James’ Mission Sept ‘24 - Sept ‘26 San Pablo Philippines

This week was one of my favorite weeks yet here in the MTC. Like I mentioned in my last email, I gave a talk on Sunday this week but what I didn't mention is we also sang a tagalog song in sacrament meeting. It was lowkey kinda fun and my talk went really well(I think). It sounds crazy but I think my fears of public speaking might be getting a little better😝👏 Idk if I've mentioned this before but I have the best roommates ever and I got so lucky. Usually there are 6 people in a room but we only have four, Its me, Elder Smith, Elder Caldon, and Elder Miranda. The other two kids In our room are in our twin district which is so nice because I don't have to be around my district all the time and they are just amazing people. Elder Miranda is probably the smartest kid I think I've ever met in my life. He's pretty much fluent in tagalog and he's just so nice and funny. This kid is literally my inspiration some nights i'll just ask him how he's so smart an...

Yo what's good everybody? This week was so wild and I have so much to talk about. First of all, it's crazy that I only have 2 more weeks here I'm so hyped for the pines🇵🇭🤯 I should probably clear up the title before I get into the details of this week tho😂 The MTC pushes this thing called exact obedience and its self explanatory but it's it's pretty much just following all of the rules they have to a tee, like waking up exactly at 6:30 and not 6:45 for example. Well this week, I told myself I was gonna be exactly obedient and push myself to see what blessings come from it. At the very end of the week, I had barely noticed anything different to be completely honest and then the unthinkable happened. My bishop asks me to give a talk in sacrament meeting this next sunday💀💀🤪 for those of you who really know me you know that I HATE public speaking with a passion so this should be fun haha. But to ge honest I do see it as a blessing I'm here to get better and ...

This week was so fun. Once again, it went by way too fast. Time flies as a missionary it's actually crazy. For all of you that still read my emails... I miss you🫰🏼🥲 And for those of you that don't, I still miss you. This week me and Elder Smith had our first tagalog lesson! For those of you who don't know, which is probably everyone, they have these things here called HOA's where you go teach an actor a lesson for like 20 mins We had a couple English ones the first couple weeks and they went really well but the big challenge is the tagalog one. Everyone says that they suck and that were gonna completely fumble and its gonna be horrible. So I was super surprised when it went really well and we got really good scores on it. Tagalog is soooo hard and I feel like I'm kinda getting the hang of it but I just know the second I'm in the Philippines it's gonna be so different and I'm gonna be so lost. Something funny that happened in the HOA is the actor as...

This week has been amazing. Time is flying and it's crazy that i've already been a missionary for over a month, because I only got 23 more of those😂 There are so many things to talk about this week so I'll try to keep it short and sweet. I'll first talk about tagalog. I am so glad and lucky that I am learning a language. Learning a language is so fun I don't really think I realized that before I came here. Of course it's super hard but it gives me something to look forward to every day. Tagalog is a crazy language that makes absolutely no sense sometimes but idk it's still super fun. Here at the MTC the higher floor you're classroom is on the harder the language is and we're on the top floor💀 The other day in class I learned that the Ewoks in Star Wars and the minions in Despicable Me speak a little bit of Tagalog in some scenes which is awesome. I'm gonna have to rewatch those when I'm home to see if I can understand any of it haha. Shou...

Hey everyone, how are you guys doing?? This week has flown by so fast and has been an amazing week. I've had so many crazy experiences and I never would have thought that I would love the MTC as much as I do, hence the title. Like I say every week, every day is the exact same but it's the small things every week that get me through it. Me and Elder Smith have been grinding the push ups during each of our breaks. We get 4 breaks a day so I do 50 pushups a break and 50 at night which is 250 a day. One day I was just mad because I wasn't getting the language so I did 100 a break and ended up doing 500 that day. Our schedule has finally started slowing down so I've had a lot more time to do fun stuff like play volleyball and basketball which is soooo nice. This week went by super fast because we had a lot of service opportunities. We helped the new missionaries arrive at the MTC and we did a MTC cleanse because that's what they do every year right before general confere...