The Lost Plates of Jack and Leiana

 Since Jared was so close, just 3 one hour flights away from us, he came to visit for Christmas. Of course, to get between those short hops took him almost 24 hours. We were so glad to have him. It started raining before he got here. We were getting orange rain alerts and warnings of severe flooding. It had us changing plans often. Instead of going to the Sohotan Caves, we went to the weaver's caves, or Saob, meaning "come in" in Waray. You can see the rain pouring off the rocks. Of course we took him to McArthur's Landing in Palo.  We had wanted to take him snorkling but again the rains made it dangerous. Instead we ended up taking him to Hindang Caves where there are lots of monkeys. We didn't go into the bat cave, although we could see and hear them flying about. Too much guano on the ground. We found the monkeys over by the ziplines, of course.  We got our pictures taken inside the lifesize ornaments and light display at the coca cola plant. We sunk our canoe ...

 In the Philippines you can have a mansion sitting next to a hovel. Many of the shacks are built on land they don't own, often on the side of the highway or back in the barangay, a small governance unit that has houses built anywhere along an often crooked dirt path. Sometimes that path is barely wide enough for someone to squeeze through. While downtown, I took this picture of the "abandoned" building next to the post office. If you zoom in, you can see that people live there. I don't think there is any electricity or water, but it is shelter from the storms. Water can be hauled in and you can cook over burning coconut husks. At times I am forcefully reminded that I live in a third world country.

 We just had our Christmas conferences with all the missionaries. It was divided into two groups as we couldn't get all 180 plus missionaries together at the same time. The first night was the talent show. It was so fun to see these missionaries perform. My favorites, of course, was the islanders dancing. Jack caught a video of the first group's tongan dance. All the other islanders in attendance came up to support her. It's just part of the culture. I'll see if I can get a copy of the video from the second group of the Samoan dancer. Very similar, yet more energetic, response from the islanders in that group. We also had a large group of elders from Africa perform a number.   https://photos.app.goo.gl/bA2HEJWHCnVZC8yt8  Tongan Dance from Jack's photo blog. She is very good and the support of the other islanders was totally awesome. The Philippines are quick to showcase their cultural dances. There was a new appliance store that opened near us. On opening day, they ...

 While at one of the doctor's offices, we found a cool sign that Jack photograpahed. What made us really laugh was the scripture reference. Ephesians only has 6 chapters. It should be 6:18. To go along with that, the elders in Catarman sent us a cool acronym as well.  To do effective missionary work, we must HOLD to Christ. Humility in order to be  Obedient to properly convey Love which we show through  Diligence in the Lord's work. Because this is Christ's work, we must HOLD to Him. He must be the focus of our every action.

Everywhere we go, I kept seeing signs saying Tuba for sale. It made me curious. I haven't seen that many bands, especially ones with large brass instruments, but the signs are everywhere. This is what I see in my mind: However, I came to find out that Tuba is actually an alcoholic drink specialty in Leyte made from coconuts sap. It is often known as Coconut Wine. 

  Jack got drafted to play Santa at the local ward's Christmas Social. It was a total hoot playing Santa. I had a load of fun handing out the wrapped presents to the kids. They went nutzo posing for pictures. They would say, "okay, now Santa is going to go." Then a half dozen groups of either adults or young adults would jump up on the stage for one more set of pictures. I think I was in the suit playing my role for over 30 minutes. Of course Santa does have his favorites.

 This is the back of the mission office at sunset. With the Indonesian Volcano going off, we had some incredible sunsets and sunrises. Thought you might enjoy seeing where we spend a good portion of our day, when we are not traveling.  We got to drop the departing missionaries off at 5 in the morning. This was a shot of the sun coming up near the airport. 

 On the roads in the Philippines, anything goes. Some of the rules are:  The biggest vehicle has the right of way Fill the gap: you can always slip in. Lanes are mere suggestions, drive or stop where you want, just put on your hazard lights Traffic moves as fast as the slowest pettycab (bicycle taxis) Some of the fun things we see on the road include In this photo you can see the petty cab on the far right, a bicyclist, several motorcycles and cars. It just misses the people walking along the highway. We saw several trikes loaded down as a traveling store. The fun one was the balloons but you can see a convienence store on the road as well.  Road closures often are only a suggestion. Road construction happens year round. Here's a trike (motorcycle taxi) going through the closed road. You can see another trike going the other way in the background.

 The mission president and his wife brought back our passports and alien cards. With everyone else out on a tour of Tacloban, we took the multicab [jeepney] into downtown to the drivers' license office, called the land transportation office here. We brought all the documentation and stopped to get a medical exam on the way. The medical exam was sort of a joke. They asked us our name, birthdate, height and weight (no checking on your honesty here! In fact, when I said I was 5'3", the guy said no, that's too tall and lowered my height) and I got a vision test. They didn't even bother to check Jack's vision as he was wearing glasses. It only took a few minutes. The guy who helped me, Christopher, had met with missionaries many years before. Sort of fun. Anyway, we got down to the office all hot and dripping sweat. We sat in the crowded room for about an hour or so while they processed our paperwork and we came out with this cool souveneir of our time in the Philip...