Merry Christmas from The Philippines!

"It sounds like you had a good Christmas, very different from mine. We were teaching and eating and eating and eating, Eating appointments. Oh my. "

If I'm remembering correctly, I believe Sister James had 5 or 6 eating appointments on Christmas day, which is good. She loves the food.

Sister James has been in the Philippines for about a week now, give or take when she actually arrived there after a brutal 2-day flight. But she is there, safe and sound.

Sister James spent some time in Ecuador last year, and she expected the peoples' living conditions to be similar, but she says things are worse in the Philippines. "The living conditions here are appalling. Truly. There are dirt floors and everything, some of the houses have tile, but it is pretty bad, We are truly so blessed to have the security and shelter and comfort that we have. " They also don't use toilet paper. It's a luxury for Sister James to have some.

"I got blessed because of my awesome companion. She is native. She is so cute and she speaks really good English. Her name is Sister Daquioag. We are also living with these other two sisters; they are also native. They are truly hilarious goofballs. I don't ever understand them, but when I do get their jokes it's pretty funny. Haha. Their names are Sister Bermudo and Sister Sauqetwoef. (I don't know how to say her name still) I can't ask her its too late."

Lindsey (I'm feeling so weird saying Sister James. Eventually I'll get used to it, but not right now.) has only been in the Philippines for a week, so she's having some difficulties with the language. Lindsey is one to expect a lot from herself, and rightly so. In this second week, she is already seeing improvements. She received a priesthood blessing around Christmas, and she said, "I know that the blessing helped me, later that night we were out teaching and I understood almost all of what my companion was teaching about." She goes on to say, "It was awesome. I am definitely understanding a lot more than last week. What a relief, now I can actually start listening and writing down words and speaking. I get nervous when I speak sometimes, and then other times I don't at all and I don't care if I am wrong. But I will get it eventually. I just am having a battle with patience right now. I get so pissed when I can't say what I want to say, especially when I am talking about the gospel."
Sounds just like Lindsey.

"This church is true. It's real. It's amazing being able to feel the spirit so often as a missionary. I am truly blessed and protected as a missionary. It is amazing being able to see people living the gospel."

Okay, now onto the technical aspects...

If you feel so inclined to send Lindsey a package, please keep the price under $50. If it's over that, she has to pay a crap load of money for it.

Her mission home address is:
Sister Lindsey James
Philippines Olongapo Mission
National Hwy
Mangan-Vaca, Subic Bay
2209 Zambles
Philippines

You can send packages or letters to this address. Letters take between 3-4 weeks to arrive, so if you want a "faster" method, I would stick with dearelder.com. The link is set up to be on the page where you directly write a letter, just select the Philippines, Olongapo mission, and it should tell you what to do from there. That takes about 2 weeks and is free. International mail requires an international stamp (they're about a dollar at the post office), or two regular stamps.



Ingat!!

--Anna James

p.s. pardon the grammatical or spelling errors. Lindsey's English sucks now, and I tried my best to proofread, so sorry if I missed anything.