Emergency transfer to a tropical island - Poor Rob haha

Hooray! It's April over here too! This week has been just your average week in Makati. Nothing strange, or unusual has happened that is worth typing about, so yeah... bye.

APRIL FOOLS!!!!! Man; I got you guys good, didn't I. :) This week has actually been one of the craziest weeks of my mission so far. It actually was quite average up until Thursday afternoon. Lots of teaching appointments, and OYMs. All was going well, when all of a sudden, at about 3:00 pm, the phone bleeps the text sound. Elder Delacruz had the phone that day, and he said, What?!?! Your getting transferred to Palawan! I thought he was joking, but lo and behold, it was a text from Pres. Ostler. Sinabi niya [he said], "Elder Fawson, you are being emergency transferred to Aborlan Palawan tomorrow. The previous missionaries have lost the trust of the members. You are to go and rebuild that trust. Your new companion will be Elder Ordesta. Work hard, and be exactly obedient. Meet at the Buendia chapel at 9:00 am tomorrow morning. I love you! -President Ostler" 

So right now I am sitting in a little computer shop in Aborlan telling you about how I'm in Aborlan Palawan. hahaha I really like it here. It is super different here than in the city! There are so many stars here, it reminds me of what the sky used to look like :) There is so much dirt and trees and stuff. My shoes are getting so dusty here too. It is a good thing I have shoe shining supplies, or they would be filthy! It actually smells a lot like Fish Lake, or Havasupi, so you can sort of imagine that. haha

We are fresh starting the area, which means that neither of us were here previous to the transfer. It's been really hard, because the previous missionaries haven't kept the area book up to date at all, so we have almost no idea about who the investigators are, where they live, or anything. Yesterday was really good though. We bore our testimonies for fast Sunday and got to know the members at church, and afterward, a few of them worked with us and showed us around a bit. We mostly visited members and befriended them, because that is our special assignment here. Everything is going well so far though. 

Elder Ordesta is super awesome. He is a really experienced missionary, and has actually spent 10 months total on Palawan already. This is his 3rd time being transferred here. He will go home in August, so he's just got a few months left. I'm gonna learn a lot from him. :) 

It was really exhausting coming here. I forgot what it was like to be cramped onto a plane. It brought back painful memories of my flight from LA to Tokyo (over 12 hours) on my way over to the Philippines so many months ago. hahaha This flight was only 1 hour though, so it wasn't too bad. :) 

Fun coincidence! One of my kabahay (house mates) is Elder Clark. You may think "woopdy doo!", but Elder Clark is who I was with on my MTC exchange when there was a crazy fire and we saved a bunch of stuff for a member. How neat is that? He's my district leader now. 

Yup. Lots of changes this week. Feel free to check out Aborlan Palawan on google and find out any fun facts about it. :) I gots to go now. Bye!!!

Elder Fawson