September 14th - September 20th.

I started Tagalog lessons last Tuesday, it's hard, but I am determined so will probably be taking lessons, twice a week until I go home eighteen months from now.

Have been working hard on learning the mapping and Sister Clark has finally trusted me enough to give a serious mapping project to prepare a stake boundary map to be sent to Salt Lake for approval. The work is very tedious but I like it. My next big undertaking will be to work with stake presidents & bishops with their maps to see if the boundaries we have match theirs and if not to make the changes, of course if there are stake boundary changes, then we have to talk to all the stake presidents who stakes border that stake to make sure they agree with the changes, you can see it does get complicated and sometimes a lot of discussion to get a stake president to be willing to change his boundaries. Mostly though the are co-operative altho we do have one now if the boundaries are changed the one stake president will lose a elder quorams president, relief society president and one other leadership position, don't know how that is going to pan out.

I'm starting to get the hang of the grocery stores but still confusing, I have lost a little weight, maybe I'll just stayed confused at the grocery store and see how the weight goes.

We still have not been assigned a ward/branch yet so we just go to one that is close because we have to pay a taxi. This last Sunday we were able to get a ride with a senior missionary couple and went to the Makati Chapel which was the first chapel built in the Philippines. It is also a chapel Scott went to for six months while he was on his mission here. He said he baptized several converts in the font and spoke several times from the pulpit, who would have thought I would ever be sitting in that same chapel? The Makati area is very clean and I would love to be living there.

I would like to do some walking outside, but can't find an area that feels safe enough. They do have an exercise area in our apartment building, I did buy some walking shoes and socks with the idea of walking on the treadmill, but I prefer the outdoors. Okay, so I'm looking for excuses to stay off the treadmill, let you know how that goes.

One of our senior elders was bit by a misquito that gave him dangue disease and had a really rough time, spent five days in the hospital and one week at home and still gets tired very easily. I have increased by committment to spray Off on me everyday. Our medical personnel here at the office said the misquitos will be worst this year because of the flooding in our area last year.

They are building two new buildings next to our apartments, it is so interesting to watch the men work, the work is 24 hours a day and the workers have living quarters right on the site, you see the change of shifts as one group leaves the sleeping quarters and other group go in to sleep. They have their laundry hung out to dry and every team wears a different colored t-shirt mostly with long sleeves. At around 7:00 am every morning they all gather in a group listen to some encouraging words, have a prayer and then do calisentics, mostly arm waving and some leg lifts and then everyone goes to work. In the warehouse district it is the same ritual except some mornings the workers there do some jogging down the street. Almost everyone here carrys some kind of towel or small rag for face wiping and you often see workers take off their t-shirts wipe down the upper part of their bodies back and front and put on a clean shirt. Even little children will have a small rage stuck in the back of their shirts. I have been using kleenexs but may at some point try the small rag, probably not, wiping my sweaty face more than once on a rag would be like using a bath towel twice in a row and you all know how I feel about that.

The mission president is having a birthday this week so we are all going out to dinner to help him celebrate. I haven't been to a restaurant here that I really like. All the orders are taken at the same time but the food is delivered to the table all at different times and the food is often cold. No one seems to mind, well I do but when in rome,etc.

Typhoon season is about over and so far haven't had one. I am told when the typhoons come through the building get cleaned up, the way these buildings here look, I think we are due for one to clean them up, but of course you can't just have a typhoon that cleans buildings they seem to want to clean everythings else in their path.