First of August

This weekend. We visited the temple in Cebu and had a nice Temple session on Saturday morning. A Filipino artist painted this picture of the Cebu Temple that we have posted in office. Most of the office is windows so we don't have many places to post pictures.

Villamor home

Villamor's and their Jack Fruit 

Pork and dried octopus with rice and corn

Very tasty dish

On the way home we stopped by the Villamor's to say hello. We hadn't seen them in several weeks. We wanted to give them a couple of cans of peaches. They had never tasted peaches and we wanted to tell them that peaches are what we grow in Utah and I wanted to tell them how good they taste right off the trees. They have a farm where they grow bananas, papayas, corn and peanuts. But they have a lot of problems with people stealing their produce. We went back on Monday and joined in on their family home evening. They had a dinner for us afterwards. We ate a pork dish with dried octopus and other dried fish in it. It was tasty, they also served rice as always, and some corn. It isn't a sweet corn, its the corn they dry and mill. So it is kind of chewy and not sweet like we are used to. They showed us their Jack fruit but it had started to spoil and so they are going to give it to their cow.

We have tried other fruits this week. We love the black melon it tastes a lot like watermelon. We also had some Rambutan, it is good and sweet, has the texture kind of like grapes with a large seed in it. The Mangsteen has sections of the fruit in it and it is very nice and sweet also very similar to the taste of the Rambutan. 

Black Melon

Rambutan

Mangsteen

Banana truck

We didn't visit Bogo this week but went to church in Consolacion. These are pictures on the way to Bogo. One section of the road the people weave baskets and floor mats, one section they sale their fruits and another section they sale sticky rice (very sweet rice that is wrapped in banana leaves).

Fruit stands along the road

Bogo mountain view

The cart is used like a wheelbarrow and carries everything.
They are all along the road in front of where people live

  

Working for rice from the government

 

Visited a missionaries apartment and found these clothes hanging on the fence. They don't look like clothes the sister missionaries would be wearing. The clothes belong to the neighbors who don't have any place to hang their clothes. Across the street these neighbors have strung a line from the trees for their clothes to dry on.

We have made some very dear friends in Bogo. Stephanie helps us teach our classes on Sunday. Her mother and nephew are in the picture with us. Love this baby and his family, his uncles are always kissing and holding him. He is very kissable. His parents are in our Temple Preparation class along with his Uncles, Kevin is preparing for a mission and Kenny just returned. The class is mainly made of young people preparing to go on Missions.

Cute family

So kissable

Stephanie and family

We had transfers and had 13 new missionaries arrive. We had two that missed their flight out of Manila and didn't arrive until the next day.

New Arrivals

After we feed the new arrivals and their trainers everyone else that is at the office to transfer eats what is left. We plan for them so there is usually plenty left over for everyone. We usually feed 80 to 100 missionaries during the transfer. Isn't it a pretty spread. The President's wife does most if not all of the food preparation. We try to help out where we can. There isn't anything left by the time everyone leaves for their areas of assignment.

New arrivals and trainers

Everyone else

Dad on transfer day