Visitors!

Our very first visitors! After two years of being completely closed to tourists, the Philippines opened their borders to tourists in early spring and our first visitors were two of our sons, Brandon and Kevin. And it's a great story!! 

Brandon had plans in place for several months to visit us. He had made his airline reservations and we had extensive plans of what to do during his three week stay in the Philippines. A few weeks before his long-planned arrival, he learned that two of his friends, who happen to be the sons of fellow mission leaders, were going to be here at the same time and that they had planned a scuba trip to a nearby island. So the afternoon of Brandon's arrival, we picked him up at the Clark airport, which is about 90 minutes from us, and drove him the two hours to Manila, where he overnighted before his short flight the next morning to Coron. We were, of course, thrilled to see Brandon. Seriously, we couldn't have been happier.

Well, our two boys had concocted a huge surprise for us. When we arrived at the hotel in Manila to drop off Brandon, who should come walking toward our car ... Kevin! Kevin's life in the Army doesn't allow him to make plans too far in advance and these two boys had planned this grand surprise at the last minute. It was a wonderfully joyful moment. Brandon and Kevin Colton, #40 and #14, lacrosse teammates again ... pass, shoot, score, for the win. 

After their scuba trip, we picked our boys up at the Manila airport and visited a few of the highlights in Manila. The American Cemetery, located in the heart of Manila, is a beautiful and moving tribute to the American soldiers who died in WWII. 

We toured Fort Santiago, an old Spanish citadel inside Intramuros, the old walled city of Manila. 

Inside Intramuros are many churches, including the Manila Cathedral, where I got lucky and found this gem of a nativity. I still get excited over a new and interesting and unique nativity and this nativity is no exception. It's carved from bamboo and showcases the Igorot people, an ethnic group found in the mountains of northern Luzon. 

One of my favorite foods here in the Philippines is the Korean dish known as samgyupsal, introduced to us by our missionaries. The meat, usually thin slices of pork belly, is grilled at the table and then wrapped with toppings in a lettuce wrap. We found a fun samgyupsal restaurant in Manila.    

 

When we arrived back at the mission home in Subic, Sister Davis, our office secretary, surprised our boys with a wonderful welcome banner. The phrase at the bottom of the banner ... "We love you already!" ... is a phrase we use often in our mission.

One of our first adventures with our boys was taking them to the local market here in Subic, where we bought some of the exotic fruits we've come to love ... dragonfruit, mangosteen, chico, longan and rambutan. 

And here is definitive evidence that our boys came to visit ...

Oh wait, not the fast-food Jollibee's bee ... this picture ... of our mission sign. 💛 

Our boys helped Steve make a big Saturday breakfast. We clearly skewed toward all things yellow, including bananas and mangos, the two most common fruits here in Zambales, which we eat just about every day.  

We traveled with our boys throughout the Bataan peninsula and we visited many of the memorials commemorating WWII and the Bataan Death March. As the mother of a soldier who wears the same uniform as so many who fought and died here, I felt a profound sense of gratitude for all of the soldiers who traversed on foot, in the face of devastation and war, the same paths we now travel in safety and peace.

We visited Mt Samat, the memorial honoring the last stand of the Americans and Filipinos before surrendering Bataan to the Japanese.

We visited both of the Kilometer Zero Bataan Death March markers, commemorating the two places where the Death March began, Mariveles and Bagac.

And we found a new, meaning new to us, and significant marker, Kilometer Marker 112, which marks the end point of the Bataan Death March ... Camp O'Donnell, a WWII POW camp where thousands more soldiers died from disease, starvation, neglect and brutality. 

Rounding out our WWII history tour, we also visited Corregidor Island, which has been closed due to Covid for most of our mission. Corregidor Island saw the last battle before the complete surrender of the Philippines to the Japanese in 1942. The island was successfully recaptured from the Japanese by Americans and Filipinos in 1945.

Many of the war-ravaged buildings have been left in ruins, as a memorial to the soldiers who fought and died on the island.

Some of the old artillery is still in place. Here we are atop Battery Hearn, the very same piece of artillery that Japanese soldiers mounted after they temporarily captured Corregidor.

Here is Corregidor's symbolic Eternal Flame of Freedom ...

... and Corregidor's Malinta Tunnel, the once headquarters of General MacArthur.

Corregidor Island today is a peaceful, lovely, uninhabited island with beautiful views. It serves as a testament to the bravery and courage of so many who served and lost their lives on the battlefield.

We did one hike while Kevin was still in town, the Stone Hill hike in San Antonio. We were joined by some of our missionaries, current and former. It's rainy season now and we were fortunate the whole time that B&K were here that rain never hindered our plans. On this particular hike though, I would have welcomed the rain ... I've never been so hot in my life.  

One of the activities that Brandon wanted to do while he was here was something that is quite familiar to many of our Filipino missionaries and quite unfamiliar to us as Americans. He wanted to learn the life skill of how to slaughter a chicken. So just after our Stone Hill hike, we visited the family farm of one of our former missionaries, where he and several other missionaries, former and current, kindly orchestrated this most unusual activity. 

Here's Brandon at the point of no return ...

Here are B&K after the deed is done ...

Here are me and Kevin plucking feathers ...

Here's me washing the chicken ...

And here we all are with that chicken looking as good as any Perdue chicken I've ever seen. It was quite the adventure.

After Kevin left and while Brandon was still here, we had a week of zone conferences. Brandon joined us for two of these zone conferences and our missionaries loved meeting him. Brandon is the handsome and bearded young man next to me. 

On the Thursday between zone conferences, we ventured on another outing and we headed up to San Antonio, hoping to find a boat and a captain to take us out to the San Antonio islands. We got lucky and we spent the afternoon touring the islands and coves along the coast of San Antonio.

On one of the islands, as I was leisurely collecting shells on the beach, my phone suddenly rang and it was Brandon, calling us from the island peak. I had watched him a little while before disappear into the jungle, wondering where this adventurous son was headed.

We have three volcanoes in our mission, two dormant and one active. Mt Pinatubo, in the north of our mission, erupted in 1991, and it has been closed for most of our mission due to minor seismic activity. It recently reopened to visitors and we were happy that we could hike Mt Pinatubo with Brandon. To access the trailhead we drove for about an hour with a driver and guide in a 4-wheel drive vehicle, navigating crazily, I mean carefully, through a river bed, cautiously maneuvering over and around boulders that I thought for sure would either capsize or derail or damage our vehicle.   

The 4WD took us as far as it could go and then we began to hike. We hiked for several hours along the river bed, navigating our way between high lahar canyon walls, remnants from the volcanic mudflow which dramatically changed the landscape during the eruption decades before.    

For the last 30 minutes of our hike, the terrain changed from the rocks and lahar of the valley floor to the jungle of the volcano slope, as we made our way up to the Mt Pinatubo crater lake, where the view was spectacular. 

We attended church with Brandon one Sunday in a unique location called Nazareno, which is just far enough away from the assigned ward building that they are authorized to have their own sacrament meeting. This is the only congregation in our mission that meets in an outdoor setting and it is lovely.  

The members here were kind and generous, showering us with fresh coconuts and other fresh fruits to take home with us and offering us fresh coconut water to drink on the spot.

When we returned to the mission home that afternoon, our security guard taught Brandon how to use a machete to de-husk a coconut and prepare it to drink the coconut water inside. 

Our last adventure with Brandon started at our favorite hotel in our mission, Las Casas Filipinas De Acuzar, a beautiful property on the west coast of Bataan, where we've stayed many times before when we've visited our missionaries in Bataan. The views and sunsets here are spectacular.

We had dinner at a Spanish restaurant at Las Casas and we experienced a dish called "Piglet Segoviano Style," which required that we place the order ahead of time. I'm not sure what we expected but this is what we were served. 

On our very last day with Brandon we exceeded our own expectations with the hike we undertook. We wanted to hike Mt Mariveles, one of the two dormant volcanoes in Bataan, and there are many options to do this. In doing some online research, Brandon discovered a trail to Pantingan Peak, the highest peak of the Mt Mariveles volcano. It is listed as an 8.4 mile hard hike, with a 4100 foot elevation gain, and it was supposed to take about 7 hours. We guessed with my slow hiking that it might take us 10 hours or so.

Here's the path ...

And here's our destination ...

The trailhead was about 30 minutes from Las Casas and we were on the trail by 6am. For the first couple of hours, the trail was wide, well marked and not so steep and we hiked at a good pace. Then for about an hour or so we hiked through grass taller than me in some places and the trail started to get a little trickier to follow. We crossed paths at one point with two boys on carabou and they were the only other people we saw on the trail.  

After three hours of hiking, we left the open grassy fields and we entered the jungle, and I mean JUNGLE, serious JUNGLE, real JUNGLE. 

For the next six hours, we climbed up the side of the volcano, through dense, deep green, steep jungle. The longer we hiked, the steeper it got, and the slower we climbed, counting our progress in vertical feet, not miles forward. For hours we pulled ourselves up the mountain, one handhold at a time, carefully making sure that the vine, branch, tree trunk, or rock we were relying on as an anchor was stable and steady. We entered the jungle at 9am and we reached the summit of Pantingan Peak at 3pm. 

Steve was an excellent trail guide and kept us on the almost invisible trail during our trek through the jungle and on the very dark trail at the end of the day.

Brandon was my guardian angel and personal Sherpa. He stayed within a few feet of me the entire time we hiked in the jungle, magically knowing when I needed his hand to pull me up a particularly steep few feet. 

The view at the top was cloudy, which did not distress us at all. One, because that's what happens when you hike higher than the clouds. And two, because we had beautiful views along the way.

All in all, we hiked almost 17 miles in just under 14 and a half hours. The only part of the initial trail description that was accurate was the elevation, 4100 feet, as you can see in the summary map below.

When we got back to our car, it was well after dark and we were dirty and exhausted. And I don't think I've ever been more proud of myself.

I learned an important lesson on this hike, one that I've shared with our missionaries and one that works for life in general. The GPS map below shows our ascent, documenting the route we actually hiked, and it looks like our actual route (the thick red line) mostly follows the planned route (the thin red line), with maybe a small detour or two. This high level view looks straight and direct, as if we followed a straight and direct path to the top. 

The map below is a close up view of the above map. This close up map makes us look like we were crazy hikers, never able to find or stay on the trail. When in fact, we never left the trail. We never got lost. We never backtracked, although the GPS went a little nutso at one point and it looks like we backtracked. We didn't. We never wandered. We were on the trail the entire time.   

Here's the moral of the story and it's a good one ... 

We teach our missionaries in their initial orientation on their very first day in the mission field about what it means to be a successful missionary and this about sums it up! 

(For anyone who read to the end, you deserve an award. 💝)