First Week in the Mission Field

Family!


I love it here in Cebu! It is hot and humid, but not unbearable. When I first stepped off the plane in Hong Kong it was like I hit a wall of water! When you walk out of an air conditioned room at church it feels the same way. It is crazy how much you sweat!

I am assigned in City zone in Cebu City. The temple is in my area! The only area with it! I feel lucky. My companion is Elder Clark. He is an American from California. He has been out 21 months and is a really good missionary. He takes good care of me. Everybody is his friend and they tell me how lucky I am to have him as a trainer. He is one of the best Visayan speakers in the mission. He understands everything and is always joking around with the Filipinos trying to make them laugh. We were both transferred into this area, and the boundaries are about to change and all of the previous progressing investigators are moving to another area, so we had nobody to teach. We have been doing a lot of tracting. We have met a lot of members. One of them, Frankie, doesn't have work so he has been going with us every day for the last 3 days. He knows were a lot of members are. My area is huge! It covers a lot of down town, which is tiny houses all smashed together. So many people can live in one block! Also we have a LOT of bukid (hills) in our area. We take a jeepny up there almost every day. I’ll send you a picture next week. It is amazing how many homes are built on such steep hills!

I love it here. There are so many good people who live in such humble circumstance. They have little houses made of concrete the size of half our carport with 6 or so people living there. And on the other side of the wall is their neighbor’s main room. They are literally right next to each other. It is so beautiful! Everyting is so green. The bukid is so beautiful. They have a place called tops. It is the very top of the bukid. It costs about 100 pesos to get up there, 100 pesos to enter, and probably 50 more to get home. That is about 5 dollars, but it is really expensive here. A normal jeepny ride is 6.5 pesos. We took 3 of us on a motorcycle (motor) 15 minutes up a steep windy road into the bukid and it cost 80 pesos up and 45 down.

The temple is so beautiful! The grounds are so beautiful. They keep it really nice. My apartment is the nicest one in the entire mission! We have AC, a shower with hot water and no bugs. We live at the old church next to the assistants. One area over, Sister Robbison, who I was in the mtc with, has a bucket of cold water to shower with, dies every night because it is too hot, and bugs everywhere. We are so lucky. We are moving next week so that another senior couple can move in. Hopefully that place will be nice too.

Mail takes forever to get here, so email works just fine. Thanks for everything! I love you all!

Elder Schenk