Of course their own country.

They are prepared for their dance.

Nicely done!

An elder from Samoa helped them put together this Tongon booth. My favorite.

We have about six or seven missionaries from Tonga.

Spain

The youth presented dances from the various countries.

Elder Ganir just had to get in on the action.

What can you do with some cardboard, bamboo and paint?

The youth in Lipa Stake had an activity with around-the-world theme. They created these booths. I thought they were very nice.

Another overload of the day!

Overload of the day!

This is Melle

She is my favorite seamstress. She has a shop that specializes in NBA sport uniforms. She also sews for me. She can make anything! I love her. So, as I have said before, you design the uniform, any style, any color, any trim and any logo and they do it. How about Ganir family basketball uniforms. I want Dad to get a navy blue with red and white trim uniform. Let me know. It is pretty cheap.

The Quiambaos go home in two weeks

She is seventy two and I am sure he is older. They lived in Salt Lake and Texas with some of their children for five years before coming on their mission. They left from Texas. When they are released on July 14, they are going to an area in the Philippines that they want to live in. He will build a house for them. Some of their children live there too. They are the sweetest people and oh so cute to listen too.

Notice how dark Dad has gotten. The sun is fierce.

Helping Mom with the vital family income.

This is Anthony. He is a faithful church member. He is 16 years old. He is in his family's kitchen helping his mom make rice cakes to sell. His job is to turn the stone, really fast for thirty minutes. This will make enough rice milk for a recipe. Believe it or not, he is crushing uncooked rice grains which produce this rice milk. His mom cooks and his sister sells. They make several recipes a day. They live in the middle of a rice paddy under a bunch of beautiful trees.

Just another pretty sunset!

We have to park across the street.

This is the second chapel that has this sort of sidewalk repair going on. We have to park on a street that is no too safe and walk across the busy street, which is also not too safe. These kind of jobs are all done by hand. No machinery for anything. They even have to break up the cement with a hammer and mix the cement by hand with a shovel and a small bucket. All we can say is that progress is happening.

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.