Banaue

First of all, you may already know this, but there was apparently another decent-sized typhoon that hit the Philippines and is slowly moving across the country, but rest assured, it isn't expected to really affect us and nothing has happened up here except for a little bit of rain earlier. BUT, that didn't stop us from going to the Banaue rice terraces earlier today and riding on top of the jeepney for the nearly 3-hour ride.

On top of the jeepney

The Banaue rice terraces is basically one of, if not the coolest and prettiest sites in our entire mission. We actually went up with the Bambang Zone because even though we are in Solano Zone, Elder Costacio and I are basically the unofficial members of Bambang just because we always hang out with all of them. We traveled last night to "sleep over" at the Bambang ZLs since we had to leave at 4:00 in the morning, but there were ten of us elders over there so there wasn't a whole lot of sleeping going on and we also decided to hit up Jolliebee for some food at like 2:30 A.M before we hit the road (Kind of reminds me of late night Denny's runs with the homies haha). I have actually been awake since 6:30 A.M Sunday morning so after we are done e-mailing and go home, I will be lookin' to go straight to bed for a long and scrumptious snooze.

 To where we are going

 From whence we came

Along the trail

This last week we also went on splits with the Lamut elders and I worked in our area with Elder Navarro, who is 18 years old from Idaho and has only been in the field for a month. It was a little different than some of the splits I've been on in the past because this was Elder Navarro's very first time going on splits, but that was able to help me a lot in trying to exemplify my role as a leader and example to others. The language is obviously still coming for him but he is a chill guy and a good missionary with a strong desire and bright spirit, so I still rather enjoyed the experience.

We have two investigators who have been progressing pretty well named Jarone and Khanejie. They are brothers aged 14 and 10 years old and are living with their aunt, who is an active member, so we have been teaching them quite a bit lately. Although they are fairly young, they have still been doing pretty good in the lessons and we are hoping to extend baptismal dates to them sometime soon but unfortunately they weren't able to attend church yesterday (but they were the ones who came last week).

Last night we also watched some basketball at the barangay which is like the Filipino version of rec ball or a city league or something like that. It was really more like watching the circus but it was one of the more entertaining things that I've seen in quite some time and it reminded me of how much I miss rec and church ball haha. But that being said, to little Ry Guy and the rest of the gang-hope you are tearin' things up back home. I still got that Viking Pride ha!!

Well enjoy the pics and have a good week everyone. I'll send some more next Monday. Time for me to go get some sleep ha :) Love you all!