Monday, October 7, 2013~Week 8
Quezon City;12:35 PM Mon (PH); 10:35 PM Sun (US)

Heyyyyyyy fam bam! First of all, I'm so so SO happy that you had such a great birthday mom!! I was praying so hard that you would! I thought about you the whole day!!!  I wore your favorite skirt and shirt and had my favorite meal, spaghetti, for lunch and just kept wishing you a happy birthday all day long!! I'm so glad that you got your gift and that you liked it!! 

A favorite outfit for mom!

Eating my favorite gluten-free spaghetti in honor of Mom!

  And what a BEAUTIFUL cake!! I want you to know that when I get home, I am going to make you the BEST Halloween Birthday cake in the world!! So be excited!!! And I was looking forward ALL WEEK to our chocolate birthday date! They don't have Hershey's here but I got the most American Chocolate I could find and had that!  Sunday was Fast Sunday and so I started fasting after lunch Saturday so that I could break my fast at 11:00 the next morning for our date!! 

Best chocolate I could find for our date.

It was so fun! And I could just imagine you eating it and letting every piece melt in your mouth and then after we ate it, giving each other a big squeeze and a nice sticky, chocolate kiss on the cheek! Thanks for the date mama! It was so fun to feel so close to you! I LOVE YOU!!

This week has been a little crazy! After I emailed everyone last week, I went home and was able to write hand written letters to Mom, Dad, Alena, Janessa, Morgan, and Jannie! But I promise to write everyone else that I didn't have time for as often as I can! Including my brothers! There's just hardly any time! And I can only send mail every two weeks when they do a mail run so it's always going to take a long time to get it but they will come!! Anyway, Tuesday we had district meeting and that was nice because there's an Elder from my zone in the MTC that's in my district now and it was nice to see a familiar face! And! I met Elder Phelps!! Brock Johnson's cousin that everyone kept telling me to find! He's in my zone! So it was fun to talk to him about the people we knew from St. George and he's actually really good friends with my MTC district leader Elder Hunsaker! So we talked about that and it was just good for the soul! And then we all went out to eat at this place and I had pansit which is basically just rice noodles with some lettuce and carrots and stuff. It was good! And gluten free! So yeah Tuesday was good!

Eating pansit at Mang Inasal after district meeting!  Dessert is called halo halo.

And then on Wednesday we had MTC exchanges which is where the missionaries from the Manila MTC come out with the missionaries for a few hours. They get to do it twice! How nice and helpful that would have been!! Those lucky ducks! But it was really good and the sister that we went out with is from Tonga! She's very very nice! She's going to the Naga Mission! I hope she has fun!

On Thursday, we went to a dinner appointment with the other Sisters to a fairly wealthy member's house and the food was really good! My favorite part though was the chocolate covered blueberries BECAUSE they were American! They have a place in Manila that's basically a Costco and that's where she got them from! I miss Costco!!!!

View from Kainig 1 

On Friday, I saw my very first rat and I almost died. I HATE RATS! We were in Daang-Tubo teaching a recent convert and it just crawled right up by the window and it's huge tail just sat there on the wall and then it scurried away and it was disgusting and I could go my whole entire life without seeing another one and be perfectly fine! I would definitely be more than fine actually. I hate rats. EW.

On Saturday night, we had an experience that I never wish to have again! So we feel asleep with the light on that night for some reason and then at like 12:30 in the morning I wake up because Sister Jones was kind of squealing and was out of bed and I asked her what was wrong and she said that there had been a cockroach CRAWLING ON HER ARM!!! I was like what?! And then as I start to look around at the floor I realize that there are TWO more crawling around and then it was just a little bit of frenzy because I started pointing at the cockroaches and she grabbed her flip flops and hit them and then I screamed because there was one climbing up the wall and she runs across the room and smashes that one and then I look down and the other two that she had smashed were still trying to crawl and I yell, "They're still alive!! They're still flipping alive!!" And so runs back over and starts pounding on them and then I yell that one just came in through the window and so runs over and smashes that one too and then she just sat there repeatedly hitting all the nasty little creatures until we were sure they were dead! So in total, there were FOUR extremely large cockroaches in our room! IT WAS SO DISGUSTING!! Yep. We shut all the windows as tight as we could and covered up our entire bodies as best we could with our sheets and tried to get some sleep after that but just ew. So that was an adventure of sorts. Could have lived without it but it happened anyway.

The spider that was a little tiny bit smaller than the
size of my palm that was outside our house last night!
Our neighbors captured it for us!! It was so funny! 

Sunday I had my chocolate date with Mom, (best part of the day and week), and then we had church and then after that we had the Relief Society Broadcast and it was fabulous! I loved it!! It was fun to look into the choir and see people that I knew! And who were coming to the Philippines!! Super super fun! And President Monson looks so skinny! It makes me sad!! But he's just so cute and I am so grateful that we have a living prophet on the earth today!! What a blessing!

TODAY!!!!!!!!!! 

So it's been a busy week and this next week is going to be even busier! But I am so so SO grateful for so many things! I am grateful for the power and strength that I get from the Lord every day! I am so grateful for the hour of personal study that I get every day! It's my favorite part of the day because it starts the day of work and allows me to just focus on the work rather than think about home! I devour the Book of Mormon! I never really appreciated the Book of Mormon so much until I came on my mission! It takes on new meaning and brings such peace and comfort and joy! I love reading it!! President Monson said during the RS Broadcast that he "never tires of reading it" and I don't think I ever will either! I'm excited to finish the Book of Mormon so I can start reading it again! President Bednar suggested that we could take a new copy of the Book of Mormon every single time we start reading it again and write a question in the front and go through and highlight everything that pertains to the question you have. He said that you will get something new out of the Book of Mormon every single time. Before I left the MTC I bought a Book of Mormon and I'm going to do that but I'm just going to do it in different colors instead of different books! I'm super excited!! I love the Book of Mormon and I love this gospel and being a missionary is hard but it's also so worth it! It's hard to be away from family and friends and home and it sometimes seems like an eternity until you'll be able to see them again but I am so grateful for the time I have to serve the Lord. This is the only time in my life that I'll be able to dedicate every single hour of every single day to the Lord. And in the long run, it doesn't seem that long compared to the rest of my life. So I just need to suck up my homesickness and get to work!! Thank you so much for all of your prayers and love and support! I feel it every single day!! I miss you all so SO much!! Love you!! Only 11 weeks until I get to skype you!! Wooo hooo!! Mahal kita!!

Love, Sister Andersen!

(Below I have included extra posts from our extra time we had online....)

P.S. I completely jinxed myself with the bug bites because I am now being eaten alive!!!

P.P.S. There's an old lady here that we teach and she's a less active member. Her name is Nanay C. (Nanay means grandma) and she talks and laughs EXACTLY like the old blind lady on the Princess and the Frog!! It's so funny! And the recent convert that I talked about, she's literally a Filipino Barbie! I kid you not!!

P.P.P.S. Little did I know when I sent my umbrella home that it was rainy season here. Yep. Got an umbrella. (Still laughing about this one!  I sent her a news report on a typhoon right before she left the MTC! Live and learn.)  :)

(I asked her about mosquito nets.  I used one on my mission.  Drapes above/over the bed and tucks under the mattress. And I inquired about bug spray.) 

 We bought nets today!! I can't wait to put mine up!! Hahaha! Ummm sprays don't work on the cockroaches here. They don't die. OH and I get to go the Mall of Asia today!! They have Wendy's and Taco Bell there!! I'm STOKED!!

 (A favor.  She would love if you'd respond.  Feel free to email answers to me to forward as one, if you feel so inclined, or just send to her on your own if you prefer. Thx.)

 Also, ask everyone what their favorite Book of Mormon character is, or their favorite Book of Mormon story, or their favorite prophet!! And then tell me next week!! Thanks!!

Last week she mentioned cold showers, so I asked her if she has tried a "bucket" shower....heating water and mixing it with cold; also a reference to last week on oatmeal)

Haha okay I'll let you know. Right now I don't mind that it's cold because I'm always so hot!! But I'm sure I'll do that later on in the mission as I settle in! Haha it's kind of funny because I eat oatmeal every single day here. I love it!! They have brown sugar so although it's not exactly what I eat at home, it's pretty darn close. But it's been a blessing for sure!

(I asked what the colorful dessert was in the noodle lunch picture) Oh yeah!! That's halo halo! It's like a weird ice cream thing that has ice cream and then kind of snow cone and then fruit stuff and gelatin stuff and other....stuff! Haha it was kind of weird but pretty good!!

(A happy note:)  Just to let you know, the homesickness is getting better! Thank you for your prayers! Continue to pray for that though! And the language! Thank you for EVERYTHING mom!

(Told her I'd 'dearelder' missionary friends letters to her....)  They said that Dear Elders sometimes take longer than regular letters! Just to let you know! But I'm SO grateful for anything!!  (dearelder.com is free: just choose Philippines Quezon City Mission and submit it by Sunday midnight for it to go through the pouch service.)

Here is her mailing address written more clearly: 

Sister Hannah Lynne Andersen

Philippines Quezon City Mission

Aurora Blvd. Corner

J.P. Rizal St. Project 4

Cubao 1109, Quezon City, Metro Manila

PHILIPPINES