You Ate What!?

What an epic week.  I'll start off with last P-day. Probably the best P-day I’ve had since being in the mission.  We went to Mainit Falls. The most beautiful hike I’ve ever been on.  It was about an hour hike to the top and there were waterfalls everywhere. It was amazing.  The hike was way cool because there wasn't really a path.  You kinda just weed wack your way along the river bank (so much better than designated paths). Almost as good as Adam's Canyon.

I had quite the experience this week. I tried the most extravagant food you could dream of... by accident. So we were at our branch President's home last Monday for a Family Home Evening and he was BBQing (a lot of people here have little grills outside their house that they cook different things to sell). He was cooking pork, pigskin, pig fat, and one other thing that we assumed to be pig liver.  So we decided to give pig liver a try. Neither of us had tried it and it was only three pesos (about 8 cents).  It wasn't too bad. Not the greatest taste but pretty good.  After we had finished we were talking with president and we found out that it was in fact not pig liver. Nope, it was pig blood.  PIG BLOOD. They add some sort of ingredient that causes it to solidify, BBQ it up and serve it all over the Philippines. If I had come across this in America, I probably would have thrown up.  Not here, we eat anything and everything. Fish eyeballs, heart, chicken stomach, ground fish with vinegar, if it doesn't kill you, we eat it. 

It's been a while since I’ve shared a spiritual thought so I’ll let 'er rip right now. 

These are a few scriptures that have really helped me through learning a language (1 Corinthians 2:1-5).

When I first got here, I wondered why the Lord doesn't allow all his missionaries to speak immediately.  I wondered why it had to be so difficult.  These scriptures were the answers.  No "enticing words of man's wisdom" will ever be able to fully convert someone to the gospel.  Like Paul, my teaching is "not with excellency of speech or of wisdom", I’m weak, and not gonna lie, a little scared at times, but my testimony in the Lord is unshaken. I know that He lives.  And when I declare repentance unto the people here in the Philippines, I do my best to speak with power and boldness, in order to show those that we're teaching that their faith should not be in me nor in my flattering words, but in the power of God. It is by the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost alone, that we come to know eternal truths. By no other power can the mysteries of God be revealed.