21 October 1999

It's my HUMP DAY!!  Wow, it's already been a year since I entered the MTC.  It doesn't feel that long at all.  I guess time flies when you're doing the work of the Lord.  It's morning right now, so I haven't had any festivities yet.  I did, however, have a fitting hump day dream last time.  First, I dreamed that I was back in the MTC with the same district that I had the first time.  It was our second mission.  I remember saying to Elder Swingler, "It sucks that we, a couple of RMs, have to go to the same MTC as all of these young 19-year-olds."  I was going to a Cebuano-speaking mission, and I was a little impatient because my Cebuano was just as good as the teachers'.  Then the dream switched.  I dreamed it was my first day home after my mission.  Dad wanted me to water the lawn with the hose, but I had problems getting everything set up.  Anyway, I thought this dream was good for hump day, because right now I'm at the halfway point between the MTC and going home.

I'll write more tonight.

Well, this day didn't exactly go how I wanted it to.  We went to Mayorga this morning because I needed to do baptismal interviews.  I thought there was only one, and I planned to be back in Dulag for lunch.  But there were three, and they were all out in the bukid (wilderness).  The first one was a 20-minute drive into the middle of nowhere.  The lady I interviewed was nuts.  When I asked her to pray, she stood up, raised her right arm to the square, and gazed into the heavens as she prayed.  She said some weird things, but I felt she was ready for baptism.  Elder Gummersall and I got back to the Mayorga apartment around 12:30 and ate carabao for lunch with Elders Millington and Clark.  It was my first time eating it.  Tasted kind of weird.  It was raining after lunch, so the Mayorga elders said we couldn't go interview the Garcias, because the path would be too wet.  We played Scrabble while we waited.  At 3:00, it stopped raining.  Elder Clark and I started walking towards the bukid where no rides would go.  We hadn't even been out of the house for one minutes when it started to rain again. "Screw it, lets just get it over with," I said.  The walk was retched.  Not only was it long, but it was muddy and had a lot of deep puddles.  And I was wearing sandals because of my toe.  They're falling apart now, and I just bought them on Monday.  Instead of getting angry and upset, Elder Clark and I laughed our heads off because of the difficult walk.  The interview went well.  The Garcias are a very nice family.  Sister is Cebuano, so we spoke that to each other.

Elder Millington and I didn't get back to Dulag until 6:00.  We picked up a cake that I had ordered and went out to celebrate my hump day with Hazel and Susan.  It was a fun visit.  After that, we walked out to San Miguel and visited Imelda Tobis.  We gave her some cake, she gave us some juice, and we had a nice talk.  It was a long talk.  Imelda could go on for hours if you let her.  We got home right at 9:30 and ate the food Sister Buco had prepared for lunch.  It was sweet & sour pork.  Very good.

Now it's past 10:30, so I'll go to bed now.

Burning my Hump Day shirt

My Hump Day cake.  Susan and Hazel, too.  Millington is covering the Coke bottle, because we weren't supposed  to drink Coke.  We also weren't allowed to drink untreated water, and Coke was our only other option at the time.

Susan, Hazel, and Elder MacKenzie