VACATION ALREADY

After being here less than two weeks, we had three weeks without missionaries because of a big open house that was planned for the MTC in the second week. This left the week before and the week after as a sort of vacation time. President and SIster Taylor took us to a wonderful place called Sonya's Garden down south about 40 miles to a city called Tagaytay, which is off a lake created by the volcano Taal. (no view of the lake or anything, but it's much cooler down there)

It was a wonderful place. We stayed two days and had massages and good meals and lots of rest. Sonya is a wonderful older woman who always had the dream to build the place and have people come and enjoy it. It's a large complex with many cottages, greenhouses, a restaurant, and a spa area.

The food was great, all organic and grown right on the premises, mostly vegetarian, although they cooked chicken for us at Sister Taylor's request. They pamper you horribly. It was like an English resort in the early 1900's. We took lots of pics.

Elder Armstrong right outside our cottage, some of the gardens behind him.

The main room in our cabin. Up the stairs were two more bedrooms and another bath with a shower.

The showers were all open areas in the bathrooms that were lined with smooth pebbles. Above is a bowl of fresh flowers in the shower.

This is the smaller bath room, the shower head is on the right.

Humongous staghorn fern by the outdoor dining area. Mom would have loved this!

Lunch table: delicious mangoes, tomato filled with caribou cheese, olive oil, and fresh basil, hot dog (!?), fresh herb teas.

Another staghorn fern.

Sister Armstrong relaxing with some tarragon tea in the restaurant area.

The following pics are the results from a flower arranging class I went to there. The woman who did the class was a master of simplicity.

 Above:  Jack fruit hanging on a tree. YUMMMM!!! They grow all over here.

Another strange looking...fruit? I don't think this one is eaten. A lot of the plants all around outside are all the plants I used to grow indoors in California...coleus, arrowheads, wandering jews, etc.

Passageways through the gardens are full of overhead arches like above.

Blew this pic up a little so you can get some perspective. These are spiders on the roof of one of the greenhouses. The 'small' one on the right (or even the smaller ones above) are much closer to the size we are used to seeing spiders.

Some flowers:

 Two of the greenhouses:

 Sonya's water supply above.
Here's a good example of electric wiring practices in the Philippines:

A better picture of the 'bidet':

Sonya, President and Sister Taylor, and us:

 Above is Elder Armstrong with some garlic chips. They taste great chopped up in rice!

Wow, that took a lot of time! Signing off for now. Next time I'll post pics of the missionaries...they're the best part!

We miss all of you but we're so glad to be here! In the temple the other day I realized that I finally feel that we've given everything we have to building up the kingdom of God on earth. That feels good!