March 28, 2022 - Letter to Mom

Sunday was quite the day haha. We went to church at 9am, had branch council at 11am, and then for the rest of the day, we visited several members and part-member families to become more familiar with the area. We taught the brother of the girl who got baptized with his brother and their friend, Seth, next door (both are youth), and then all three of us walked to various places in our area to meet some members. It was good, and we met a lot of people, but I wasn't able to talk, and I couldn't understand them most of the time, which was frustrating. Elder Sabala did a great job though, I was proud of him. We were also supposed to be home by 7pm to report our numbers for the week, but we didn't get home until 8:15/8:30pm, and that's where my frustration really boiled over, more than it ever has, I think. 

This whole week or so, I've been my reserved self since it usually takes me between a few days to a week to get adjusted at each transfer as I process the new information/area/people, and I've especially been so now because of the foreign language/people and because of the fact that we're whitewashing an area and I'm follow-up training and adjusting to the new mission terms/policies. And today, we did a lot of walking and didn't have a lot of food, which made me more tired/reserved. Plus, because of the lack of understanding/language barrier between me and everyone else, I either feel like I'm left in the dark as I don't know what my companion is talking about to various people we're with or being patronized as people explain many things to me that I already know but they think I don't understand (this is especially the case with my companion, but I try not to be too hard on him since he's new and shy/timid; plus he deserves a lot of credit for all the talking/meeting with people he's done lately). And, I haven't had enough time to sufficiently adjust to any one area because of all the moving, and I haven't felt like I've gotten any rest, not even on P day. So anyways, all this is building and building, and Elder Sabala asks me when I want to be home, so I tell him 7 at the latest. That's around 5/5:30pm (also, by this point, our phone is dead, so I'm unable to contact anyone or report numbers until we arrive home to charge the phonr). After meeting one more member, we begin the long walk back to Seth's area of town to drop off him and the others (since they're youth and we didn't want to just leave them while they're so far from home). So we're walking back, and Elder Sabala is talking to Seth and thr others like he has the whole time since they don't speak much English, and I'm following along, thinking that we'll just drop them off and ride a tricycle back to our apartment since it's almost 7pm and that's when I told Elder Sabala I wanted to be home by. When we get to Seth's house, it's 7pm, and I'm ready to be home to report numbers and charge our phone since it's been dead for the past few hours (the battery is trash on this phone lol), but then he tells me we're going to ask Seth's dad for a ride, and I half-jokingly say to myself that then we won't leave till 8 since he'll want to talk. Turns out, I was right lol, but there was little I could do about it because we were already at ther front door at that point, and from the little I did understand about the conversation, they were talking about important information such as the people we met, who we could stop by in the future, and potential apartments we could check out. So by that time, I'm really frustrated/reserved since I had no idea these stops (we made a couple more stops on the way) we had made were going to happen because I wasn't told about them until we're already at their front door. And Elder Sabala somehow didn't know about the 7pm curfew until we got home and all the other Elders explained it (even though I already told him to let Seth know we were to be home by 7). 

Anyways, I'm really frustrated which makes me reserved, and Elder Sabala keeps thinking I'm mad at him even though I'm not since he didn't know and he's new and we're both just figuring this out together. When we finally get home, the district leader and the zone leaders keep telling me to send in the report since I haven't been able to yet because of tbe dead phone, and I eventually had to resend it again because I did the wrong format (to be fair, they literally gave me 0 format to follow), and then they start asking about our goals for this next week, which we don't have because Ekder Sabala and I haven't been able to talk about it yet, we've barely had time to meet with the members and get adjusted to our area. So then they get a little frustrated with us since we're supposed to have that all done by 7pm (though, once again, neither of us knew this), the district leader calls Elder Sabala because he speaks Tagalog to talk about our goals, and then one of the other Elders begins explaining to me the importance of goals because I said that we didn't have any yet, and he even tries to explain how to set goals in the first place. I know he was just trying to help, but it felt very patronizing no matter how much I tried to explain our situation, and I was almost ready to lose it, I was even slightly shaking. He eventually backed off because he thought he was offending me, and I spoke to him and apologized to him a little bit later for my shortness. Eventually, we got the goals set for this upcoming week, and I was able to open Graycee's presents and read your guys' emails, which was a short moment of joy I had in this long and exhausting day. By this point, it's almost 10:30, and I was still feeling frustrated, so I decided to just retire to a smaller room to do personal study (since we didn't have time to do that either) while the others played cards. They eventually made some food, and Elder Sabala brought some to me, I think because he still thought I was mad at him (although I told him several times that I wasn't, and I was being honest). I didn't want any because I didn't feel like it, I just wanted some alone time to study and collect myself, plus it was 11:15/11:30 and I didn't want to eat that late. But he kept pushing it on me and asking if I was alright when all I wanted was some space to study and calm myself down (if you think someone's upset with you, why would you keep pushing something on them that they've expressly declined while they're fairly obviously trying to have some space to be with themselves to study/collect their thoughts, made 0 sense to me), so that was frustrating again, even though I know he has good intentions. 

Ultimately, I just decided to sit in a chair (and later kneel on my bed) and just close my eyes and pray. And when I wasn't saying anything to God, then at least I had some relative peace/time to myself. I just did that while they played cards and Elder Sabala sat right in front of me as I did so. Anyways, we eventually went to bed, but yeah, it was a fun day haha