Over a year since I pushed the buttons of a microwave!

Hello everyone!

Mom, that's a lot of questions at the beginning of your letter here. Basically, I live in the most fortunate apartment in the whole mission. It's really small. Only a room smaller than the carpeted living room at home, and a CR (comfort room: that's what the bathroom is called here) that's about the size of our laundry room. We have a single table in the middle of the room and a bunk bed against the right wall. You may be thinking, "what's so great about that?" What's great is what's against the left wall. Over on that side is a fridge and sink (the standard), but wait. There's more. There's also an oven. A real oven that can be used to make cookies and stuff. And a MICROWAVE!!!!! It had been over a year since I'd pushed the buttons of a microwave until 3 nights ago when we bought some popcorn and popped it all up for an evening treat. It was awesome. What makes it better is there's a washing machine in the laundry area out back, so those are all the things that make it the best apartment ever. 

My area's super sweet. I can't make up my mind if it smells more like Fish Lake, or Havasupi. Either way it's awesome and I love it. We live quite a distance from the ocean unfortunately, like an 8 minute walk. A pity, I know, but we did teach an investigator who lives on a little kubo hut right on the beach. It was pretty sweet! I don't have any excellent sunset photos yet on my camera, but they are stored in my brain's hard-drive and will never be deleted as long as I shall live. :) Jealous? haha

We have a lot of investigators, but almost all of them need to be married before they are baptized, so that's a trial considering it requires 1000Php. That's a high price for a lot of the people here. They are progressing though. We had 9 investigators at church yesterday, so that was sweet. Also as a welcome gift the branch president gave me the opportunity to speak in Sacrament next Sunday. How generous of him! Hopefully my back won't hurt too bad after stooping over a low pulpit for so long. :) I've done it before, so I guess I can do it again. haha

Being a zone leader is super busy. We are teaching zone meeting tomorrow. The zone meeting is based on a meeting that all the leaders have with president Ostler, then they teach all that stuff to their zone. The thing is that I wasn't at that meeting so hopefully I can do alright anyways. :) Wednesday we have exchanges with one of the district leaders. Thursday is district coordination where we meet with the district president of the northern Palawan area and talk about how the missionary work is going. Friday and Saturday are really busy too with the branch here doing a one day mission thing, and lots of other meetings and stuff. It's a lot busier as a zone leader. Rarely if ever do we have a full week just to work. It's busy, but it's fun too. At least it probably is. I haven't had a whole lot of time to figure it all out yet, but my companion is super awesome, Elder Cortez. We have a lot of fun together and laugh a lot as we go about doing good.

My toe is healing super nicely and it doesn't hurt one bit. It still doesn't look nearly as dashing as before, but maybe after I get home and Grandpa works his magic it'll be back to it's previous glory. :) It's good you're so hasty at sending my shoes over. My keens are fine, but It's always a good idea to have at least 2 pairs. If there is more room in that package, the oven in my apartment is just dying to bake some brownies or something. And yes, you were right that some Smarties will never go unappreciated. :) Also feel free to send me a good cookie recipe or two that we could use that's not too hard or expensive. 

I'm jealous you were able to go to the temple. I haven't done an endowment session for an entire year now and expect to wait a while longer considering my time here no Palawan has just begun. I actually just watched a cool video about the Salt Lake temple this morning. It's crazy how many miracles happened to make that temple work out. Temples are so cool. Believe it!

In the airport while coming here to Palawan there was this tourist from Italy sitting close to me, and we started talking. She doesn't speak fluent English so in my brain I just thought to speak Tagalog instead because that's what I do now if someone doesn't know English. It didn't work. hahaha I guess Italians don't speak Tagalog. hahahaha She did know a bit about the church though, that we all had really big families and she even heard about this mormon who had 10 wives and 40 children. I talked to her for a while longer and she wasn't really interested. She's Athiest. Sayang [Alas]!!! She was really friendly though. Also I solved a Rubix cube all by myself for the first time in my life on the plane, so that was a life changing event that must never be forgotten. :)

Last Saturday there was a time that I saw 2 different monkeys within only like 10 minutes. I didn't get the chance to photograph the occasion, but I thought I'd send you a pic of this last monkey I saw in Aborlan to remind you that my life is super awesome. :) I LOVE PALAWAN!!!

that's about all I've got time to say this week, but I do know that I love you all and that the nice ocean breeze is a lot more tasty than city smog. Mahal ko kayo!!!

Elder Fawson

P.S. the internet here is a bit better than Aborlan. I'll attempt to send a photo or two. :)