Huebes ang 28

6:45 a.m.

Up and at them this morning. We have to meet Brother Potato at 8:00 at the church for a few minutes then I may go to the doctor's for labs, or I may wait til in the morning. It is time for the one month check. I have been feeling better. Have lost no more weight.

Yesterday we went to Maasin School to work. I took the i-pad and used Hanx Write to have the children write and read. We wrote to each other, then the children read it all back to me. ("Ano ngalan mo?", I asked them) What name you, actually. I then wrote their name and started with questions for them . . . Where do you live. Where is your house (balay). They usually gave one word responses, unless I could dig more out.

example:
Ariel

Where do you live?

Maasin

Where does your father work?

Farmer

What doe he grow or farm?

Rice

Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Ten (can't remember the kinaray-a)

Ten brothers?

Yes

Any sisters?

Ten

Okay lang

 Where does your mother work?

Manila

What does she do? What is her trabaho? . . . .


After each new question and answer, I had them read it back to me. I had them type their answers. At the end they read back to me the whole thing. I gave them an olin for their efforts and they had fun, I believe. Their basil reader is way boring and they can decode and call the words, but they have no idea of the meanings, so there is no comprehension. They comprehended this activity . . . they read, wrote, listened, spoke . . . good language arts activity.

We had the 10:00 break (long recess) and Maam Tubale told me Ariel's father died a few days ago. It turns out he has one brother and one sister. The custom in the Philippines is for the dead person to lie in the home while the families gather and they burn candles and morn and drink coffee and eat. The family of the dead person sponsors all this.

Children from the school were bring pesos and putting them in a jar for Ariel and his brother and sister. He said nothing to me about his father when I asked. Maam Tubale said the man died of lung cancer. He was a smoker and a heavy drinker. I felt pretty lousy. Sister Sessions and I gave Maam Tubale 500 pesos for Ariel. She said she would tell them we donated. I told her no, no, no that can just be from the school or something. We didn't want anyone to know beside her.

She immediately went in and told Maam Solomon (Ariel's teacher) and she trucked the three children out to thank us. How embarrassing. I told them it was no problem, we loved them. We hoped to be anonymous for several reasons, but that didn't happen. Some of the customs here defy common sense, but  . . .

Francis came over at 1:00 and we did a language lesson; the first in about two weeks. I did a little better as I have been studying the workbook the church uses at the MTC and finally understood a little of what was taught. The word order for Kinaray-a and Illonggo is Verb, Actor, Object (of the verb) and location. So,
The missionaries taught the gospel goes like: Taught missionaries the gospel, Nag(indicates past tense)tuod kang(filler?) missionarios sa (the) ebanghelio. Weirrrrd!

We are learning slowly. We may be able bear testimony and pray in Kinaray-a in about a year.

We went to Leo's for ice cream in the evening and I read the BoM and some in 1 Corinthians. I am trying to keep up with the BoM reading with the mission and trying to finish the New Testament as well. It is great. The Lord is revealing many new and wonderful and exciting things, especially now in the BoM. (Second Nephi now).