afternoon monsoon

The weather has changed!! There have been afternoon thunder storms every day for a week.  We have been very lucky to have been home before the rain starts.  We are still in summer officially and not the rainy season, but that has not made a difference.  By about 4:00 pm the rain and thunder starts and then starts and stops most of the evening.  It is actually nice to go to bed with the rain falling, even though I do not like rain, I have seemed to sleep better the last few nights when I fall asleep to the rain falling.  Rainy season is not officially to start until June, so we will see how that goes.  We have felt very blessed to have a fairly dry year so far as neither of us like getting wet and being out in the rain. 

Today we drove to Binalbagan to teach the last session of Planning for Success.  The drive is two hours and on a two lane undivided road full of traffic including cars, trucks, buses, tricycles, people and animals.  It is probably only 50 miles but with all the traffic it takes two hours.  We were able to complete the application for one young woman and set up the other two to start.  They had forgotten their user names and passwords, so we had to request new ones from lds.org.

Sunday was Mother's Day and the Primary children sang a beautiful hymn, "Where Love Is" and then gave all the mothers yellow roses.  The really neat part was the bishops son just broke away from the group and ran straight for me to give me the flower and a big hug and kiss while wishing me a Happy Mother's Day.  I was so pleased.  Even though I am so far from my family I was thought of an recognized.  What a sweet gesture from a young boy who is normally so shy.  I was very thankful to be able to attend our resident ward where I at least know many people. 

We were supposed to travel to Cebu to do some more training but were told to not travel during the election, so we will leave this Thursday instead.  There is a tendency to have violent outburst during the election and the mission dept. prefers we be safe. So we did not travel. I really am excited to go to the big city where the hotel has real air conditioning and there are American restaurants.  There are also many tourists so we are not the only foreigners.  Not that that has ever bothered me. 

It is very hard to be here right now and there are several struggles at home with our family, but I know the Lord will watch over everyone and that the family will watch out for each other.  I am so thankful for children that support one another and are loving and caring.  I pray for them everyday.