2nd Manila Trip 4/22/2014

	Elder Dallin Carlson
Sent:	Tue 4/22/14 8:52 PM

Hey everyone!

Thought you might want to know about my trip to Manila - it all went pretty well! Everything worked out with the flight for me and Elder Smedley - we found out that Elder Fabiano and Elder Hale (they were in my batch at the MTC but they went to Cebu East Mission at the mission split) and it was awesome!  I had already been through everything so they sort of followed my lead as I figured out where the driver was and as we got into the vehicle that was sort of like a kidnapping vehicle :P 

On the way to the bureau of Immigration we went by landmarks and stuff that Elder Olson showed me last time so I was able to point all of them out to the other Elders and so they were impressed... and then when we got to Immigration there was someone waiting for us who helped us take care of the paperwork and get the 5 passport pictures we needed and get to the fingerprinting and then she said we were good and said she'd take care of everything else! and then the other elders had to take care of some things at Manila city hall because they had a tudloan who had no first name on his birth certificate and so he needed someone to take care of that and they had permission from their mission president so we took care of that and went to the airport to wait a few hours for our flight going back to Cebu.

In our work there's been a lot of tracting because of Elder Quinco - I actually feel sort of blessed to have a companion who loves to tract.  We almost have more investigators than we know what to do with! But some aren't that progressing so we'll just put them on the backburner, it's nice to have a fresh teaching pool.

To answer your questions about Easter, they have this whole thing with Semana Santa (Holy Week) where everyone is on vacation so most stuff is closed and the first part doesn't have much besides some Catholics doing mini processions with their saints (sometimes it's one of the apostles or there's also Mary, or as the Catholics here call her, "momma mary" or Jesus -  Catholics here call him "poppa Jesus") but there's Mundy Thursday, then they have most stuff on Good Friday with "processions" - it'd be like a parade but there's only one float, usually with Jesus hanging from a cross or "momma mary" and then there's a bunch of people following it, many of them holding candles. Then there's nothing I can think of that's super significant on Saturday and then they have Easter Sunday where they have breakfast and lunch as families and invite people (that's why some of our investigators didn't come to church) But like most Catholic stuff, it's focusing all on the death of Christ just like when they have crosses everywhere and do a cross when they pray - they always ask why we don't do the cross when we pray and we simply explain that we remember his death and the cross but we don't focus on it but we focus that he was resurrected and because of that we will too and if we live righteously, because of his suffering in Gethsemane we can return to live with our Heavenly Father.

I can' believe the mission is coming to a close - time just goes so fast when you're working hard! reminds me of the saying "time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana" ....who knew there were such things as fruit-flies and that they like arrows? :P

anyways, I've got to go now!  Don't worry, I'm determined to stay focused and give my all hangtud sa akong paguli!

love you! hope all's well with you and yours!

-og sulugoon sa Ginoo,      ~si Elder Dallin Carlson