The Lost Plates of Jack and Leiana

 In addition to being the mission nurse, I am also the supply coordinator. Jack was originally doing that and I was being the travel secretary. However, we swapped soon afterwards as I did better with supplies and him with the tracking of tickets and travel documents. We do step in and help the other a lot. So we had been waiting on a large shipment of supplies since the middle of December. They had gotten lost on the dock near Manila and took a while to get to us. Last week they finally found it and put it on the boat. The shipment arrived today, all 49 boxes. Guess what I will get to do tomorrow. 

 This is actually kind of late to get posted, because it happened right after Christmas while Jared was visiting, but we just realized that we had forgotten to post this, so I'm remedying that now. Most of the plans that we made for Jared's visit fell through because it started raining in early December and just didn't stop for the rest of the month. Every time we put an address into the GPS, it would throw up a blurb stating: "Your route may be effected by general flood advisory: Extreme!"  Our big excursion with Jared had been to go to the Pinipisakan Falls and Sulpan caves . A two-day excursion where you hike through the jungle and up a river to some falls coming out of a cave then go spelunking in the cave. A week before we were supposed to go, we got a phone call from our guide saying that with the river above flood level, it just was not safe, but he had some alternative caves that we could go hiking that would not be affected by the flood waters. He did say...

  We drove down to Hindang to see the wild monkeys at the caves there. As we pulled up and paid our 20 peso entrance fee (about 50 cents), a monkey came over and sat down to make sure we paid our fees. He was nice enough to pose for us. We looked at the caves but didn't want to go in. It was getting closer to dusk and the bats were flying around the cave. You could smell the guano and we didn't want it on our shoes. The picture is actually of us outside the caves as the caves were very dark. However, no monkeys. We were very disappointed. We started to walk out but then went to check out the zipline area. That's where we found the monkeys. They would come right up by you, no fear whatsoever. Even a nursing mom with her baby.  We watched them play until the dads came and chased them away. I got a great picture of all these monkeys.

Most foreign missionaries in Japan need to go to Manila once a year for visa requirements. Jack and I got to accompany 37 missionaries for that trip. We were taking 1/5 of the mission with us, including half of the leadership. We took one of the two Assistants to the President, one out of each set of Zone Leaders, a bunch of district leaders and regular missioanries. It took us many trips to get us all to the airport. We started at sunrise with our flight out of Tacloban. The sunrise was beautiful, rising over Samar Island in the background. They had a bus for us at the airport to take us to the MTC. There we got hotdogs for breakfast. (Don't ask) The actual visa stuff took only a few minutes. We then had some time. The missionaries were having a great time seeing friends from when they were in the MTC. They also saw their teachers. There were so many joyful moments. I even bumped into a friend. She is the wife of a mission president in a different part of the Philippines. It was s...

 While our youngest son was visiting, we did some caving in Samar. Exploring caves had never been a big desire of mine as I don't like the dark or being in small spaces. It sets off my claustrophobic tendancies. But hey, it might be fun. First, we hiked into the cave through jungle. In the photo, we are literally where the road ends, with only jungle in front of us. We hiked to the entrance of the cave where we ate lunch and were oriented about caving. The food was great. The history of caving interesting. The desire to enter nil. But in we went anyways. I never said I was smart. This picture is at a viewpoint across the valley. We entered in the cave behind Jack. Inside the cave, we got to walk over loose rocks and around stalagtites and stalagmites. We walked through mud and bat guano. We waded through a couple of indoor streams and saw an indoor lake. There was one place where they filled out water bottle with pure water dripping down. It tasted good and we didn't get sick l...

 I have spent a lot of time lately visiting doctors. Here is the Philippines, many doctor's offices are located on a floor of the hospital. There are a few solitary doctor offices in the community but not many. Sometimes you can get extra stuff at your community doctor's office, like advice on your road construction plans with an eye checkup and surgery. So if you go to a clinic in the hospital, you walk around the floor, looking at the signs on the door. They have the doctor's name, specialty and office hours posted. Usually there is a receptionist who sits by the door. You check with her to see if the doctor is available. Many times the doctor is not in during their posted office hours. The receptionist will text the doctor to have him come in. It is not uncommon to wait an hour or more to see the doctor during his/her scheduled office hours. As one person said, the office hour posting is merely a suggestion. Of course, sometimes there is just the room number and doctor...

 We were driving to Biliran Island and saw the rainbow peeking through the clouds. It was a beautiful sight. We now know that Biliran is the end of the rainbow, a sort of Brigadoon. The red part is the top of the Biliran bridge that is sort of closed. The bridge was doing a strange waving action when we had the last strong winds. They closed it to all heavy vehicles, such as buses, semis, etc. Only passenger vans and smaller can go over it. The semi's will park on one side and unload their cargo onto smaller trucks and trikes to take it across the bridge to a waiting truck on the other side. Only one vehicle going one way is allowed over it at a time, although sometimes they will let a trike and a vehicle going the same way across at the same time.

 One thing we often see along the sides of the road is rows of red and green Coke bottles. These are the large 1 liter size. I thought they had a huge addiction to Cherry Coke. Come to find out that the red one is gasoline and the green one is cooking oil. I saw it first hand when our trike driver pulled up to one of these places, grabbed the red coke bottle and dumped it into his gas tank. I wish I had grabbed my camera for a picture of the red coke swirling into the motorcycle. I am now careful of what I drink. We did learn that almost all the soda in the Philippines not only has regular sugar in them but the fake sugars as well. That was enough to keep us drinking water, or pineapple juice. Filling the coke bottle.

 You see the signs all around, in every small town and village. There will be a few tires on the side of the road with one tire on its side with the words "Vulcanizing". I wasn't sure what it meant at first. It's a tire repair shop.  We got caught in the rain one day and the only place to duck out of the rain was in a vulcanizing shop. He was working on repairing a flat tire for a jeepney. It was fun to watch him work. He had tools to help him take the rim off the hub so it would come out. He then took the liner off which protects the inner tube from the hub and rim. He then deflated the tire, pulled it out, reinflated and looked to find the holes. He would mark them with a small pin. He had a big half barrel of water by his shop that he submerged the inner tube in. Once he found all the holes and marked them with pins, he would dry each spot thoroughly, put a sealant or glue on it then put on a patch. This patch would be placed under a machine that would heat the rub...