Elder Ben Bondoc: Palaway Po, Kuya

Hey

So this'll be a quick one. Funny experience of the week. Here we go. So after teaching a lesson, my companion and I tried introducing ourselves to a mother that we had just met. She was carrying this baby, and trying to hand him over to me, said, "Palaway po, Kuya." which translates to "Can I get you to spit on my child?" I was totally thrown off guard because I had absolutely NO idea why I would ever spit on a baby. But then my companion explained that there's this superstition in the Philippines that if put spit on a baby's stomach that the evil spirits will go away or something like that. I didn't get it and still don't get it. But yeah. She was actually asking me to lick my finger and draw a cross on her baby's stomach.. Thrown off.

So this week I learned about the importance of laughter. So I think sometimes we all get caught up in our lives. We get stressed. Sometimes we're faced with problems that we can do nothing about. This week my companion and I laughed more than I have on my entire mission. As hard as life gets, I believe that we should smile--laugh. Why? Well.. Why not? There's always a reason to be happy. Of course I can't say that we can always be happy, but I believe that we should always be on a pursuit for happiness, as the founding fathers once said (yeah I still remember a bit of American History even in the Philippines.) But yeah. That's all. Hope you guys have a great week.

"And it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness."

2 Nephi 5:27

-Elder Bondoc