Elder Austin Russell Cook Philippines, Legazpi Mission 8-2016 thru 8-2018: The FHE's here are SUPER CRAZY!!

This week was actually super kicked back surprisingly, which was kind of nice.

our family home evening

I'll start at last P-Day. Right after we got done emailing, we went to a member's house for "Family Home Evening." The FHE's here are SUPER CRAZY!! There were like three or four families who got together in this tiny little home, and we just played games and ate food and talked for like three hours! If you lost at one of the games, the winners take a brick of charcoal and wipe it on your forehead and cheekbones. It was so weird, but honestly I thought it was SO MUCH FUN!!

Then I guess I'll just skip over to Thursday. Thursday, after teaching them for a couple of months, the Hernali family has finally decided to get baptized! There were a lot of steps involved to getting them to this point, but they finally want to get baptized. But on Thursday we learned that Sister Amy is actually not married with her current partner, but they still have kids. That’s a common thing over here actually, but luckily, by doing some research into the technicalities of it all, she actually can still be baptized without waiting to get married! And my biggest hope out of all of this is that they will want to get baptized at the beach, because honestly, THAT IS MY DREAM. To baptize someone at the beach is the coolest thing ever. Plus it makes for some super awesome pictures.

Honestly not much else happened this week. We spent most of our time preparing the Hernali family to be baptized. We spent probably more time over there than we should have, but since I’m a trainee, there’s not much I can do about it. Once we spent THREE HOURS at their house. I thought it was ridiculous, but I have no say in what we do since I'm brand new and stuff. Whatever though, if that's my biggest complaint, then obviously things aren’t too bad over here!

That's all for this week! I hope you are all doing well, and I pray for you all every day! Keep doing your best. Make me proud, and I'll make you proud!

Elder Austin Cook

The food is really good but is SUPER simple. It's always just rice with something on top of the rice, usually meat or noodles and I haven't had any problems with it honestly! I'm not necessarily homesick, but I do think America is BY FAR superior to everywhere else in the world and that I do miss. I sleep VERY WELL at night, especially if I shower right before bed because it's so hot and humid. I have a fan that blows over me the whole night and it keeps me super cool. I use the little blue micro fiber towels you made me to wipe my face. Of course you were right about those, they are so helpful!

Washing my clothes is kind of a pain in the butt. We just soak them in water with detergent and then scrub them a couple of hours later. It honestly is not efficient!