Letter #9

Hey there family! So once again I am safe... and having a great time here in the philippines. I have been assigned to the area of Lo-on in Bohol. My companion is an Elder Holley, from America and he has been here 1yr tomorrow. his visayas is great and we are having so much fun teaching and tracting here in the barungay. Our branch is very small with only about 30 ppl of which 6 are investigators. There are only a few priesthood, about 8 or so. But the priesthood that we have are so strong and help out so much with fellow-shipping the investigators and new converts. We have a baptism coming up the week after conference on the 15th and hopefully another one in the next couple of weeks after that. We contact about 20 ppl each day and invite them to be taught. But they all come up with the same excuse. "maglakaw karon" which basically means "im about to go walkabouts"... they all use the same excuse when we invite. Our house is small... im sending pictures in another email... but we dont have very much at all. I have come to realise just how blessed we are in Australia, and just how much abundance of food and other things we truly have. But i love it! it is so much fun here besides the little that we have. In our house we only have rice and water... but that is really all you need here to survive...hahaha! We have a toilet WITH a seat! and a giant bucket and ladel. Walay toilet paper though... kamot lang. But its not that much of an issue, at least not for me. There are 3 of us in the same zone at the moment on Bohol. Me , Elder Irvin and Elder Dustin. The food is mostly rice and little sides of meat. My body hasn't gone spaz on me either, so that has been good. And they have Milo here so im happy! Im getting eaten by mossies every day despite the DEET stuff...(i dont think the mossies care) but its okay. And we have had heaps of lizards in our place... even some big "tuko"s which i had photos of, and they are pretty big... like two hands worth of size. Oh... if you send a package by mail here it costs me 40pesos... thats just how things work in the philippines. And pres. schmutz said no emails from anyone cept family... so if you could pass that on to my friends through whatever means you want, including the blog. Salamat! So ill probly just send one to the famly rather than seperate ones unless there is something real specific i want totell ppl about. So there are 6 in my district and another 4 in the other district in our zone... so 10 in the zone, and 2 are sisters. The other lot are all in Cebu city, and i say good luck to them... it is mayhem there. On the roads... there are NO road rules... we thought we were going to die going back to pres. place from the airport. Basically if you are bigger you have right of way and if you honk, someone else has to make room for you. But surprisingly no one smashes into each other and no one gets angry at other ppl for pushing in, cause its normal. Its pretty cool how that works actually. Today we are at the "big" mall on Bohol, which is sorta like Parra Westfield but half the size and with a ton more security with guns, and i mean big scary looking guns like shoties and ak47s and the like. Now about mail... it all goes into the office in Cebu and then whenever Pres. and Sis Schmutz go out to visit they take the mail with them or when we go back in for meetings we can pick it up. So ill probably get it when we go back to here from Elder Holland, yes the Apostle, when he comes over on the 20th. We all head back into Cebu for the meeting, which will be great. So far this week we are WAY under budget, and have heaps of money left over so far. You end up paying more for transport than for food. Oh... cool story... coming into Bohol we cought a taxi to the peir, then a bout across the water, then we jumped on a bus... literally on top of it. We were going like 80km as well, it was so much fun and a great experience. Although since then we havent been on top of another one. On Bohol there are not very many gypnees, so mainly buses and litter motorbikes coverted into trike ppl carriers. I having such a great time that the work is just so fun, and even though i dont know what to say back, at least i can understand ppl =] Love you all heaps and miss you Elder Taylor Addison Cox ***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** Terri here: "Tuko's" are gekko's, but apparently they can get big. If you google tuko you can see what they are!! You can also find where he is if you go to google maps and put in "Bohol, Loon", it should bring up on the map, where it actually is!! When we get photos I will post them up. So people if you want to write to Taylor, his address is over on the right side. I know he will enjoy letters from you all. Notice where he goes shopping the security guards have guns!!!