PINAKANAKAKAPAGPABAGABAG!

Can you say that word?!  It has twenty-four letters and means PET PEEVE!  Funny huh?!  Jarom says it is pronounced:

"pee-nuh-kuh-nuh-kuh-kuh-pug-puh-bug-uh-bug"
 

 

Dear Family and everyone else,

 It has been raining here for days.  It's raining right now.  Once a week, we walk to Rizal which is a three mile walk through the mountains there and three miles back.  We had to ride by trici (tricycle or a 150cc motor bike with a side cart) there because it was raining and the water in some spots over the road was knee deep.  We had to walk on the way back because no trici.  We got wet...

 

This morning I saw eleven people riding on one trici!  The driver and two behind him, five in the sidecart, and three on top of the side cart.  Aaand you can fit up to like fifty people on a jeepney - thirty inside and like twenty on top.  It works somehow.  In America you wouldn't even think about putting more than seven to nine people in a van.  Here, they fit like fifteen to twenty people in a van.  Very efficient and they make some money!  (haha)

 

(these are photos I found on the internet - this is basically what Jarom must see!)

 

Next week is the big 20!  My birthday is on our P-day so we are going a few miles down the road to an area called San Carlos to play basketball.  I'm going to break the goal!  I told the little kids of the primary and a few deacons to come so I'll dunk for them and we'll play.  What makes me happiest here is the kids.  They are so nice and they help me get through the day when the day is tough.

 

This week has been tough.  We have over five hundred members here, fifty came to church Sunday.  Our investigators didn't, and the Bishop was home sick.  Only fifteen stayed for the three hours.  The sacrament meeting attendance is 8% and the real member attendance is 1-2%.  People here don't really pray or read every day and they DO NOT do it as a family.  There was a member who had to open the church with his wife.  He is an American who served here and married someone.  He opened the church at 7:55 and church starts at 8:00.  No one showed up until 8:45...all I have to say is I'm going Jeffery R. Holland on them at the fireside and DECLARING REPENTANCE!  I tried to do the Ammon approach and serve them, but it doesn't work.  It's time to let them know the importance with the sound of a trump!  I feel like Captain Moroni in Alma 51:14.  I do have to say though that I love the challenge and I came here to work.  When everything is hard and you're doing all you can you have to push forward and work work work because that's all you can do and God WILL bless you after the trial of your faith.

 

This letter isn't like the previous ones, but more of a...I don't know (haha)...just what's going on on the other side of the world.

 

Love, Elder Pambihirang Odom

 

P.S. Pambihira means freak or freakin! 

 

P.P.S.  Remember when times get hard just say

"PINAKANAKAKAPAGPABAGABAG"!!!!!