Mission Tour

We were privileged this past week to have Elder Larry Echo Hawk of the Seventy come and tour our mission. Elder Eco Hawk has recently been assigned as the 2nd councilor in the Philippines area presidency. On Monday we got to go with Eco Hawks, Stuckis, Burts and a new couple that just came to our mission, Newsons, on an excursion to the underground river. It's about an hour and a half north of Puerto. It was a lot of fun and we had a good time getting to know everyone better. The underground river goes back in under a mountain for about 8 and a half kilometers in a huge cave. It's really neat. Lots of big caverns and interesting rock formations and, of course, thousands of bats. Lily especially liked the bats. It was a great trip and we really had a good time.We have been really busy with missionary work and have had some really wonderful experiences the details of which we will share later as we see how things turn out. For now we'll just say we have met some really wonderful people and we pray they will come to a knowledge of the truth. We have witnessed some real growth in many members of the branch and really appreciate our branch president; he is working really hard.

Before going to the underground river we visited a war memorial where143 U.S. soldiers were  burned to death by their Japanese captors because the U.S. forces were landing and they didn't want any of their POWs escaping.

Only 11 managed to escape and survive

One of the monuments

Names of some of those that perished.

Picture of an old calaysa

Left to right: Newsons, Echo Hawks,Stuckis,Us,and Burts

We also went to a war museum and here are some pictures, including this jeep.

These are the 11 survivors of the burning.

War relics

Japanese Relics

German Relics

Other weapons of War

World War 2 weapons

1957 Buick ... A good Year

Pictures of Palawan

Western Palawan looking toward China

Another view

A limestone mountain on the way to the underground river

Elder and Sister Echo Hawk. It was a real treat to spend the day with them.

I guess inside there is a rock formation that looks like an elephant, hence, elephant cave.

Stuckis

Newsons

Guess Who?

Someone's home at the foot of the mountain

Our boat drivers

Shoreline on the way to the river.

The crew...

... the rest of the crew( at least on our boat)

The underground river! Those caves are where the river comes out of the mountain. We went inside about 1.5 kilometers

Interesting tree

We had a monkey visit us while we were wanting our turn to go.

Another view of the mouth of the cave.

And another shot of our little visitor.

Some shots of the inside of the cave. Sorry it's kinda hard to get on camera what we were seeing but it was pretty cool.

And back outside.

Good side lizard, eh?

We saw him along the trail to the river.

And that's the Underground River

And here is Thanksgiving dinner with the Elders