A Missionary's Work: P is for Patience

4/3/2017

Hey Everybody! "It's a great day to be alive, with the sun still shining when I close my eyes" - A great country song. If you can figure it out, email me, haha! But it's great here, a smile always on our faces, and learning new things, especially in Tagalog everyday! Oh, one fun-ish experience is finding out I have gained my first allergy to cashews or at least the oil. I found a cashew tree the other day and picked one, and later found out there is like two shells on the cashew and it goes one hard outer shell, tons of oil and an inner shell then the nut. I got tons of the oil on my hands and it's like superglue, it covers your hands and you need to scrape it off (still in that process). I also had (past tense mom, ha) a bunch of rashes on my arms. That sucks because that's one of my favorites, sayang (dang it).

Right now I think I lost a bunch of weight, the complete opposite of my 1st area, but only because we're working harder and doing more, which also means I can eat anything I want (a wrestler's dream yay!) We're loving it here though and we're always busy.

So I hear it's still snowing in Ohio. That's funny because here it's like 100 degrees always, though that's my kind of weather. Oh and one more thing. I had a one-day chick yesterday. Which is literally one day old chick fried or grilled and eaten whole and color orange... it was.... actually really good. It might be one of my new favorite street foods along side chicken intestines an chicken blood (it's kinda like jello haha)!

Anyway, to my spiritual food thought type deal. This week has been spent on learning patience. Usually the first thought to my mind from that word is not exploding when my sisters are arguing at me or each other (I love you my beloved sisters haha). But as you really think about it, it's a lot more than that. Think of how Christ used patience. Christ loved those who hated him. He served all including the selfish. He endured every pain and sin. Patience is not "takin' all the crap", it's loving the people even when they kick you out of their house. It's doing all those thing you shouldn't have to do, with a smile. It's choosing to be happy through every hardship and trial in our lives. Patience has a lot of meaning behind it and I'm way far from being a master of patience, but I've started to learn and grow from many situations in life before and during my mission. It's also very closely related to humility (opposite of pride). Hopefully this thing that I'm learning can help someone out there. Love you all and have a great, patient-filled week...

Stay maganda and stay pogi ;)
Elder Peterson