Friday, October 25, 2013

Week 2... Officially the Middle Batch!

 Roomies
 Views from MTC

 Manila Temple
 The two Krueger's!
 Travel buddies
 He hasn't lost his personality... thank heavens!
View of city at night


Hi Everyone! 

It's really hard to read through those emails and answer all the questions, so I'm just gonna write what I was planning and hope I cover a bunch of them! I love hearing from everyone though! So this week I actually have an outline so hopefully I won't be as scattered. 

First thing first I STILL don't have athletic shoes! The sizes are so screwed up because they're either fakes or replicas. Ha ha! Some even have the wrong logos! So hopefully I'll get some like tomorrow. I was also talking to our Filipino roommates and they were saying that I could get a good handmade guitar here for one to two thousand pesos!!! That's like 25-50 bucks!!! So cheap it is crazy! Not like the food though... Anything that is American at the supermarket is so expensive! Like at least 5 times more expensive than Filipino brands that taste exactly the same. Needless to say I don't buy anything American there. Stick with my Jack-n-Jill brand chips and such. Another cool thing to get here are these PAT rings. It's weird that it works out like this, but PAT is the Filipino CTR. So I now am getting a PAT ring with my mission and name engraved on it! 

Oh, I actually have a question to ask you guys! Someone sent me some flip flops and I have no idea who it was. Gotta figure this out! 

We have a lot of devotional type stuff here and one was this video of Elder Holland that he gave last year and it was INCREDIBLE! That guy can speak! So uplifting and, at times, even scary. He called us missionaries "lower case 'a' apostles" which was good for some laughs, but it made us all realize just how important this work really is. I'm so excited to be here and to be doing this work. We've been told that China, as well as the rest of Asia, is really reliant on the work we do here. The Philippines is the stepping stone. This work is so important for the church. 

The language is coming well too! My teacher is impressed with my progress and says I notice intricacies in the language that no one else does, not even her. It usually takes like 3 or 4 teachers collaborating to answer any question I have. Ha ha oops. But I really do love the language! It is really cool sounding. I also really like my District. They are really cool guys. Me and my kasama (companion) Elder Lindley get along really well too. We are really good team teachers. We play this game in our district called "What if?" where you all write a question on a piece of paper and then switch papers and write the answer on the back to whatever new paper you have. After that you mix them up again and the first person reads their question and the next person reads their answer and you just keep going around. It get's really funny cause the answers don't usually match up quite right and you get some hilarious results! 

The food here is good too. Every two weeks we get burgers, pizza, and spaghetti, which is all incredible. It was nice to take a break from the plain white rice being 75% of my diet. And I haven't really gained too much weight. I don't really know though. My pants shrunk a bit and they still fit fine, so I'm assuming I'm the same. I do work out every day though. Me and E. Lindley have a routine for each night, so that helps us out a ton. 

It's also true what they say about Filipino men and American women. They LOVE American women. I showed my roommates some pictures of like Xan and Audrey and everyone else in that picture book and they were like, "She's your girlfriend!? WOWWWW!!" or like "American women are so beautiful!!!" They liked Audrey too ha ha and I was like, "Yaaaaaa.. She's 14." But everyone has some admirers here! Those roommates are gone now though :( They were only 12 day MTC guys, but we got a new batch today! We are officially the middle batch! The greenies are pretty cool and me and my kasama got some more Filipinos for roommates and they're super sweet guys. We were gonna tell the new guys that the word for companion was asawa instead of kasama. Asawa means spouse ha ha but we had mercy on them as they looked pretty shell shocked. 

I guess the only other thing that happened is that after the two Filipino missionaries left it was only me and my kasama in our room. So we obviously had to turn two of the three bunk beds in our room around to make two GIANT beds! I call them the Super Beds and now everybody knows what they are. It was nice for a couple nights but now we have six people in our room so it's back to a single bunk.. Oh well. It was good while it lasted. 

I'm having a blast here and it is so much fun! I love you all!

Elder Krueger

Thursday, October 17, 2013

AHHHHHHH!


Hotel in Manila 
View from hotel window
View from MTC window
Patrick's room

Local store?? Looks like they have familiar things... The Elder in front is Patrick's companion

Where to begin? I love the MTC! There is SO much to do here! The food is like crazy weird.. I had a  whole fish yesterday and there is so much rice with every meal... like half of my plate. it's insane. The classes are way long. Like 16 hour days and such. We've already had four teaching appointments with a guy named Jayson and they have gone well! He only speaks Tagalog but we got him to commit to baptism! Teaching in Tagalog is really difficult but it is crazy how far we've come in a week. All of our favorite words is Mabuti (Pronounced Mah-boot-ee). See if you can figure out why.. It means "good" so we're always like "Dude this dinner is mabuti." The other missionaries are really cool! We get along really well as a district, which is the Alma district. We don't have TOO much time to bond because they keep us so busy, but that's ok. Keeps my mind off of missing everyone, ya know? I really love the little toys you guys packed for me. They are such a relief when I've had a stressful day and everything and I can just chill with a yo-yo or something. Ok, I'm sorry this is so rushed. There's just a lot I wanna go over! Let me slow down. 

My companion is Elder Lindley and he's a really cool guy. We have quiet moments but we have the relationship where that is totally fine. The rooms are for six people but we only have four, thankfully. Our two roommates are both Filipino which is really nice for all of our questions about the language. 

They keep us really busy, like I said, with language classes, preach my gospel classes, and just teaching practices. They really challenge us with difficult situations and leave us to figure it out on our own. Like the investigator we are starting with today hates God, is recently divorced, and his son died two months ago. It'll be challenging but I have faith (Pananampalataya sa Tagalog) that we will be able to teach him well. 

We get gym time every day but I definitely forgot athletic shoes at home... so I wear my flip flops and play ping pong for an hour every day. I ordered some new ones for like 500 pesos, which is about 12 bucks and I think they may actually be here today! The food, like I said, is funky. The cheese really does all taste like easy cheese and the milk is most definitely powdered. You can't even imagine how much rice I eat. All in all though, the food is delicious. 

My jet lag is gone now. It was actually gone after the first couple days! Doing good! Eating, sleeping, and praying a lot! You can definitely see the Lord's hand in everything once you are in the right mindset. There are so many questions that I've answered from our investigator that I have no idea how I understood him or even remember how and what I said to answer. The Spirit helps in every lesson. We watched General Conference again last week! They get it a week later here so we had another ten hours of sitting in really uncomfortable chairs listening to Conference. I got so much more out of it though. It was really cool. 

Hmmmmm. I'm really not sure what else to talk about. Everything is good! I'm happy and so is everyone else! Oh! We had this like stress mangagement class that was really needed. My whole district was really down in the pits about the third day just with having to learn the language and everything like that, but this class lifted our spirits luckily! Not much else to say.. Enjoy the pictures!
 I love you all.   

Elder Krueger                  

 P.S. I can not tell you how many times people have asked if Taggart and I are brothers. Gotta explain the same last name but no relation haha it's fun.


Thursday, October 10, 2013

I"M HERE!

So crazy you guys!!! I'm actually here! They are letting us write our families and stuff right now but ya, I just finished getting a mandatory haircut and my hair is like SO short now! haha Mom would hate it! I love this place so much. We got into our hotel at like 1 in the morning and didn't get to sleep until about 2. So three hours of sleep and I was up at 5 and now I'm here! The drive to the MTC was insane.. like seriously frightened for my life while we were going... but I made it. It was just crazy on the roads. Any four lane road became six lanes with motorcycles darting inbetween cars and such. It was insane. We were all just silent in amazement to all the people and giant buildings and just all the... EVERYTHING! It's crazy (Have I told you that it's crazy yet?) I love all the guys and gals I got to come over with. They are way cool people. 6 elders and 2 sisters all going to the Quezon City North mission. I also met my companion for like a minute or two and he's a cool guy. We'll get along nicely. The flight over was just like way long.. I was so done after like four hours from Seattle to Tokyo, but we had like 7 hours left of that flight left and then like another 4 to Manila. We actually got to Manila at 10:30 but going through customs took forever.. The flight from Seattle was cool cause we left at 2:30 PM on October 9th and then arrived in Japan at 5 PM October 10th. Lost a day or something. Killed our first cockroach at the hotel. Super fun... I'm glad to hear that you all are doing better! Just know that I'm having a great time so far and ya. I love it here! The humidity hit us like a brick wall getting off the plane. The airport was hot and humid and stepping outside was SO much worse haha but I'll get used to it. I'm not sure what else to tell you about... Elder Krueger is sweet! Nice guy. Uhhhhh that's about it you guys! I love you all and everything! I'm not sure when I'll get to write again so that'll be a nice surprise for you guys when I do.
 
Elder Krueger

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

First Pictures

I am so happy my kids love each other! This is from Patrick's Farewell
After Patrick was set apart Audrey went in for the big hug! Love his face!

A kind traveler sent these from the Seattle airport. Love her!

All ready for Tokyo then on to Manila!







Well, We just took Patrick to the airport and he is off! He is happy and ready... it has been a long 5 months. He has watched all of his buddies move on to their various schools and life adventures and he has been patiently waiting for his time to go. Last night he got to talk to all of his best friends over the internet and it was fun to see him laugh his guts out! Lasting friendships! By the time we got all the bags situated and talked to family and went to bed it seemed the lights were back on and we were headed out the door at 5 am. When we got to the airport the guy at Delta said "You are the second person I have checked in this morning that is going to Manila, and he was dressed like you." So we inquired a bit more and, yes, he is a missionary from Boise going to Manila today! Crazy! They will travel the whole way together. I can stop worrying a bit. And right next to us was a family with a son going to Peru. I love the church! I gave his mom a hug. I think saying goodbye is hardest on the mom because, personally speaking, your child's mission started long ago. You try to help him along his way and when he makes the decision to go on a mission your mission begins. You set all the appointments for EVERYTHING under the sun and start making lists and go through the book and check all the boxes and go to the store 50 times for last minute stuff and talk to other moms about what your kid needs for a far away country... and on, and on, and on. And I wouldn't change a thing! I love you Elder Patrick Krueger! You are going to have the time of your life!

I am going to update this blog every week with the letters and pictures that Patrick sends us. I will post some from his farewell here soon. Right now I am going to have a good cry and get some sleep! Deep breath!

Susan Krueger