Fresh octopus anyone?

On the beach at our hotel.

Notice the plastic bottle in the tree.......

It is called Tuba. It ferments in the tree and then it naturally fills this plastic bottle three times a day. They serve it at the bar at the hotel we stayed at. No, we did not try it!

Food is a little hard to find on Marinduque because there are no grocery stores. So we bring things to eat. But..........

One of the best restaurants in our mission is on Marinduque, go figure? It is called Barbarosa's. They have real steak, real fried potato slices and real green salad and macaroni salad. They even have Cordon Bleu. They also have FRESH strawberry milkshakes and fresh coconut milkshakes (very good!!) So we had peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and steak for dinner. Elder Valdez is in front with the other couple, the Hunts.

Another beautiful sunset on the way to Marinduque.

Agusto Lim and his wife. This picture is for you Aries.

Agusto Lim was the first stake president in the Philippines. He was the first temple president at the Manila Temple, too. He was a mission president, a bishop and Area President and a seventy. He was born on Marinduque and wanted to retire here. He is still strong , willing and able to labor in the church. He and his wife came to the District Conference we spoke and trained at. He is a good man. We asked someone to take a picture of us all and this is the best we got out of the whole batch.

February 15th was Joey's big day, finally!

Joey first heard about the gospel when he was 17. He wanted to be baptized but, his parents said no. The years passed by and one day two sister missionaries came knocking at his door. He remembered what he felt about the gospel many years ago. Joey is now 39 and he finally got baptized. What a pleasure it was for Elder Ganir, when Joey asked him if he would please baptize him. This is a picture after the baptism, with Joey in a new shirt and tie.

It is sugar cane season again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The huge, overloaded trucks even go through the cities as well as very narrow neighborhood areas. The cane is all cut by hand and loaded onto the trucks by hand. This one shows a common basket weave used to really pack in the cane or maybe just to be artistic????? The sides seem to hold the cane onto the truck better than if it was just thrown onto into the truck any old way. The only time that this doesn't work very well, is when the truck breaks down (very common) and all that cane has to be unloaded and put on another truck. We must say, the travel time to get to places is longer because of the huge, slow-going trucks.

The jeepney sayings never cease to amaze me either

You are all probably tired of seeing my "overload" pictures, but it ceases to amaze me when I see this.

The RS Express is a boat we have never been on but, it left 30 minutes early today...so we hopped on.

President Anderson next to Elder Valdez of the Area Seventies with APs and Elders Ganir and Hunt

We had all just finished a district conference on and outer island and everyone was hungry, so out came the lays potato chips.

Finally, one of the most favorite ways the younger elders like to pose (looking to nothing)

FYI it is bawal for missionaries to ride on top of a jeepney. So it was funny to see Elder Ganir and Elder Hunt climb up and strike a pose or three.

Another striking pose, still on top of a jeepney

Elder Ganir and Elder Hunt posing like the young elders!

Overload of the day! Coconuts anyone?

The elders from Mindoro Island have to come the night before transfers in order to make the meeting on time.

So we fed them dinner.

Elder Moala loves the tie and his new shirt. It is almost impossible to find shirts that will fit large Elders here.

Thanks to all who have donated the ties that have been sent to us. We have given some of the ties to Elders who have given away some of their ties to people who need them. Thank you again to all. Thanks to Amber our daughter and to my mother who have sent ties to us. We can not even begin to tell you how much the ties have meant to so many people here.

An early Sunday Morning walk by the pool and beach.

We had to stay overnight at this beach resort so we could go to an early morning meeting before Balayan District Conference started.
We had to speak. Dad had to look especially official to represent the mission. The weather was cool enough for him to wear a long sleeve white shirt for the first time since we've been here.

Two churches we saw today in one little town. Cahtolic and Mennonite. Of course we have a chapel too.

Overload of the day! We can't even remember what this bamboo was loaded on. All we know is that it was moving down the road in front of us.