We celebrate Dan's birthday at Silab Falls

Happy Birthday Son!! Twenty-Two !!!

As we thought about your birthday blog, we decided what better way to wish you Happy Birthday than by using the resources at hand—men and women of your own age who we rub shoulders with every day, and the great outdoors!!. So we asked our zone of missionaries to help us wish you happy birthday. Last week we had a missionary zone activity. About once every transfer we have a group activity with the missionaries from this zone (which corresponds to a member District, which is like a Stake). Anyway, there are 10 of us in the zone, and the young missionaries like to be super active on their p-days and especially on the week they get a zone activity.

So, there is a member in our branch who has a coconut and banana farm way up a mountain near us. And on this farm he had a waterfall, EIEIO, which he offered to guide us to.

They met at our house and we fed them breakfast— pineapple juice,pancakes and scrambled eggs with bacon in the eggs, and mango and banana with yogurt. They were very happy. Then they aided us in making your birthday sign, see above. That is what we came up with. Is it apparent what we are spelling? So, that’s our Happy Birthday from the Tanjay Zone.

After the photos, we headed out. One of the Elders had collected funds from the others, bought ingredients, and had cooked our lunch—rice and a yummy stew (called adobo), which we took along. We loaded everyone into the truck and drove up to a place called Silab, up a teeth-rattling road (with several Elders crammed into the covered truck bed —yikes) up about 6 or 7 miles. Then we got out and the fun began. Our guide, the branch mission leader whose property we were on ran up a hill and returned with a guy carrying several bamboo poles. He lashed them together and one had a hook shaped knife on the end. He raised the contraption up into a coconut tree, hooked a clump of coconuts up 30-40 feet high and they would crash down and roll like bowling balls down the hill to where the Elders and Sisters would chase them down. In the one picture that just looks like jungle, look for people doing just that. When enough were collected, Brother A. hacked off the top of each with a bolo knife and we collected the coveted coconut water. We filled several soda bottles full to take home—Dad’s new pick me up drink. It’s full of electrolytes and such. We then scraped out the fleshy parts into a pitcher, added sweetened condensed milk, and that was the other part of our lunch later. They call it Boco salad.

While all this was going on we had a short cloud burst, so we took cover under some banana leaves.

The hike into the falls was short but pretty steep. Steps had been cut into the soil and rock in preparation for the province to develop the path, the falls and pools into a nature destination.

We got down there and as you can see it was pretty fabulous. The pictures tell the story. We ate our lunch down by the water. Filipinos are pretty serious about their food on any activity. You’d think each person could just carry a sandwich and some water, but no, we (actually they) hauled a cooler full of soda, the pot of stew, the pot of rice, the big container of boco salad, cups, plates, utensils. It was pretty awesome.

We hiked around a bit and were going to do some rappeling down the walls of the canyon into the lower cavern, but another cloudburst arrived and this time it didn’t let up. Since brother A.’s father-in-law died in a flash flood a few years back on this very river, he did not mess around when the rain started getting heavy. We climbed out of the canyon and headed home.

We had a great day playing with these marvelous men and women, all of whom are Filipino, all of whom are about your age, none of whom look anything like you, but who all know how to have fun in nature and boulder about on rocky ledges. Some things translate into any culture.

We love you Dan, and loved thinking about and planning and implementing your blog post. We are so proud of you--the fine man you have become. Congratultaions on all you've accomplished this year--you have really made it count. The missionaries all join us in wishing you a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!