Week 4 MTC- July 12th, 2016

KUMUSTA! T-MINUS 2 WEEKS UNTIL THE PHILIPPINES. Our district got our preliminary travel plans this morning and it's starting to get so real. We're flying Wednesday night to Friday morning Salt Lake to LA to Hong Kong to Manila and then we'll stay at the MTC there for a week while our visas process before we fly to Bacolod. The time has gone by so fast, it's blowing all of our minds BUT WE ARE ALL SO EXCITED to actually be in the Philippines! This Thursday we get to start doing skype TRC which is basically that members from the Philippines volunteer to skype us so that we can practice teaching people with real accents in a closer to real situation, we're super excited to see how it goes and practice our language. My kaupod and I have gotten a lot better in the last couple of days at really trying to SYL and use the right grammar order and it's really hard but we're for sure improving. The good news is we know more than we used to, the bad news is everyone says that as soon as you get off the plane in the Philippines you can't even recognize what anyone is saying because they're all talking so fast and with accents BUT it's okay because we'll have a whole 18 months to try and figure it out there. So we are all very aware of our weaknesses, but we are still SO excited to leave in 2 weeks, it's going to be so fun!

NEW DISTRICT

Haha it was so hard saying goodbye to the Cebuano district last week, I literally cried when they left for the airport because I was afraid I would never see most of them again. I made them promise that they would come visit me in Utah/Virginia and I promised that I would come visit Kiribati/Australia. PLUS yesterday our favorite district of people left for Fiji which made us so sad for the same reason that a lot of them are from Kiribati and we might never get to see them again. But in the words of Sister Cherry, "ees okay ees okay" because they're going to be incredible missionaries and bless so many lives. The new missionaries are so fun. We love all of the Sisters and Elders so much. Sister Pito, Sister Cherry, and Sister Togagae are so fun and make me laugh so much and we're all already such good friends after knowing each other for a whole 5 days. The elders are all straight out of high school and are super cool too. One of them is from Florida and I was talking to him about how cool the East Coast is and one of the UT elders rolled his eyes and said "here we go"... apparently I talk to much about Virginia and the East Coast and all of the poor UT kids don't even know what they're missing out on. It's okay though they said they'd maybe visit one day so they could get a tour of the best state.

SADYA (FUN) STUFF

The days are all starting to run together and I can't remember what happened this week and what happened last week since we low key do almost the same thing every day. (eat, study, class, eat, class, study, eat, study, sleep, repeat). Ummmmm we had a spike ball tournament with our district with a bracket and everything to pick new seats for class. Sister Fawcett and I and 2 of the elders rigged it so that we could get the best seats. It was a good time and Sister Fawcett came in 2nd... except somehow ended up in the same seats...The other day we were bored and waiting for class to start so we started playing hangman in Ilonggo, except plot twist it wasn't even fun because once you guess p,g,n, and k literally all of the spaces are filled except for vowels and it's super easy....We met 2 elders the other day, one is from Haiti and one is from Samoa and they're both here on their 6th week learning English before they go serve in different places in the United States. And at the end of the conversation, they were both like, "before we came here, we didn't know how to speak English, and now we can even understand you when you talk really fast." People who speak English can't even understand me half of the time, gift of tongues is real everybody.

MALIPAY PANGHUNHUNA SA SEMANA (HAPPY THOUGHT OF THE WEEK)

PISPIS KA BALA?

There's a scripture somewhere in the Book of Mormon that I can't find right now and I'm super annoyed about it... JOKE LANG (JUST KIDDING) FOUND IT. 3 Nephi 13:26- "Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" Our teacher told us about it in class and basically it talks about how much God loves all of his creations and takes care of all of them, but how much more he loves each of us because we are his children. Our teacher showed us what she had written in her Ilonggo copy of the Book of Mormon - "pispis ka bala?"- are you a bird?? If Heavenly Father is willing to take care of even His smallest creations like birds HOW MUCH MORE HE WANTS TO TAKE CARE OF US AND BLESS US SINCE WE ARE HIS BELOVED CHILDREN. Sorry for the rambly-ness of this email... I have like no time and my memory is horrible, but just know that God loves each and everyone of you and knows your trials and what you're going through and is always there to bless in times of need.

LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! SALAMAT FOR THE LETTERS AND EMAILS AND LOVE. DON'T KNOW WHAT I WOULD DO WITHOUT YOU. Much love from Provo<3

Sister Rainey

AUG03 PHI-BAC

2005 N 900 E Unit 36

Provo UT 84602 

^use that for dearelder

p.s didn't reread this before sending so pasensiya (sorry) for all of the mistakes