The Spider

Hello Family and Friends.

This week was another fun and interesting week in the Philippines.

 One night this week I was heading upstairs to change into my PJ's when I went to turn on the light and I see this HUGE BLACK SPIDER (for real hand size)crawling right next to my hand. I was so surprised that I screamed probably the loudest scream in my life. Like those blood curtling screams they do in those black and white scary films.  Anyways after that everyone yells to me if I'm okay and then I go downstairs and tell them what happened and my companion just starts laughing at me and is like "Welcome to the Philippines". But I could not force myself to sleep in the tarantula room right? So I recruit sister sasagi to come upstairs and try to get this spider so we can go to bed. Anyways, after about 30 minutes of terror, tears and screams and discovering that our new spider friend has like super-spidey- jump-4 feet powers we gave up and I layed awake all night just on the look out and so scared and wondering how I found myself living in a country where it is socially acceptable to sleep with a tarantula 2 feet from your head. 

I consider myself lucky though because this morning I walked into the office to drop off something and saw Elder Winkler! He is here for some random reason in my area but we were talking and he said in his apartment they had two rats and he said "It's okay now, they are dead" I asked how they had killed them and he responded "Well we got one with a trap and the other one I stepped on" HAHA Oh man. Life is hard. Also he said they don't have any water at their house so they just wait for this cute little lady with a water cart to come around and sell them water. Somedays she doesn't come and they just don't have water that day! haha I love hearing my fellow missionaries stories because it reminds me to be more grateful. 

My companion wants me to tell you all about our weird food experiences but I think I will save that for a later email or for Christmas or something but don't you worry because I definitely have stories. haha

I am writing later today than usual because this morning we had a really neat experience to volunteer at a medical screening the church medical mission was hosting. We weren't allowed to proselyte or talk about the gospel which is basically as debilitating to a foreign missionary  as cutting off an arm since we literally only know gospel language and vocabulary. It was a really neat experience to help out though and I was able to meet a lot of amazing people and struggle to speak broken Tagalog to them:) The people here are always happy and grateful no matter what. I really admire that. One man came in to have his eyes checked for cataracts and the doctor told him his eyes were too far gone and he wouldn't not be able to reverse his blindness and instead of getting angry or upset he just graciously thanked the doctor for his time and walked out so dignified and awesome. If I can come home more like a Filipino I would consider myself so honored. 

Also Sorry if it seems like I only write crazy silly stories. I promises I have real life awesome spiritual missionary experiences all the time. I will try to get better about writing them. 

That's it for this week! Love you all!

Sister Turner:)