Finally in Mindoro

So, this past week I had the opportunity to travel to Calintaan, Mindoro! It turned out to be a 3 day trip, but it was worth it! Instead of flying, all the missionaries going to Mindoro (the only island in our mission) got to take a boat! It was so beautiful to see the ocean and some dolphins along the way!  

It took 3 days to travel here so we didn't get in until Friday. Crazy huh? Wednesday I traveled all by myself with my luggage on a jeepney for about 2 hours. It was pretty boring until the little kid right next to me started to throw up.... So thankfully it was close to the end of the ride and only a little bit got on my shoe... When my stop came up to the mission office, there were so many people and other bags on the jeepney, I had to put my bags through the passenger side door and then proceed to crawl over the seat and get out.  I got to the office and waited for awhile and then I hung out with the ap's for a while and then went to sleep at an apartment close by.  Thursday, we got up at 4am and started to travel at 4:30am. The buses and planes were full for Mindoro, so all the missionaries going to Mindoro all got into 1 van and we drove all the way until 7am to a boat port. Once we got there, we waited until about 1 with literally 200 other people in the smallest building ever, for our boat! haha it was fun. One of the new missionaries is from Las Vegas. It was only his 2nd day in the Philippines so, I got to talk with him a lot. We finally got onto the boat which was the largest boat I have EVER been on. It was another 3 hour beautiful boat ride, over the ocean to the island. We got there and some missionary couples picked us up. We dropped the missionaries off at their areas but because our area was so far, we slept at the zone leaders house that night. So, we didnt get to our house until Friday! 

Here in our area, it is so huge. There are rice fields as far as you can see! I have seen tons of Caribou and White Cranes in the rice fields. The other day we got to travel by rice fields and believe it or not, all the way to a members house! Tha'ts when for the first time, I had fresh BUKO Juice (coconut). They climbed up the tree and cut it down for us, it was so tasty!! We are in a branch here in Calintaan. The people are so kind and fun. Our area is huge! We have to travel by trike most of the time because houses are so far apart. Our area actually is on the beach so, we get to tract and proselyte on the beach because there are so many houses!

So, I absolutely love it here, even though it is EVEN MORE humid here than the city believe it or not.