These are the Johnsons

They came from the same ward as our mission president did. They are on a humanitarian mission. They work in the ERC Employment Resource Center. They travel all over the island of Luzon and do workshops and training in stakes and wards. They are great people and have a terrific message on goal setting. It was fun to meet them. Aries, we gave them Christian DeJesus information and they are going to try to find him. They meet with stake presidents on a regional level. They also live in Makati. We will left you know what we find out.

Us with Elder Figuracian

Just had to show the picture of his pants and tie. He is going home in a week. He is usually very conservative in his attire, but he said he wore these pants the first time he bore his testimony and now the last time he bore his testimony at a Zone Conference. He is an amazing elder. He is obedient with exactness. He left his high paying teaching job (he taught Koreans English) to come on a mission. They offered him lots of money and more paid for education if he would stay and teach and not go on a mission. He turned them all down and came on a mission not far from home. His dad was less active and so he prayed the whole time on his mission for his dad. He decided to be as obedient as he could. He did not here from his dad for one year. Then last Christmas he received a letter from his dad that said he had his temple recommend and is going to the temple. We see blessings like this happen all the time here in the mission field.

This is the farthest town our mission goes to on Mindoro island

It usually takes us two and a half hours to get to this town after we get off the boat. The only road that takes us here is usually full of tons of pot holes, making it an extremely bumpy ride. It's worse when you have to go to the bathroom! There are NO public restrooms on the way. I try not to drink anything for a couple of hours before we go. To our surprise, the pot holes were mostly filled in, but the road was still bumpy. It took us an hour and a half. Yea!

It was a beautiful day!

We had to drive a completely different way to go to a Zone Conference in the city of Lucene because, a bridge was being repaired on the regular route we take. It took us three hours instead of two and a half hours to get there. It was so worth the drive. We didn't have time to stop and take the gazillion pictures that we wanted too, so we are going to go on a P day and do that. This is just one picture we got of the hundreds of terraced rice paddies. The area is called Majayjay. It is pronounced Ma Hi Hi. The towns and villages were very nice. The people keep it pretty clean and garbage free. It is a lot cooler being up so high.

There are many trees that look like this now. They are very beautiful. The trees are huge, too.

I think this is a Trumpet flower, also in our neighborhood.

I love these golden, orange Hibiscus in our neighborhood.

Here are those gorgeous "rufflely" flowers growing.

I am not sure what these are called, but I love them. They are a Japanese flower, I have been told.

The Hibiscus are nice to look at too.

Beautiful white Plumerias!

I have my own theory why these fragrant flowers have absolutely no smell whatsoever here in the Philippines, but they are still lovely to look at when we find them.

And Elder Ganir wonders why I refuse to ride a bus!