Happy Valentines Day

Belated Happy Valentines day!!! And belated Gung Hai Phat Choi for that matter.  Gotta love all the red splashing around our island of late.

From 9 yr old girl

People in the Philippines love both holidays and there have been signs and decorations in the stores for some time.  We received a few Valentines of our own from the Ablen kids—beautifully hand-made and written, and one from our little friend Vincent in the branch.  Elder Cropper took me out to celebrate the day, and the restaurant had a special menu.  They served nothing from their regular menu—just 3 choices of “for two” meals.  It arrived artfully plated on one platter from which we shared and it was very yummy—pasta, salad, and batter-fried seafood. Strangely they even turned people away who were not in pairs!!  Like they were not willing to make the platter for two into a plate for 1 or 3. Funny.

Ya gotta love the art work

Six yr old girl

It is Vincent's 8th birthday next month. He asked me to baptize him

11 yr old boy

Over our time here, a few family members have talked of visiting us during our stay, but we have really discouraged them.  Travel here is grueling—like way farther and way more flights than you can even imagine.  When you travel that far, you want to stay a while, but we can really only take off a couple days, and the rest of the time would be missionary stuff and training that is not that fun for any one else (though we love it like it’s our hobby, not our job). Then there are the tropical diseases which are a very real and likely threat and which can’t always be avoided even when careful—yet another missionary, this time in our branch, just came down with Dengay fever last month and was oh so sick. All that said, we were surprised last year when Tanner and Taylor tacked a jaunt down here onto their business trip to China, and we had a great few days with them.  Then, last week Richard and Sharon came to see us in conjunction with a trip they made to Thailand!!  They too were only here a few days, but it was so great to have them here.  It makes us second guess ourselves about being so adamant with others about not coming, but the reality didn’t change—it is dangerous here and they were lucky to get home without fever, dysentery, or amoebas—I don’t know about Thailand, but it’s a jungle over here.

Yummy mangosteens.

At the flower market in Dumaguete

Elder Cropper's favorite mango stand. Mmmm good!

Chicken Panda.  Deep fried chicken in banana leaves.

Over the river again on a new bridge. Teaching the gospel.

They of course will come home with tales of how lovely our home is, how nice the city near us, how lush and paradisiacal the surroundings and vegetation, how exotic and idyllic our setting, how delightful the people, how well run our branch.  And that is all true.  Our circumstances here are beyond what we could have imagined.  At first they were all so foreign and frightful we could hardly breathe, but now, we are really at home here.  We know where things are in our favorite grocery store.  We know the short cuts through town when traffic is bad. We know the names of every child in our Branch Primary.  We know where to get a Magnum bar or the best mangoes (a stand on the way to Valencia). We know what spray to use to eradicate the latest ant colony from our truck engine (they usually end up carrying eggs into the glove box before we notice they have returned). We have an emergency plan for black outs, floods, and storms. Our armed security guard is mostly friendly.  We get a text when someone is happy or ill or gets good news.  We are included. We feel at home.

Whale shark. Biggest fish in the world

 Richard and Sharon saw and heard some bugs that most people only see on discovery channel, and they were greeted by our resident gecko dropping from the door frame as we walked in, but those things are old hat for them having lived in Brazil for 3 years.  They were not too fazed by the wildlife, but even their stomachs took a lurch when we walked them into the fish market in Dumaguete.  The smells in there are indescribable.

No fear Sister C. twenty foot long shark.

Toaist Temple in Cebu. Elder C saw it 40 years ago while serving in Cebu

We snorkeled one afternoon and discovered gads of beautiful fish—don’t picture a reef off a resort on Palawan—this was a toothless lola collecting a fee at a “nature reserve” that consisted of a few bamboo tables, some bouys to keep us enclosed, and a shower after from a hand pump, bucket and dipper.  We golfed one day (well the men did) on an overnight  trip with Pres. and Sister Schmutz and his brother, Steve and his wife Becky. We shopped for baskets at a little spot so remote we can’t believe Sister S. could find it and there we discovered a mini-factory of hand weavers. We swam in the ocean with whale sharks!!  They were close enough to touch!!  We hiked into a tropical water fall (the hike was a test of our pluck that is for sure) where we really felt Tarzan-esque. We ate a few really great meals  (actually too many for our own health)  including one lovely one at the Schmutzes’, and one at an ultra-Filipino restaurant where we ate banana flower salad, sinigang soup,  pork pata, pork kare kare, chicken tidbits in banana leaves, and a sweet chili chicken dish.  And we ate on banana leaf plates. We saw aTaoist temple and Magellan's cross and a museum full of Cebu history, pre-colonial to post-independence.

The best part of having them here, as Sharon said in an email yesterday, was so they could be witness to the work we do here.  It makes our experience here more real, less surreal-like it's not just a dream, unconnected to our "real" life.  They came with us to our branch, and met the people here who we have loved and who have loved us.  They met our mission pres. and his wife who have become our family/life line/mentors/partners.  They taught with us in members’ homes and shared the light the gospel brings.  They became sentimental about their own missionary service, and were able to counsel us on the reality of leaving this all behind and returning to the real world.

These big guys were so cool to swim with! As long as a bus.

Richard with the shark

We really wish all our family could have come to visit.  But the thought of your safety loomed much larger than our yearning for you.

One of God's magnificent creation.

On this Valentine Day, we are more conscious than ever of the power and source of all good things— God’s love.  God’s love for us, our love for Him, our love for others, their love for us:  those forms of love that emanate from Him and that are our gift from Him empower, animate, and enlighten everything.  When I write that it sounds so trite, so commonly stated, but I know it is true, and I did not come here with as firm a conviction of it as I have now: God loves His children, and his plan of happiness includes our being buoyed up by the power of that love. While here, we have seen first hand more of what some might call evidence of God’s neglect than we have ever before seen, but at the same time, we have seen the awesome power of God's love that turns darkness into light EVERY time a heart opens to it.  Love (not in its maligned, pip-squeaky and often twisted worldly version, but in its Godly purity) really does conquer all.