A putiki in my pants

Kamusta Everybody! 

 This past week has been really good, and pretty eventful! We’ve been working with the members and have given a lot of good lessons.

 We’ve been visiting and spending a lot of time with a really great new member who was baptized a few months ago. He has so many questions because he is always reading from the scriptures and the church materials. For example he wants to know what the Brother of Jared's name is, why mountains are the temples in the Old Testament, what the Urim and Thumim looked like, and where are the three Nephites.. pretty deep stuff for a new member. With the help of the Spirit, we’ve been able to answer all of his questions and he always seems to have a firm understanding after we explain. 

 On Friday we had a Ward Missionary Family Home evening that was Halloween themed. It went really well and they all had a good time. I was in charge of coming up with the games. There aren't any pumpkins here in the Philippines so instead we used little squashes to have a decorating contest. All of the people there really liked the idea, I guess they had never done anything like it before. 

 The funniest/most memorable part of the week however happened yesterday. During sacrament meeting, while the bishop was giving a talk about being prepared for emergencies, my leg started to itch. I scratched it a bit assuming it was just a string in my pants but then a minute later I felt something again. So I scratched harder, thinking maybe there was a bug in my pant leg or something. It stopped for a minute but then started itching again so I hit my leg and rubbed it and then a little dismembered black wiggling tail fell out of the bottom of my pants!  I then realized that a putiki (a little lizard) had crawled up my pants. I must have made a gasping sound and then I started shaking my pant leg and kicked a little bit in my chair, and as I did a little tailless lizard flew out. A few of the members saw and started laughing (people here in the Philippines aren't peculiarly reverent, for example during this same meeting the bishops son was making a tower of hymn books on the steps to the podium, so laughing isn't unusual during a talk). I just hope the bishop didn't think that we where giggling about his talk and how we need to have lots of canned tuna ready in case we have to evacuate and can’t buy food...

 Well that’s about all for this week. I found out today that I will be training this next transfer! I am excited for the new challenge but at the same time nervous...I just hope my Tagalog is good enough. However, I am looking forward to being able to grow while teaching. I hope you all have a great week.

 Mahal Kita

   Elder Hayden Merrill