Well, here we are and just to let you know we feel very safe here. What a week! We have been in culture shock, and will come out of this experience forever changed -- for the better I hope. We arrived to the mission having a mission tour where all the missionaries conference with the President and Area Seventy. We got to help take pictures and reapply for visa's something that the government is requiring if you ever want to leave this country. The Philippines will accept bribes, but the church does not do bribes, so the we now have to reapply for every missionary every two months. What a joke. It keeps the office missionaries swamped.
We haven't had a car or an apartment yet. Elder and Sister Schlager (the best trainers on the planet) (they remind me of Laura Adams because they are so good) has let us tag them around -- they do the apartments for all the young sisters and elders. They took us to see our area, about 30 minute drive where we accidently went to a baptism that was just starting. Two girls -- one about 10 and one about age 17-18. They were so radiant. We need to definitely learn Tagolog. We can feel what they say, but can not communicate. We met Bishop Markoet and he immediately asked us the teach RS/Priesthood on the combined Mar 30. Yikes! It will be in English because our Tagolog is not very Mabutti.
Sunday the Schlager's took us to their old area where they are assigned to attend church. They gave the talks. They described it as up in the mountains,so I was figuring out of the city. (less populated) We went through Binangon, TayTay, Morang, Teresa, Maligaya and Antipolo. All of them are connected suburbs of Quezon City or Manilla. The people and houses never did stop, except we did see a few rice pattys and a bay to a large lake. If anything though it was more populated than the city. I now think there are 84 million people here -- not 14 million. It was fun to see though, in the rice pattys they have carribow, kind of like a water buffalo and in the lake were little huts where people live and fish. (I thought of Jared Z living in his ice fishing tent) They often can't get back and forth from bahy to shore cause of the water lilys that float around. We visited a family that had been in a tricycle wreck in Antipolo. Their whole family was on a tricycle (4 children, mom and dad) They were all in hospital, but will be OK and are still Guapo. To get to their home they live at the bottom of a long sloping trail. Many children all came running to put our hand on their forehead out of respect. The trail had been cemented by the missionaries as a service project because a member fell and broke her back going down. She has a disabled daughter. Now a tricycle can get down to her house to take her to church. Anyway June's house (his family was hurt) was brand new. They did not have a home and the church helped him build one for his family. The church bought the land because they won't build on something as temporary as a squatter which are most of the areas. It is double larger than our chicken coop in Riverton. They kept trying to build it bigger, but he wouldn't let them saying it would be fine, it's big enough. The children are clean. Even though dirt is everywhere. They dress in clean clothes, nice shoes that they wear to church. They have no money and do not know where their next meal is going to come from. I'll tell you we have so much to be thankful for -- too much.
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