A Great Week Forty-Six

Welcome to our great week in the Philippines.  We started off by taking a load of refrigerators for the apartments in Baguio.

This is one of the new apartments we're getting.  The landlord agreed to paint it and fix it up.  It will be great!

The outside of that apartment.

Scene outside from the new apartment.

School children across the street.

One of the highlights of the week was when Elder Larry EchoHawk and his wife came to tour our mission.  Half our mission  met with them on Wednesday, and this is the lunch they had for us.  The other half met with them on Thursday in Baguio.

                                              You can see our mission president President Balledos on the right.

This is us with our good friends Elder and Sister Fullmer who are the Office Couple.  We two are the only senior missionaries in our mission.  We sure enjoy working with them, and they do a great job in the office.

Later that evening, we met at a lovely hotel for dinner with Elder and Sister EchoHawk, the Fullmers,  and President and Sister Balledos and their children.

                                                     A storm was brewing as the sun was setting.

This was just as the sun was going down.

                                                          It was a lovely but stormy night.

Elder and Sister Larry Echohawk and the Dinkels.

 We had the Assistants to the President to our house for dinner on Friday.  Elder Matthews is going home to Cebu this week.  We will miss him.  He's done a great job as AP.

Saturday we traveled to Tubao to the woodcarver's branch where I taught the sisters how to make scones, tortillas, and no-bake cookies.  We had a great time!

 The sister on the left with the baby is the woodcarver's wife.  His mother is the RS President at the far end of the table, and his sister-in-law is the pregnant lady on the right.  This whole family was brought into the church when the mother converted years ago.

 Frying scones.  They put cheese in the center to make cheese bread, and taco meat to make empanadas.  They are very creative.

 One sister brought two bottles of orange pop, then poured it into plastic bags with a drinking straw for each of us.  Delicious!
Sunday was traveled an hour to Rosario for Church.  It was their Primary Presentation, and the children did a magnificent job.  The following are scenes I snapped as we passed on our way to Rosario.

                                                                     Lots of traffic!

                                    This means, "How is my driving?"  I wonder if they ever get any calls????

                                                          Tree-lined road in the country.

 These are buckets of dried fish as we passed the area where they catch and dry fish.  It's really smelly!

                                         More fish.  The bottles on the right are vinegar.

                                     We went through a mountainous area to get to Rosario.

                                           Here is the sign pointing to the Church.

                                                    Rosario Branch Meeting house.

 After the meetings, the Branch invited us to enjoy a meal with them.  I think they were celebrating the Primary Program.  Anyway, it was delicious and we had a great time.

 Our meal of pancit, green beans with some kind of a sour thing in them (they were actually good), cassava with coconut, and a rice cake.

 This is one of the families there with 10 of their 11 kids.  The two middle girls are preparing for missions.  The youngest boy is the one who flipped his tie in time to the music when he sang, "I Want To
Be a Missionary Now."  So cute.

This is the gecko who always hides behind the water tank.  I don't know why I can't get a good picture of him, but you can kind of see him in this larger picture.

 There he is barely outlined behind the water tank.

Today we were just sitting down to work on our blog when we heard American voices outside and someone saying Mormons.  Brad looked out and it was the Office Elders.  We invited them in for left-overs, and they accepted.  That was the perfect end for a great week!

Well, that's our week in pictures.  Hope you enjoyed!  Have a great week, and we'll see you next time.  We are having 29 more missionaries coming this week, with 6 going home.  Great news!  Take care and see you later.

Week Forty-five

We don't have many pictures this week, but I'll share what we have.

Same rice field I've been taking pictures of. . .rice is getting pretty big now.  In some fields, they are spraying the rice for bugs.

 This is one of our cute AP's.  He is part Filipino and Australian,  and has lived in Australia and Cebu.  He's going home in September, and tradition has it that when you've completed your mission, you have your picture taken by this sign in front of a hamburger stand in Baguio.  He's coming to BYU in January.  We hope we'll get to see him then.  He's awesome!  Good luck, Elder Matthews!

 We had a visit from a little friend.  Brad said he was 3", but it seemed to me more like 6".  Anyway, he won't be visiting again!  He was on the door frame to our family room.  Great, huh!

                                                     In my book, the only good spider is a dead spider!  

This is Dragon Fruit.  It is a beautiful pink color and looks really exotic.  You peel it like a banana.

                                                       Here the peeling is almost off.

                                                               The peeled Dragon Fruit.

                          Then you slice it like a kiwi.  It quite resembles kiwi in its texture and taste.

I wanted to see if I could make jam out of it because the color was so pretty.  It turned out really good.  I used equal sugar and fruit and a little lemon juice, like I do for all my jams here, and cook it about 7 minutes or so.  Then you have jam!  No pectin is needed.  I think I'll try cobbler out of the rest and feed it to the Assistants and office Elders tomorrow.  They'll eat anything!

I guess that's all for this week.  We love you and hope you have a great week.  Bye for now.