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