Here is Last Weeks Letter

Hello my Family,

It again sounds like you are all doing great back home, I cant believe all the new stuff that mom and dad have bought, it will be a completely different house when/if I get home haha. 

Oh so mothers day is coming up, and I am going to see if I can Skype! Just for your information, President Carlos says we can have as much time as we want when we Skype so that's pretty awesome! 

So I want to tell you more about my new area, our area is one of the tougher ones, we live about 45minutes away from it so that really cuts into our work time. and its far from the branch meeting house so our investigators dont come to church which stinks, and the people in our area are either super Catholics, inactive Catholics, or Muslims. and we aren't aloud to teach Muslims because here if a Muslim is converted to Christianity they kill the convert and the people that converted them. kinda scary. And these super Catholics just want to bible bash when we talk to them, the more I hear about the Catholic religion the more I see why its so popular, from what they tell me if I want to be saved all I have to do is believe in God, open the bible once and a while and go to mass on Christmas, its a lazy mans church. It also saddens me when these people fight us or tell us to go away, because I know our message is true and I know that it would help them too, but that's agency for you. There was this one lady that really didn't want to hear us, she said "my family is catholic and always has been" I held myself back from tell her how the catholic church came to the Philippines by the Spanish that invaded and conquered the Filipino people then told them what they should believe. I am sorry I don't mean to bash on the Catholics.

But it is still great, the Branch members are so strong, the Branch President is a 26 year old RM and he works with us sometimes, so cool(and he just so happens to be a carpenter)
The people here are part of what is called the Ifuegao tribe and they have there own language with 100's of dialects but luckily most of them speak Tagalog or ilocano as well.

This week our area has been smoky because the ifuegao are having their hunt, and they strategically burn the grass in the mountains to scare all the wild pigs and deer in to a smaller area so they are easier to hunt.
Oh i should tell you about jeepneys! That's what we use to get back and forth from our area. They are these jeeps left over from ww2 turned into something that looks like a bus. Anyway i am to tall to sit inside them so i hang on the back of it, I guess all those times of riding on the tops of vans in high school were just mission prep haha Its also very beautiful here, I love the Philippines, it a good thing I love you all and America more or else I don't think I would be able to leave this place. 

One thing I dont love about the Philippines is the food, I was sick a couple of days last week and I just kept craving American food, I think I will get some McDonalds tomorrow haha all the Americans in my zone go there after district meetings its funny.

Well I love all of you and I know that this work is true (hey that rhymed)
 

Thanks again for all of your love and support,
Elder Proctor

He is at the far end of the first row. :)