nice appartment with running water all the time and a flush toilet and a shower (cold water though).  At night we sleep with fans blowing on us to keep us cool and keep the mosquitoes off as we sleep.  The power goes out pretty often here.  They call it a brown out.

     That is pretty much everything that happened this week.  

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Love, Elder Harkness