Transfer Week

We're just finishing up a Transfer Week, which takes place every six weeks in the mission.  Transfer week makes for some out-of-the-ordinary driving, juggling of logistics, and emotional ups and downs for us, as missionaries arrive and leave the island, or relocate on the island.

On Monday morning, we drove our much-beloved Sister Arguilles to the port at Tagbilaran.  The port at Tubigon is nearer to us, but there were three others headed home, who were leaving from Tagbilaran, so we took her to ride the ferry with them.  She'd completed her 18-month mission here and was going across to Cebu, where she and the others would meet with our mission president one last time.  The following day, they each flew to their own homes to return to their families, three in other parts of the Philippines and one in Kiribati.

 

Into the terminal, where tickets and bags get checked.  Then they go out another door and walk out on the pier.

Every Tuesday, there's a District Training for the missionaries in each district.  Ours involves six missionaries.  This week, as happens every six weeks, transfers were announced after the training.  The District Leader makes a chart on the board and fills it out . . . gradually . . . to build the suspense.  Of course, the missionaries are dying to know who's going and who's staying.  There's no particular length of time that a missionary remains in the same area, so they're anxious to know.  This time, one of the sisters who's been here in our town (right next door, in fact) was to transfer.  Also an elder from the other town in our district.  These announcements are followed by a lot of chatter, picture-taking, and, in this case, some goodies, as it was the birthday of one of our sisters.  So, as the missionaries disburse, they go home and pack up, and make some quick goodbye visits to the members in the area.

This sweet gal has been in our area all the time we've been here, so it's hard to see her leave.

Besides learning who would be transferred the following day, we also learned who would be training the brand-new missionaries who would arrive the next day.  Those new trainers had to catch an early ferry on Wednesday morning, to go to the mission home in Cebu for their own training.  This would just be a day trip for them.

Early morning on the dock.

(I'm reluctant to use the names of our missionaries who are still in the mission, for security reasons, so maybe I'll try just using their initial.)

Sister P, from our area, was to train, so we took her to Tubigon to ride the ferry with some other new trainers.  Then we drove to Clarin to pick up the sisters there, and took one of them and Sister R, from our area, to the ferry.  Also Elder B.  There were others, who arrived with the Zone Leaders.  (This all takes so much calculating!  I finally just tune it out and leave it to Tony and the ZL's to keep it all straight!)  This group was being transferred to areas on Cebu Island, so we put them on a ferry.

Breakfast at McDonald's - - our usual meet-up place in Tubigon.

These ferries, by the way, are just for passengers, not cars.  They're really like big, floating buses.  With TV.  And about as much leg room as economy seating on an airliner.  They're pretty fast, though - - the trip from Tubigon to Cebu, about 32 miles, takes about an hour.

We'd picked up a sister who had transferred from another town here on Bohol and took her luggage to the apartment in Clarin, where she will spend the last few weeks of her mission.  Also - - boy, I'm having trouble remembering how this all fit together - - we picked up some missionaries from the ferry who were transferring from Cebu to Bohol.  It was well past lunch time by then, and one of the sisters noticed "the yellow M of happiness" in the distance, so we had lunch at McDonalds - - our second meal there that day!

See that "yellow M?"

After delivering those sisters to their area, it was time to go back to the port once more, to wait for the trainers and their newbies to arrive.  Their boat was late, so we had time for some nice sunset pics.

Eventually, we saw the ferry, and finally the four sisters we were waiting for.  Both the new sister missionaries are Amerikanas!  Sister H is here with Sister P in our town.  : )   By the way, I think President Maughan said that about one third of our missionaries are American.  In our previous mission, it seems like it was closer to half.  That's a good sign, that the Philippines and other island nations are now providing that many more missionaries.

Our brand-new missionaries and their trainers.

On Thursday morning, we had one more transfer-related thing to do, which may not happen all that often.  We got to take a family to the airport in Tagbilaran, to meet their daughter who was arriving home at the end of her mission!  What a great privilege that was, to be a part of that sweet reunion!  Of course, the family lives 30 minutes in the opposite direction, so it was an all-morning excursion, but that's okay.  A little bonus - - the other senior couple here, the Bells, were delivering a young man from their branch to the airport at the same time, to leave on his mission!  So . . . a big day, all the way around.

Our newly-returned Sister Pilay with her auntie, her mom, and some friends.

Sister Pilay with her mom and President Nueva, our district president.  We'd stopped at the church so she could meet with him to be released as a missionary.  This was her last picture with a name tag on.  

This shot was taken on a different day, but Martinello was at the airport at the same time, to leave for the MTC, just beginning his mission.

Transfer weeks are fun, I think - - despite all the logistical gymnastics!  In our other mission, we weren't much involved in transporting the missionaries, usually, except for those leaving for home.  The others were able to get where they needed to go on the bus.  But distances are greater here, I think.  And then there's that ferry . . . and the tickets aren't sold at the port, for some reason.  They're sold at an obscure little place in the market.  So they do need assistance, and it's nice to be able to help.  : )

All for now - -

Working around Calape

Much of our travel in the mission is along the coast highway, so I'm always happy for a chance to see what life is like along the smaller streets and the rural roads.

Yesterday, while Tony was helping some missionaries in a remote town move to a better apartment, I went with the sister missionaries here in Calape to visit some of their investigators.  I like to do this every week or so.  It's great to meet these people in their homes and to hear (even if I understand little of their conversation) how they're progressing, and get to know them a little.  Two of those we visited yesterday are scheduled for baptism already.

We took a trike ride out of town a little ways, to get to the area where we needed to go first.

Some of the places we visited were down little dirt paths through the trees.  I can imagine how very muddy they must be on wet days!  A stream runs through this area and we crossed on a covered bridge.  I was surprised at first, to see covered bridges here, but it makes sense to keep the plank surface dry so that they're not so slippery and so they last longer.  I suspect these bridges were probably built by the national government, after the big earthquake here in 2013.

First we visited a man in his 70's, who had a handful of little grandchildren running in and out.  He'll be baptized this Saturday.  His home is very humble but tidy.  The sisters slip off their shoes when they go into a house, but no one seems to think that I should have to do that.  We visited for awhile, with him sometimes questioning me, partly in Visaya and partly in English, with the sisters translating as needed.  I couldn't discreetly take a picture of his house, but it was down this path, to the right.  : )   These are banana plants all around.

Our next stop was to meet with a 15-year-old girl named Aiya, and her two friends.  They were intrigued at the chance to practice a little English, so that was fun.  I'm always happy to speak English!  We sat on the front porch of Aiya's house and the sisters taught the girls.  There were little ones at that house who kept popping in and out, too, and hiding and peeking.  Nothing more interesting than an Amerikano!  Aiya and her friends would like to learn piano, so I'll probably help them a little with that.  I wasn't really planning to teach in Calape, because the more remote towns in our district have more need, but I'll work something out with them, probably. 

This sign was by the street near Aiya's house.  Your guess is as good as mine!

Here's a tiny little house we saw, in a big, fenced yard.  It looked almost comical, sitting out there.  Like a doll house, almost, all prim and tidy

After Aiya, we went to see an elderly lady the sisters have been teaching.  To get to her house, we walked down a long dirt road between a large field and a treed area.  

This is mostly rice fields.

A couple of carabao grazing nearby.  The calf  has a heron riding on its back.  The birds feed on the carabaos' lice.  

At the end of the road, we turned left and crossed another stream.  This little guy wanted to follow us across the bridge, but his nanay called him back.  : )

Here's the lady's house we went to visit.  It's a cute little place with an open, airy living room and a well-kept yard.  We didn't stay long at all, though, because she was sick and needed to sleep.

The houses in neighborhoods like this just seem to be plunked down anywhere, and the path just goes alongside one to get to the next.  I suppose they have boundaries to their properties, but they appear to be very random, not in straight rows at all.

The sisters pointed this out as our district president's house.  He and his wife and two daughters live here, and he farms the land at his mother's house, several kilometers away.

I took a picture of this house because it's so cute.  I love the woven bamboo siding they use sometimes.  I can tell this house must be new, because of the condition of the siding.  It only lasts few years and has to be replaced.   (Hopefully, you can enlarge this and get a better look.  I didn't want to get up close and shoot it, because people were there.)

As we were walking back out that long road, a trike came along and we hopped on and went back out to the highway.  The driver stopped twice to pick up more passengers and eventually there were seven of us on the trike.  I had the front seat and had to scoot over to let a little boy sit by me.  I was right next to the driver.  People here have no personal space issues at all!

We got out to visit one more house, with a couple living there.  I didn't get a picture, but their home is very humble, made of concrete but not painted.  It's interesting, though - - every house, it seems, no matter how poor, will always have a TV and often a stereo system of some kind, too.  These good folks turned off their TV when we arrived, but the neighbors had some music playing pretty loudly.  We laughed about it a bit, and then the man walked over and asked them to turn it off for awhile, and they did.  Ordinarily, no one seems to mind anyone else's loud music.  And houses being what they are, sometimes there's very little sound barrier from one house to the next.

The sisters taught this couple a lesson, almost exclusively in Visaya, and then we headed home on foot.  Not too far, but it was getting pretty dark by then.  All year 'round, it's always dark by 6:30.

 It was a fun afternoon!  I'm really seeing more need to study the language here than I felt I needed to in our previous mission.  I did learn a little bit last time, but only about one third of the Visayan (Cebuano) language is the same as Tagolog, so many of the words and phrases I learned before don't really work here.  So, that's something to work on.  I'm really happy for this opportunity to meet some sweet people, see some new places, and have this awesome experience!

All for now!  : )

The Philippines, Round Two!

And here we are again!

When we applied for a second mission, we didn't request any particular place or type of mission we wanted to serve.  We left it open, as we did with our previous mission.  We did, however, mention that we'd be happy to go to the Philippines again.  When we received our call by mail, it came as a very comfortable relief that we should be returning.  We knew pretty much what to anticipate and didn't have to worry about what to bring with us, or what it would be like, or how we would be received by the people here.  We already knew!  And we knew that there is a great need for senior missionaries in the Philippines, too, and that we could help out.

This time, we were called to the Cebu East Mission.  Cebu is about 500 miles south of Pangasinan, where we served before.  It's in the Central Visayas Region and shows up in yellow on this map.

We were to report to the Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah on December 26.  So we flew to Salt Lake City on the 16th, in order to attend the baptisms of two grandchildren, who live there, and spent Christmas with their families.

Cousins Kaitlyn and Derek were baptized on December 17, Kaitlyn's 8th birthday.

Our five days in the MTC were much like our last stay there, with classes morning and afternoon with three other couples and an instructor.  It was fun getting to know these good folks, who were headed for Portugal, a Girls' Camp in the Redwoods, and the country of Jordan (as Humanitarian Services missionaries only).  The content of the curriculum was much the same ("Preach My Gospel"), though a little technology training was added in this time.  Even though we'd been through it before, it's so amazing how strongly the Spirit works with us there, testifying to the truthfulness of what we're learning and sharing.  Our instructors are young returned missionaries and they are just super.  The week went quickly.

The traditional MTC map photo

When we boarded our plane on January 2nd, we left all our winter clothes behind.  Our daughter, Margie, took us to the airport and we handed her our warm jackets at the door.  There's no winter in the Philippines, or anything close to it!  Three flights - - one very long - - got us to Manila, where we were taken to the church Area Office, then to the immigration office, to take care of some legalities.  We spent two days in Manila and were able to attend the temple there.

On our third day in the Philippines, we flew to Cebu and were met by our mission president's wife and the mission secretary.  They drove us to the mission office to meet President Maughan and the others working in the office.  Then we drove to the mission home.  In Urdaneta, our previous mission, the mission home and office were on the same property, but that's not the case here.  In fact, when the mission was formed, in 2013, they couldn't find a suitable house to buy for the mission home.  What they ended up with is rather a mansion in a gated community.  Very posh, for the Philippines!  We had dinner there with the Maughans and the two office couples, and we stayed there one night.  President Maughan talked with us and told us we'd be assigned to work on the island of Bohol.

 We took a little walk along the shore in the beautiful neighborhood where the mission home is.













Early the next morning, we were driven to the port and left there with a brand-new van, which we took across with us on the ferry to Bohol.  The route from Cebu to Tubigan, Bohol is about 28 miles and took us an hour and a half.

At the Tubigon port, we were met by the zone leaders and Elder and Sister Bell, the other senior couple on Bohol.  We have these good folks to thank for helping us to feel very much appreciated here and to learn our way around. They took us to a little grocery store in Tubigon and then to our house in Calape.  After unloading our stuff, we went to the church to meet with President Nueva, the Calape District President - - a very nice man - - and his counselors.  After visiting a bit, he took us all to lunch!  Then the Bells showed us the public market in Calape.  There is no grocery store here in Calape - - just the merkado, where people sell all kinds of things.  And that was our first day actually in the mission field.

Our new digs

On a few subsequent days, the Bells showed us some other places, particularly Tagbilaran, the only actual city on the island, where we did some more large-scale shopping.  It's nearly an hour from Calape.  There are a few supermarkets in "Tagbi," inside malls, as they typically are in the Philippines. We bought some things in the mall that our house needed, like some shelves for the kitchen, a desk, and a water-cooler, and ordered a memory-foam mattress topper.  Now we're very comfortable here!  Senior missionaries really are treated well.  : )

                                                                   

We've had lots of adventures around the island of Bohol already and will share more pictures as the weeks roll by.  We've been here almost seven weeks now!  It's so fun to meet more new people as we tour around and visit the branches here.  More about our work and our beautiful surroundings soon.  : )