Is this really a mission? More time in Bacolod

March 9, 2011

There is a reason we should write things down as soon as possible after they happen; sometimes we cannot even remember what we meant to write if time passes, and that is the predicament I find myself in right now. I did not finish writing about our vacation trip to Bacolod and much of what happened I cannot recall.

I do remember we left early Friday morning for Jomabo in a 12 passenger Jomabo Resort van, driving through miles of sugar cane fields. Larry and Wilson Ganir wanted to “ride” a carabao, but finally settled on having their pictures taken sitting on one. It is amazing to see the men cutting the sugar cane by hand with their machetes, lifting the bundles up rickety ladders to pile on top of a stack of previously cut and loaded cane three times higher than the cart carrying the load which is pulled by a single carabao. When it looks like the cart cannot hold another stick of sugar cane and will topple over from being top heavy, another pile is added. Finally, the cart is driven to a big truck which carries several cart loads of sugar cane to a sugar cane station where several truck loads are loaded onto a semi truck which travels to the plant where the sugar is extracted. The road was filled with overburdened trucks, several of them broken down off the road.

When the men got back into the van they brought a new passenger, but one that wasn’t discovered immediately. I don’t know who saw the cane spider first, but I screamed and Diane Bringhurst jumped into my lap. The huge brown spindly spider was a good 6 inches across and was crawling up the window by Larry. We got the van driver to stop while the men hunted for the spider. Finally it jumped out of the van and scurried away, probably more frightened of us than we were of it, if that is possible.

After about two hours being packed into the van, we passed through Escalante, the last town before we reached the boat dock. We walked down the board ramp onto a small outrigger motor boat. The trip was to take about 20 minutes but with the beckoning storm and rough water, our trip was almost an hour. Larry loved every minute of the tossing and turning, of the waves whipping over the bow and of course, he was right in the front which was nice because he blocked the majority of the waves from hitting me. He was concerned enough that he put our camera and cell phones in a plastic bag with his wallet. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the trip. The sky was overcast and we wondered if it would rain, but it did not. The island was very small but picturesque with golden sand and palm trees and flowering bushes; I walked around it in about 20 minutes. We were disappointed that there was no restaurant and no hotel as the brochure had indicated; there were cottages that some people stay in but no one was in them at the time. The only other people on the island were some Korean students who are here in the Philippines learning English; they had thought they could buy food and had not brought any, but, our wonderful Filipino friends had brought food for a picnic for us and we shared with the starving Korean students. Larry was anxious to get into the water and do some snorkeling, fully dressed with his funny little cap that does keep his head from getting sunburned. His under water looking adventure was not as rewarding as times before; he saw a lot of almost transparent fish, tube worms that made holes that little fish would dart into as Larry approached, and lots of sea urchins. I spent my time combing the beach for shells picking up sand dollars, unusual coral and many varieties and sizes of shells. Bringhursts bought a big bag of shells for 100 pesos from one of the people who stays on the island to help with incoming tourists and gave me a few of their really large ones. (When we arrived home a few days later, Larry scrubbed all my shells with an old toothbrush and we put them all in Zonrox (a cousin to Clorox) for a few hours—long enough to dissolve the sponge that I thought was a unique coral, and whiten most everything else, but at least we didn’t have shells crawling away with live critters still in them.) The ride back was much calmer and more to Sister Ganir’s liking.

On Saturday, the van Gales had rented for us took us to the Bacolod Museum where we saw murals of native Filipino life, models of sugar cane processing equipment over the past 100 years, artifacts from Filipino history and an amazing toy display with over 22,000 toys from all over the world in it—1/4 of the toys owned by the Filipino woman who donated them; everything from early Fisher=Price toys and 1949 Barbie dolls, to 100s of Russian stacking dolls (the smallest no bigger than ¼ inch) to Chinese balls to South American hoops, to “Santa” figures from all over, especially Europe!, trains, cars, horses, farm animals, African animals, doll houses, games….and Daddy thought I had too many toys!

We were invited to speak to all the regional ERC directors who were meeting for a conference in Bacolod and then ate a huge lunch with them in an open air Filipino restaurant. Again we were treated royally!

In the afternoon we rode out to The Ruins, the Filipino Taj Mahal. The outer walls of what had been a sugar cane baron’s palatial mansion stood on lovely grounds, including a gorgeous fountain and a miniature golf course. The husband built the edifice during the early 1900’s in honor of his beautiful wife who died in childbirth with their 11th child. When the children got married they had to leave the home, a policy even the father followed when he remarried several years later, moving into a small cottage on the grounds. During WW II the Americans burned the interior to prevent the Japanese from using the place as a headquarters. Descendants now use the grounds and what is left of the interior for receptions. A group of college students were having a big party there when we toured the grounds.

Ganirs and Bringhursts left early Sunday morning to fly back to Cebu, but we stayed an extra day so we could attend Church with Gales. Sister Gale, Larry and I were asked to talk about the temple in Sacrament Meeting. Meeting with the members was the highlight of the trip for us. Sunday afternoon Gales took us to the mountains to view some spectacular waterfalls and the beautifully terraced rice paddies. We were amazed at the overloaded buses, packed with people in and on top, inching up the steep, winding roads We were fearful that their brakes would give out and send them careening off into the valleys below.

Monday morning we were on the plane homeward bound after a wonderful four days with the Gales in Bacolod. (Daddy informs me that I mixed up the days of when we did things: Friday we were in Bacolod and Saturday we were on Jomabo.)

I know we are having the very best mission possible—vacations and work situations. Some of the other couple missionaries here who are not temple missionaries ask, “Are you sure you are on a mission?”