Not in Kansas

We still are having trouble with pictures. We can’t upload them onto the blog or onto mishpic because the connection here is ultra-slow. So, we will keep trying other options. In the meantime:
We are not in Kansas anymore!!
In fact, If Dorothy had arrived here, it would have made Oz look like Nebraska. Okay, that metaphor isn’t working. The point is that there is nothing in my experience that even remotely prepared me for this. Yes we have travelled in third world countries, and yes our children have described living in them, and yes, I have seen Egypt close up and walked through the “residential” parts of the Old City of Jerusalem. But every day gets more and more surreal, more and more . . .
To answer Melissa’s question: We were taught to say Cebuano when referring to the language spoken here, but the language spoken in the Visayan Islands is Visayan. That language and the people who speak it, when they live on the island of Cebu, are also called Cebuano. But we are on another island, Negros, and here they refer to it only as Visayan, or Bisayan.
We met a woman at church last Sunday who was most gracious and welcoming. She told us of her son on a mission and her sons who had returned. Then the Amlan Elders told us that her family had invited us over for Family Home evening.
The Elders told us where to meet them so they could accompany us there, as it would have been impossible to find the house. We walked off the main highway onto a rutted dirt path between 2 houses. The lane curved around, past a large house, the jungle got more dense, the leaves more huge on whatever plants were overtaking the path, past another dwelling, into the gate of a dirt yard, but then out another gate, between two buildings now made of bamboo, into another open area, then an even more narrow path. Their home is built in a couple of parts with dirt area between, the walls are bamboo with a lovely pattern woven in. We climbed a couple of stairs onto a platform floor made of bamboo slats. We all left our shoes at the bottom of the stairs. There was a large round table at one end with a big lazy-susan on it, a table across one wall covered with TV and other techno gadgets. Then there were several short square bamboo stools and a bench of bamboo.
We all gathered, and the eldest son (returned missionary, maybe 25), in this setting so foreign to me, conducted in very accomplished but still heavily Bisayan-accented English, a Family Home Evening that was so completely “normal” that my jaw probably stayed open the whole time. By normal, I mean the same format, of opening song and prayer, etc., but also, the same playful interactions of older brother (another returned missionary, maybe 23), younger sister (19, newly called 2nd counselor in the YW), the same proud mom watching her grown children so capable, so skilled and experienced, the same family from nearby (a mom, her grown son and tween daughter), invited to join in, watching, seeing their own commonalities with these strange Mormons, the same Elders, young but caring and engaged. The juxtaposition of familiar and foreign kept me reeling all evening. Elder Cropper had been asked to give the lesson—he taught about keeping commandments. There was even a game after the lesson, a guessing game, like 20 questions with teams. Try to picture that in a tiny bamboo room with a dozen Filipinos. Is the world really so small?
English predominated, for our benefit, but the sister, not as confident in it, spoke Bisayan mostly, the father spoke almost not at all, and the others chattered along switching back and forth as if it were all one.
After the closing prayer, we ate dinner. The round table got moved into the center of the room. Food appeared from the kitchen, curtained off and 2 steps down, everyone sat around the table and served themselves from the platters. The food was really delicious—a rice noodle dish, with flecks of vegetable and seasoning—very tasty, a stewed meat dish with lots of cracked bones and connective tissue and unidentifiable parts in a sauce, and rice. It too was really good, very flavorful. There was a bright pink, set salad with raisins, maybe evaporated milk, and I think other fruit set in, very stiff, no jiggle.
I had brought some no-bake cookies—the kind with oatmeal and cocoa and peanut butter. They seemed to go over well, and my anxiety over whether and what to bring diminished.
Then came the most exciting part! It started to rain. It got heavier and heavier, and, though we waited till it let up a bit, by the time we left there were small rivers where the path had been. The daughter walked me out to the road with an umbrella mostly over me, but we were walking in gushing water up to our ankles and the rain was so heavy that I was soaked through all my layers to skin everywhere except my head.
Since that night we have been more and more deeply steeped in the Oriental side of Negros Island.
One day we drove the missionaries on their zone activity. We piled 10 of us (6 in the cab and 4 in the covered bed) and drove high into the mountains, along the back bones of ridges that went sharply down on each side, mango and coconut and banana and taro cultivated on hillsides so steep one could hardly crawl up on hands and knees—picture the National Geographic rice terraces without the terraces. Elder Cropper proved up to the task and we arrived safely at Twin Lakes, a national park. We had to hike down into the one lake—the other was accessible only by boat (which of course the missionaries were not allowed on). The temperature was about 10 degrees cooler than at sea level, and we were in heaven. The other missionaries, all local save one Polynesian sister, were all uncomfortably cold.
Another day we went on splits, I with a powerful and anorexic Sister from Manilla, serving in Bais, and Elder Cropper with the Elders serving in Bindoy who were in Bais that day. We each were taken farther and farther out into the actual boondocks (a Tagolog word that means mountains). I climbed steep, uneven, moss covered rock stairways curving into steep hillsides, then into nipa huts where we took off our shoes at the door and stepped onto bamboo floors in our bare feet. There is usually a kind of front porch, and that is where we would sit. There is also usually a separate hut with a place to cook. The last house we visited was not on the mountain side, but build on stilts out over the ocean. As I stepped on the bamboo slats of the floor, which gave way too much for my liking, I looked through the slats into the water and hoped the rickety supports of the floor would carry the weight of a monstrous American, the largest human the house had ever seen, I’m sure. But it did hold, and the old lola dug her hymn book and her Basahon ni Mormon out of a bag behind a curtained off sleeping space. And we sang Christmas hymns together. They love Christmas here—in the stores and in the street and at church, everything is Christmas since we arrived in October.
The people we have met are as varied and individual as could be—a beautiful, weathered old tatay (father) with bony legs, sitting with knees bent up to chest, teaching me Visayan phrases, his wife, a tiny lady with grey hair pulled into a sassy, high ponytail, her skirt on backwards, and her teeth mostly gone—only a couple of molars, their children, a giggly teenaged girl, anxious to show off her English (“I want to be a teacher” spoken so slowly, like I speak their language), a mom with naked-bottomed baby girl, two other daughters, one quiet and shy, one in carpenter shorts with a great haircut. The family lives in a tiny hut on the mountain side next to a large home of which they are the caretakers. These are all we met of the family, though there are 13 children. They sang and prayed with us, and listened intently as Sister taught them. Another family—just the old mom and dad, he a fisherman. Another family—we went to teach the daughter, but she was not there, only the old, old grandma, lola, and the very drunken Dad. Sister boldly invited him to stop drinking, think of his daughter, and bring her to church where she could learn a better way than his.
Elder Cropper was having his own adventures too. He drove into a sugar cane field from which he was blessed to get out, as it flooded while he was there. He taught a lesson next to a blaring, awful karaoke singer. In all these homes we listened as the young missionaries taught in Bisayan. In each home we were asked to testify, which we did, hoping we were confirming the truth of the same principle that had been taught. Man we are infantile here. Elder Cropper assures me it is all making a difference. Hmmmm
We met a man, the first hefty Filipino we’ve met, who, behind a bamboo screen off the side of the main highway, housed several banks of ancient computers on which teenaged boys were playing video games for a few pesos. His daughter is a girl that the American couple here had told me of. She is about 11. She loves coming to church, but her parents seldom come. She is very bright and trying to learn English. I asked her if she would like to write letters to my granddaughter, and she said, through her Dad’s translation that she would like to try. Her dad was a jolly and kind man, very happy to use his actually quite good English.
We attended a baptism of an older lady and a younger girl, maybe 15, in Bindoy, the farthest branch form us, and it was like our FHE experience. Everything was by the book, exactly like home—the branch mission leader conducted (he is maybe 18, all hip with hair in a faux hawk) the members gave talks on baptism and Holy Ghost. The Branch President gave a talk welcoming the new members. There were refreshments after. But everything was SOOO different. Coke served in tiny plastic glasses no stronger than ziplock bags, doughy baked balls the size of a dinner roll, stuffed with a smidgeon of I think cheese. All the talks except Elder Croppers were in Bisayan, and even his was partly Bisayan. I felt like a giant. It was a billion degrees with windows open and fans going. The district (think Stake) President has a son who is the branch president (think Bishop) in one branch (think tiny ward). The District 2nd counselor, who was at the baptism, has a son who is Branch President of this branch—the Bindoy Branch. Everyone is Filipino!!
Last night we finally got to meet the Branch President of the Amlan Branch. He has been out of town. We went to his home—another adventure, since driving at night here is menacing. He is a delightful man, very young. His English is exceptionally good, and we were so grateful that we could communicate so easily with him. He was very open with us and seemed happy to have us here. We are excited to get to know him better. He lives with his wife, his wife’s mother and his wife’s brother. Only he is a member of the church. He has been branch president 2 years and married only 4 months, and a member only 5 years.
Church today was a little better. Oh you can't imagine sitting in meetings with English thrown in on occasion while folks rattle away in Bisayan.
After church we visited with more people. This time in the most convoluted pathways wandering in and out of buildings that are partly cement block, partly open, partly bamboo, ducking often to avoid getting clothes-lined by clothes-lines This is like nothing I could ever have imagined--a rabbit warren of dwellings. We met a small but physically powerful man, very dark, with one deformed arm without a hand. He spoke little English, but we were with his 2 home teachers who gave a lesson from the Liahona and we added a few words which they translated. When he invited us in, he had to fetch a hanging wire from over a wall to attach a bare light bulb and a fan to. Our visit probably cost him a weeks worth of electricity, but he seemed happy we came.

I cry every day. I hurt in all my joints. Everything is hard. I want to come home. But tonight we taught the wife and mother-in-law of the branch president, something he has prayed for for a long time, so maybe Elder Cropper is right and there is some purpose to what we are doing. I'll let you know. Plus, Elder Cropper eats many mangoes a day. I do too, but not quite so many. They ARE as good as he remembered.