Week ~ 9

Balut!!!

Whaddup ya'll. PROBABLY THE CRAZIEST WEEK. So much rain. Rainy season is officially here! Most of our area floods from the rain... Like 2 feet of rain in some areas. Which makes it so we can't even get to some areas at all! We had a member call us because her house flooded, but we aren't allowed to go out into that because its not safe! So the rain has been relentless. 

On Thursday Elder Bullock called me and asked what my 4th of July plans are, I told him I had none. He's from Idaho by the way. He asked me if I wanted to come over for exchanges and go to an American steakhouse for lunch! He assured me that we had special permission to go. I was all in. I hadn't had American food like that in months. I went over to their apartment Friday night and we went to bed and planned for the day. We woke up and studied like normal and then it started to POOR rain. Luckily our apartment was on a hill so no flooding. We went out to go to our lunch, but all the way around the apartment was flooded with 2 feet of water. Only a few cars were down to go through it. We had to track down a tricycle to take us through it and get us to a place to get a taxi. 3 Americans (two big guys and then me, but i'm still fat ha-ha) and a huge Samoan piled on a trike and he took us to get a taxi. We waited another 30 minutes in poring rain to get one. Finally we got one and made it to our reservation (yes it was that fancy). I ordered up a nice stake with a mushroom sauce and shrimp on top. Of course I had to eat an appetizer;) I had some nachos, but not just nachos, MANchos. So dang good. Much needed. It was a good 4th of July here. 

In terms of investigators this week, it was even harder than last week. Brother B took off to Baguio for work! So he's not getting baptized anytime soon, besides his WOW issue... So that's awesome. Brother Jonathan took off back to his province probably to go back to his old life... So 2 PROGRESSING investigators gone. The family we have been teaching hasn't come to church yet. So they might get dropped... Brother J, the one who FOR sure will be baptized this month barely made it to church! We were so scared but he made it. He was literally skipping work to come to church! He's a stud ha-ha. Super awesome. I'll get a pic with him this week. This area is really struggling in terms of people progressing. Elder S is taking off at the End of July during transfers, so I'll be the one leading the area. That will be interesting. We are trying. People still have their agency. Not many spiritual experiences this week because it was hard to work and get to people and because there aren't many people listening! We still push on. I'm super excited for J. He and his wife are already planning on getting sealed in a year! I'll be there as long as I'm not on Palawan ha-ha.

This week was straight up crazy. This morning we woke up and our apartment was flooded! 3 inches of water! It wasn't from the rain either. We live on the 4th floor of an apartment complex and we ran down to get the water shut off. It was from our sink! So dumb. So we had to clean that this morning. I have pictures but this computer won't read my camera, so that's awesome. I had tons of pictures this week but ya'll can be patient aha. Again nothing too spiritual this week because we had a hard time working. But it was a good week. The language is still very slow. But coming. I actually tried Balut this week. On exchanges. I told myself I would never eat it again. And of course I had to mention to Bishop's family last night that I ate it, they had some on hand, so I found myself being forced to eat Balut. If you don't know what it is, look it up. Its not very good, especially when you chew the beak. Anyways. That's about it for this week. No pictures cause this computer is dumb and yeah. I love you all and i hope you all had an amazing 4th! 

Elder Lambert

Balut:  A balut (spelled standardized as balot) is a developing duck embryo (fertilized duck egg) that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It originated and is commonly sold as streetfood in the Philippines.