Yay!! Finally an email from the Philippines :) :) :)

Hello everyone! 

First things first, we are fine up here in Sumulong. On Friday night, the mission president had all of us in the Quezon City Mission stay inside because the storm was supposed to land that day. It did "land" and brought with it a nice drizzle and a few sprinkles. Haha that was all that happened up here. It really was so crazy down south though. The area it hit is called the Tacloban mission and all the missionaries in that mission were evacuated from all the areas to the main city in the mission and then yesterday they took a boat and then a bus ride and they are now staying in the MTC and the Temple Patron House. It's crazy. Most likely, all will be reassigned here in the three missions in the Metro Manila area. However, a lot of missionaries serving in our mission were affected by it. One of the missionaries in my house is from a place called Laete, which received the worst part of the storm. His family is not able to be contacted because the phones are all down there -- cell and landline. His family is still unaccounted for and so PLEASE keep him in your prayers. His name is Elder Gam. 

We had another Sister in our zone whose family was affected by the storm. Her house and all the family's possessions were lost in the storm. Her family is okay and safe though, which was good. 

Sorry that I'm emailing so late in the week. We had temple day this week and so we were able to go to the temple again and that was amazing like usual! I love the temple! 

This week was pretty uneventful other than that. Nothing too special went on. The ward here is cool. They all speak pretty good English so I can communicate with the people here which is nice. We are teaching an investigator who has a member boyfriend in California and she speaks PERFECT English so that's cool. The ward missionaries all speak in English, so its fun. My companion is pretty cool. He is weird, but I can deal with weird haha. 

Thanks for all you do! Be safe! Love you!

Elder Head

Here is some of our exchanges with Ryan tonight:

Mom:

Well you have a lot of experience helping out trunky comps :) Have you seen any pictures of the typhoon affected areas? Unbelievable!! We will continue to pray for the Filipinos and especially the elder/sister in your area. What else do you have planned for today?

Ryan:

We are going to buy new clothes, because I donated some pants, new garments, and some shirts to the missionaries from Tacloban mission. They had to leave suddenly and so they were not able to bring their luggage and so most of it they assume is either gone from the storm or stolen. So will you make sure that I have some money in my account? 

Ryan:

I talked to some missionaries from the Tacloban mission today. Many will be reassigned here.

Dad:

I'm surprised they don't temporarily assign the missionaries in the Tacloban mission to serve a service missionaries.  

Ryan:

It is really really bad and unsafe there right now. For the safety of the missionaries, they will reassign them for a time until things settle down. It still is a really low pressure area there because of the storm and so they are afraid that there will be more storms and so they don't want to risk the safety for the missionaries or the sanity of their families. 

We are so happy and relieved to finally hear from Elder Head :)