I'm so happy to be here in my mission in Baguio! My first few days have been amazing, hard and filled with many opportunities to grow. My new trainer (or re-trainer) is Elder Anderson. He's from Northern Utah and has been out on his mission for about a year. Being American, he's still learning Tagalog himself, so we get to learn the language together everyday (thankfully he's much better at it than I am). My first area is called Aringo which is near the city of Agoo. Kind of in the fields below the mountains of Baguio city itself. It is a pretty poor area...not much good housing to go around. The people are incredibly humble and friendly though.
The cars and trucks of Utah have been replaced with an endless army of tricycles and buses on the roads. Every time we ride anything with a motor, I have to laugh at what happens to traffic without any stop signs and almost no stoplights...it's a bit chaotic. :P But no matter how many times it seems like we're surely going to crash head on into another vehicle, I trust that the Lord will protect us.
Our apartment is...well...in pretty bad shape. There's no running water it's all concrete flooring. Bucket showers na lang! :) Just about everything in that building has some sort of funny gimmick to it in order to get it to work. You have to jiggle the bathroom light switch just right...and then it barely stays on. You have to hold and crank our water pump just right...or else the handle falls off... You get the idea. The whole apartment is more or less held together by spit, some rusty wire and a whole lot of prayers. :P
Our teaching pool right now is not very big. We just stopped teaching a couple of people on Saturday, so this week we get to find lots of new people to teach! The good news is that it's about 1000x easier to get into houses here than it was in Arizona (though I still love Arizona! Always!) Hopefully by the next time I write, we will have found lots of great new people to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to!
Every day, my grasp on Tagalog grows a little bit stronger...but it's a slow process with plenty of hurdles. For instance, the Baguio mission is home to another Filipino language dialect: Ilokano. Supposedly it is one of the most difficult dialects to learn, and most of the words sound absolutely nothing like their Tagalog counterparts. Thankfully basically all the people understand Tagalog, but a lot of them speak Ilokano to me, and I haven't the foggiest idea what their saying. 8P It's just going to take a while for me to be able to really understand them. I feel surprisingly confident in my ability to express what I want to say in Tagalog...I just have no idea where the conversation is at most of the time due to their accents and the Ilokano. :P Someday I'll get there, by the Lord's grace.
Nevertheless, the lessons that Elder Anderson and I have taught have really felt powerful. Despite my ability to say and understand only a little, I can still feel the Spirit reaching out to communicate the feelings of my heart to the people, which is more important than anything I say anyways. Proof to me the God truly does keep His promises. He delivers me from the bondage of my own inadequacies. I hope and pray that He will continue to do so for me and for each of you as we face our own limitations every day. God truly gives to those who truly ask.
Please take care and I will look forward to writing again soon! Know that I am praying for you!
Love, Elder Dickison
Pictures this week include:
1) Me and my Manilla MTC companion Elder Newby in front of the Manilla Temple
2) A reunion with most of my original Provo MTC district
3) The flooded plains of the Philippines
4) A lovely little squid that I ate my first night in the Baguio mission. Masarap!
5) Me and Elder Anderson in the Baguio mission office
6) My badly lit bed.
P.S. For those of you who have to know, they fed us Balut for our last night in the Manilla MTC and I did eat it. It was a little odd...but I'd eat it again ;)
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