Naic Zone Super Activity

The Missionaries in each Zone become very close as Brothers and Sisters.  When each "transfer day" comes along they are painfully aware that some of them might be transferred out of the Zone, and perhaps they will only see each other a couple of more times during their entire mission.  Thus, the Zone's try to have a Zone Activity sometime during the month prior to "transfer day".  This was our Naic Zone Super Activity, a morning at People's Park Tagaytay, to watch the sunrise.  This meant getting up at 3 a.m. and boarding the jeepney about 4 a.m.  Elder Peterson and I prepared a sack breakfast for each missionary and our Zone Leaders provided fresh, hot pan de sol for our 1 1/2 hr jeepney trip.  The pan de sol was gone very quickly, as was the sack breakfast of strawberry and blueberry yogurt drink, granola bars and finger bananas.  By the way, pan de sol is a very sweet bread like roll, with a mini crumb topping.  Our RS President has a tendahan (very small grocery) and she was up by 2 a.m. making the pan de sol so that it would be hot and fresh out of the oven for us.  Thanks Christy!!!  

Elder Peterson is on the left, Sister Torres next to him, Elder Webb is boarding the jeepney and Elders Arquiola, DeGuzeman and Sutter on the right.  There were sixteen of us on the trip, along with the containers full of our lunch fixings and lemonade.

Pictured here are all fourteen of our missionaries, patiently (?) waiting for the fog to lift so we could see the sunrise.  Well, we waited and waited and waited some more and the sun rose but the fog did not lift until mid morning.  Our missionaries were undaunted and found lots to be happy about anyway.  Sort of from left to right are Elders Welch, Webb, DeGuzeman, Hopkins, Quintana, Querubin, Arquiola, Hubert, Sutter, Hyde, Hart and Kaka, and last but never least, our Sisters Arjun and Torres.  Elder Peterson is in the jeepney keeping warm and I am the photographer. 

This is just one of the views we see from People's Park.  In the distance is a volcano, even if you don't see it, please enjoy the view anyway.  We ate our lunch on the patio of the unfinished palace that Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were having built when they were deposed by Corizon Acquino.  Our lunch consisted of egg salad sandwiches, vegetable sticks, chips, oreo cookies, finger bananas and lemonade.  We made the sandwiches as fast as our hungry group could eat them and we even shared some with a few "on lookers", who just might have been coveting our lunch.  We love to bahagi (share). 

Boys will be boys, even if they are full time missionaries.  Here are Elders Querubin and DeGuzeman posing with their favorite animal hats, wolf and panda.  They did end up purchasing them.  Guapo (handsome) aren't they?

Well just another great day with our amazing missionaries, we would love to keep them all.  After much viewing, eating, shopping and fun, it was back down the mountain and into our work clothes (white shirts, ties, dark pants) and out to do more teaching, finding, OYMing (open your mouth - ask a stranger if they have heard about the Book of Mormon), and BRTing, (building relationships of trust).  

TTFN,

E&S Peterson

A Day at the Beach

Our District had a very fun and relaxing morning at the beach on the 29th of February, our Preparation Day. We chose to go to the Dalaroy 2 Beach because it is the cleanest one we could find. We arrived at 8a.m. because it is starting to get a little warm here and our Missionaries wanted to play volleyball before it got to hot.

Elder Hart, one of our Zone Leaders is enjoying a little relaxation while waiting for all of our District Elders to arrive. These hammocks are very popular here in the Philippines because they can be carried in your pocket and pulled out and hung whenever and wherever you feel a little rest coming on.

Our Sisters and Elders are all very good at sports and really got into this game. Our Teaching Assistants were able to join us this day because they were working with our Elders for a few days. Pictured are: Sister Torres, Elder Ward, Elder Hyde, Elder Hubert, Elder Lillywhite, Elder Hopkins, Elder Kaka, Elder Arquiloa, Elder Hart, Elder Welch and Sister Arjun. We are missing our Elders from Trece and Carissa/Punta.

After our picnic we made s'mores again, Elder Peterson loves to use uling for his fires. Here is Elder Ward, one of our Teaching Assistants, enjoying his "perfect" s'more.

Sisters Torres and Arjun are enjoying their s'mores, even though they are a bit messy to eat.

We love our Missionaries and we learn so much from them. They are all very, very hard workers and they are blessed with results weekly. Since Elder Peterson and I have been here we have attended a baptism a week, with multiple candidates at each baptism. The "field is white already to harvest" is coming true here in the Philippines - the Lord's children here are ready and very eager to accept the Gospel.

Love to all and TTFN,

E & S Peterson

PREPARATION DAY AT TAGAYTAY AND THE PEOPLE'S PARK!!!

Our Zone Leaders planned a day away for the residents of the "Celestial Compound"; Elder and Sister Peterson, Sisters Torres and Deluyan, and Elders Langer and Hart. I packed a picnic lunch and off we went, all six of us in our car. I drove, with the two Sisters in front with me and the three Elders in the back seat. Yes, we were a bit squished, but we were on our way to have a great day and we were all excited. It was very warm in Naic when we left and I wondered why our Sisters and Elder Hart were dressed more warmly than the other three of us, I soon found out. As we drove through Tagaytay City and started up the mountain to The Peoples Park, it started to mist, the further up we went the more mist and then fog and wind. When we reached the top and parked near the markets, we were seemingly all alone, except for the market keepers. When we opened the car door we were hit with a blast of cold wet air, Elder Peterson and I decided to stay in the car until the weather cleared, we hoped within an hour. Our young, adventuresome Elders and Sisters ventured out to the markets, in spite of the cold and wet and thus began our delightfully fun day.

I joined Sister Deluyan, Sister Torres and Elder Hart, as they shopped for bright T-shirts - they picked some very nice ones.

Elder Hart, Sister Torres, Elder Langer and Sister Deluyan agreed to let me take their picture, in spite of the "not so nice" weather. Elder Langer was especially cold, but truly weathered the storm so I could commit this day to memory.

From left to right, heading up the hill to catch the jeepney are Elder Peterson, Sister Peterson, Sister Torres and Sister Deluyan. Sister Deluyan is happy, happy, happy, she comes from Bagio and it is very cold there, guess she is used to it.

Catching Up

My goodness, where does the time go. I have a lot of catching up to do, but will make it short. Our daughter will be helping me stay current with the blog from now on. I certainly do appreciate your patience during my time of “adjustment”.

Christmas came and went, without much fanfare on our part. We had many children come to the gate of our triplex and sing Christmas Carols to us, for which we get to give them a piece or two of candy. We also kept hearing noise, like gunshots, in the middle of the night, a bit unsettling for foreigners. We found out later that here in the Philippines people start celebrating in October and part of their celebration are fireworks, just the noisy kind, until New Year’s Eve. We had our Zone Elders and Sisters here for Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas morning breakfast of strawberry shortcake. We have amazing Elders and Sisters, their parent’s are, and should be very proud of them. We are happy to have them in our home away from home.

New Year’s Eve brought our Elders and Sisters back for a relaxing evening of games, movie (Kung Fu Panda – approved by our Mission President) and then the fireworks. It is difficult to explain how loud and long the fireworks displays go on, all over the Philippines. The displays started in every neighborhood of Naic about 9:30pm and were still going on, here and there, the next morning. From 11:30pm until 12:30am, the noise and displays were constant, loud and colorful. We made s’mores during all of this, yummy and messy. Some of our Elders and Sisters had never had them.

Back to work for all of us. There were over 250 baptisms in our Mission the month of December and already over 100 for the month of January, in our Zone alone. Elder Peterson and I are way behind in our work to teach them the importance of fellowshipping, but we are running to catch up. Retention is over 80% without our efforts, we hope we can make that even better.

We had a slight set back a week or so ago, Elder Peterson felt we needed to check out the medical facilities here in the Philippines, so we did. We started out here in Naic, in our local private hospital. The preliminary work and diagnosis was done here and then we were transferred to a very large, state of the art hospital in Global City. Elder Peterson’s gall bladder was removed on a Friday and he was released the following Sunday. He is still recovering, but getting his strength back slowly. We certainly hope we are done with that now, we are most anxious to get back to our missionary work.

TTFN, E and S Peterson