Good Bye Beautiful Coron

This has been another good week. Very busy. My companion and I created and presented a leadership training seminar for the branch. Lots of people attended and it was very interactive and we had lots of participation. It was really fun. The plan for Coron is that when it gets strong enough here we will be able to expand to all the islands that we can see around us. Including lots of little settlements and towns around the island. So we are working hard to set Coron up as the foundation. It will take years but there is lots of progress everyday. We got to go Island hopping today for P-day with permission. We had to get special permission straight from our mission pres but we went to Kayangan Lake by boat!!! Oh man. It's so nice!!! Look it up!! It's the purest lake in all of the Philippines!!!! It was so dang fun and beautiful!!! You would not even believe it! !t's a lake in the mountain of a small neighboring island. 

Purest Lake in all of Philippines

Words can't describe this lake

Elder Tu'ua and Mt. Tapias in the background that we climbed sometimes

Yep, fish

So we got to climb up this mountain a ways and then check out the lake. While we were climbing up I accidentally bumped into somebody and said "oops sorry" and helped them up. The family that we went with laughed and said "oh man Elder Roberts, that's a famous actress in the Philippines! Everyone loves her!"  Haha so that was unusual.  So see, I do know Philippine culture.  It was incredible. So beautiful. A great way to spend my last P-day here. I will be transferred in a couple days. Today on P-day I got to talk to a tourist from France while we were on the beach skipping rocks. He said he actually saw missionaries before in Tokyo, and again in California, and now here in the Philippines. So it's cool that the missionaries just keep approaching him and talking to him, he loves to talk to us.

Brother Herman made all of these matching shirts for us!

We chose lucky #16 of course (my soccer #)

This may or may not have been a little staged

Heavenly Father prepares people little by little. This man from France is just a small example of people we get to talk to all the time. But Heavenly Father is aware of all his children. So I'm being transferred. But you will hear more about it from the mission I think. I'm being sent to the richest part of the Philippines. Extremely cosmopolitan. Lots and lots of wealthy people... is perhaps an understatement. Lots of international people as well. My new area is Makati. Makati is one of the sixteen cities that make up Metro Manila. The city of Makati has a total land area of about 10 miles.  Though the population of Makati is about half a million, the daytime population of the city is estimated to be more than one million during a typical working day because of the large number of people who go to the city to work, shop and do business.  I'm about 20 min. from the airport.  There are 2 stakes in Makati, so that will be very different for me coming from Coron where we have just a branch.  It will be sad to leave this beautiful island and the people.  So I'm leaving Coron in 2 days and can pick up the packages that have been sitting there at the mission home for me then. Thank you a million times over!!!  Apparently the internet is amazing on the mainland. So I look forward to that!!!  I love you all and thank you for your supportive emails, I live for them, I love you,
Elder Roberts