ants, pigs, and more

The order of paragraphs, and the transitions between are all wrong, got cut and pasted weird, but it's too late to fix it, so, just try to keep up.
Off the coast of Negros Oriental, there are hundreds of small fishing boats. They are called "bankas". Basically a canoe with two outriggers and sometimes with a sail. Fishing consists of fish 10" to 3'. I have seen small tuna in the outdoor markets that were caught off these boats. A 40 lb tuna will cost about $25. Really fresh.
The pig truck on the barge we went on today as we traveled to Cebu. read about it below.
How many pigs can fit in a truck like this? I was afraid to try to count.I took some pictures of pig truck. I was going to do a count out of curiousity to see how many pigs you can put into a big two level truck and still make that much sound. It sounds like a night of Halloween screams from a host of damned demons. Each snout is aiming up looking for some fresh air. The barge is listing back and forth as we cross the channel. With each list there is a little higher screaming shrill. It makes pork tenderloin, Jimmy Dean sausage and bacon take on a whole new look. After the truck came on the crew tied it down because it was so top heavy. I can’t imagine the truck of those little oinkers tipping over spilling those squeals all over the deck and those little piggies running around on the barge having their revenge on us. Another adventure and memory in the PI. I hope we don’t have this memory of those screams in our dreams tonight.
Four different types of bananas. Its fun to have two or three different types of bananas on your cereal. It is like the difference between an Elberta peach and the 49er. Different texture and some are sweeter than others.
This little girl and the boy below live on a beach neepa. If their beach was in southern California they could sell it for it for a lot of money. Here they just struggle to get by.
100 feet from their house is where the father fishes.
Yippee!!! Finally internet in our house! This is the new antenna for the internet in our house. Yes that is a guy on the antenna doing installation. There is no cable to connect to it is all fed though an antenna.

I could go on and on describing unbelievable places we go to every day, one more astonishing than the next, but let me end with our amazing Relief Society President. She’s about my age. She is lively and kinda hip, with red highlights in her hair, and her teeth, like most people our age are mostly gone. Her house was where the members met years ago, before a chapel was built. She lives in only the ground level. She met us on the street so we’d know where she lived, then introduced us to her son, who has severe autism. His pallor and manner were so disturbing, I won’t describe. She apologized and as he lifted his foot out to her and she gently tied him by the ankle to the front stairs as we went in to visit. This dear woman’s husband is not a church goer, so her raising of 2 grown sons, who served missions, is a miracle, you add that to the patience and stamina required to raise this child-now-man for 22 years, AND she is serving as RS pres. in a hugely challenging branch. I honor that dear sister.
One thing I’ve noticed as a general observation is that Filipino men seem more likely than those in other countries we’ve observed to be present with their families. They hold their little ones, they are engaged in parenting, they don’t seem to have bailed out, they are not so macho. There is drinking and cock fighting/gambling, but for the most part the men are on board with their families

Looks like Eve in the garden of Eden. Oh, I don't think Eve wore glasses.


November 17, 2011
(dean types in blue and Mary Anne in black)
Today was quite remarkable. We first visited a family that has been baptized for less than a year. They live in a little burrio (village), several neepa huts clustered along the sand on the beach. High tide brings water up on three sides of the bulay (house). The house is built on a sandy beach with a view that would cost you a million bucks in California. The view had ocean, islands, coconut trees, banana trees, and lots of sand. What a beautiful family. The husbands of both mother and daughter finally have work in Dumaguete City (30 miles south) as carpenters. Carpenter is a term that is loosely used to mean you are on a construction job. We sat on bamboo benches in the shade of the neepa shelter talking to the mothers and children getting all their names. With the ocean breeze it cools things down from the hot sun and humid heave ocean air. I must admit I did a magic trick which got everyone’s attention. Magic is like music and the spirit, it transcends language. It will get everyone’s attention. We gave a short lesson of the Savior teaching the little children when he was visiting the Nephites. All the children sat and listened while the mothers nursed and cuddled their littlest ones. Mom/Grandma has 7 kids and is pregnant with another. Her eldest daughter is married and has 3 kids the same ages as her mom’s last 3 It is kind of amazing how much English some know. The mother knew very little but the daughter and the other older children knew quite a bit. In fact we were there with our American friend who had come to show us the way and introduce us. The second daughter said she had seen on facebook that he and his family had been on another island two days before. Ya, she goes to school, and obviously has access to the internet, but to think of her facebooking while we sit there in this primitive setting is weird.
We next passed over the crab fields to teach the Plano sa Kaluwasan (plan of salvation). There are some very unique and interesting features about this visit. First of all the humility of this good brother, he has lived a life of cock fighting, smoking, drinking and other things. He has totally changed his life and absorbs everything we talk about but more than that, the spirit is working in him to teach and change this man. I love watching his wife look at her husband with a smile of joy on her face and he is listening and responding to the questions about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are starting to use the language a bit as we teach. It is pretty wonderful to have a phrase or even a word come to your mind as you teach it. We teach this man outside his neepa hut and within a 15 foot radius there are 12 chickens, three pigs, two dogs and the fighting cock tied up on a table not more than three feet from Sister Cropper’s head. Four –five times as Sister Cropper was teaching, the rooster decided to cock-a doddle-doo. My ears were ringing by the end of the discussion. No one even flinches, like they didn’t hear a thing. It is a good thing for all of us he was tied down. We love these people. They are so poor and still life just goes on.
Let me preface this next part by saying that ants are everywhere here. Regular sized ones, little ones and then there are littler ones. You kind of get a little used to them except there are a few limits! Well, when the discussion is over, again, they bring out the treats. Their snacks they serve us probably cost them a meal worth of money. You have to partake or you will seriously offend. The glasses that we drink out of are washed from water out of a pump that is right next to the pig sty. The breads/rolls looked pretty good. When Sister Cropper picked up her second, I picked up one that looked just like hers. The first thing I noticed about this roll was the four little ants scurrying around on top of the roll. I blew them off and felt pretty safe. No big deal. My next bite opened up the peanut butter-ish filling that a colony of ants was devouring. I don’t know how many ants I had just bit into but I could feel some scurrying up my face. I looked at the sister that had just given us this prized treat and she just smiled big with all eight teeth showing. I wasn’t sure whether she knew about the ants. I turned the roll to the side and tapped it a few times and watched ants fall out like pepper coming out of a shaker with each tap. Now they were starting up my arm. It is amazing how fast the ants can move here. I am standing there with ants taking up occupancy in my hair by now and another contingent of ants moving up my arm and more ants are still falling with each flick and the dear sister is just smiling at me. “Can she see the ants”, I am thinking to myself. I looked at Sis. Cropper wondering if her peanut butter filled roll had the same filling treat as mine. She was looking cool as a cucumber. I heard the pig snort as if saying, “hey buddy, toss it over here I will eat it”. I knew at that moment the pig was speaking in tongues and I had a sure interpretation. “Toss me that roll dummy, I will eat it!” I started walking to the pig just a few steps away and gutted my roll of that delectable peanut butter filling and tossed it to the pig. The pig squealed with joy. Although I knew something the pig didn’t know or he wouldn’t have been so happy. (Next week he is literally getting the ax! Sorry Mr. Piggy—he is getting slaughtered to celebrate fiesta. Each town has a fiesta day. Amlan’s is November 30.)
For the next fifteen minutes I was very discreetly attacking every movement I could feel on my scalp. Even as I write this I think I missed one, (scratch scratch). Later, after talking to Sis. Cropper, she had a few ants on hers and she just blew them off. If she ate any, she wasn’t aware of them. Although, I think she was safe, she wasn’t scratching her head.
We had a great day. These people are humble, they love God, they love us, we are seeing the gospel effect people’s lives, we are growing, we are seeing miracles, literally one miracle is that neither one of us has gotten sick, and we are even starting to pick up a small bit of the language.
Today we had three interesting experiences with visits to members of the church. There first two were in an area north of Bindoy. Check you maps, it’s about a hundred kilometers north of where we are living here in Amlan. It is a beautiful area. The ocean is a beautiful deep blue off of Bindoy. The road is under construction getting there. The road construction warrants an entire blog post. It is unlike anything you have ever seen. There are only a couple of places in the mission that are more remote than Bindoy.
Thanksgiving is this week I understand. It is not celebrated here so enjoy the turkey and stuffing and eat a little extra for Sis Cropper and me. Don’t forget the honey on top of the whip cream that covers the pumpkin pie. Ahhhhh.
I’ll just add a little, since we want to get this posted today. It’s my birthday! Yes I know, as I write this, it is not yet my birthday where we came from. Elder Cropper bought me a cake, chocolate. Hmm. Mangos, they do great here: mangos, mango shakes, mango slush, mango cake, but chocolate? Um no.
The zone sang me happy birthday, I got birthday wishes by Skype from home, we stopped in at the American friends’ house to pick up some stuff for them, and they fed us lunch, SOOOOO good. And now we are waiting for the ferry to drive onto to go to Cebu Island/Cebu City for our monthly temple trip
Another story or two: One home we visited was way high above the ocean. We were working with the Elders from Bindoy, and it was a Sunday afternoon, when members of the branch love to go out on visits with the missionaries, so in addition to the Elders and us, there were 3 other branch missionaries. So we looked like a little army. We climbed the 145 steps up to the house of a little family. The stairs were murderous, uneven, and maybe 12-15 inches high. When we got up there we all climbed onto the rickety looking, but actually very sturdy porch that was lashed on to their house. The house itself was elevated from the ground on stilts, then the porch lashed to the outside, overhanging the 145 steps we had just climbed!! That’s when you calculate that you are nearly double the weight of your average Filappino, and you hope it all holds together, kind of like in the house over the ocean the other day, only the consequences of lashing failure were WAY greater.
Most of the homes we’ve visited are well kept and quite lovely. A particularly lovely one we went to last night. There were 3 generations of family living there, and it had been owned by the generation above that as well. It was situated very remotely. We drove the truck as far as the road would allow, then we walked in, well hiked, up a deeply rutted path with some completely muddy parts that we had to slog through. But as we climbed, the banana forest got thicker, mingled with open spaces of grass and coconut trees, then rows and rows of mahogany trees. The man we were visiting inherited this farm from his father-in-law who died recently while out walking toward home when a flash flood came and swept him away. This place is certainly still an untamed wilderness. We got to their house and it was a jungle paradise. The Neepa hut rises out of the banana grove, so when you climb up the stairs into it, it’s like climbing into a tree house. Out every window (opening in the wall) is another amazing view of treetops. They fed us bananas that are not even hardly in the same species as what we eat at home. They can’t be described in their deliciousness. They also served us fried banana, but they weren’t mushy like you might think—they stayed firm but sweetened even more.
Mr. Crab. A local resident in the crab field. He had his eye on me. The holes are about 3" in diameter. There are hundreds of them.
Sister Cropper walking through the crab field. I must be a little fascinated with the crab field.
A good brother with family and friends. The handsome one is Elder Cropper just in case you didn't recognize him.