Our Christmas in the Baguio Mountains

Dear Family and Friends,
    Here for our Christmas Holidays, we are grateful to be here on our Urdaneta Philippines Mission, although we very much miss our families at this time of year.

Our Mission President Monahan and his wife arranged for themselves and the Senior Couples to go on a holiday to a Mountain Baguio resort.  We all paid our own way, hotels, food.   It was wonderful, and helpful as we were missing our families during the Christmas week.

  Baguio is in Northern Luzon, the largest Philippine island, that we reside on. We live down from the West coastline,  below and inland from the little dip of the pennisula.

We live below Dagupan, 

 Calasiao is shown on this map.
 

We started out with a prayer, and along the way in Porzorrubio, there was a road with leaning trees,,,

  Elder Roberts got more excited as we started up the mountains.  We miss our Wales, Utah mountain valley home.

We saw a beautiful Mary and baby Jesus Christ statue

We also saw a place that makes favorite "heroes and heroines".

Elder Bell wanted to visit a "walking bridge" over a river to a waterfall.  It took a while to find it, even though I had taken a pic of it on the way up- out the window.   We arrived ,    and,   oh wow,   I didn't think I could walk across like...this pic- that I took of Elder and Sister Bell,,,

 
We tried to be brave- 

(We tried to be brave like Sister Roberts brother- Elder and Sister Martin in Guam Micronesia Mission.)  The next 3 pictures are of them. They seem to do daring things weekly on their Guam P-days.  Check out their blog too:
http://micronesianmission.blogspot.com
 

  This is one of the several P-day hikes of my brother Elder and Sister Martin
 

We - Elder and Sister Roberts did make it across the bridge and  had our pic taken next to the waterfall.

 We continued with the Sr. Couples on our trip.  We saw Lion's Head built with wood by the Lion's Club in 1972.

We arrived in Baguio, and went to our Forest Lodge Hotel in Camp John Hay .  We really didn't know it would be as nice as a Utah Park City Lodge.  It is almost too much of fanciness in the Philippines.

We had a lovely dinner with Elder and Sister Bell, Pres. and Sister Monahan, us, and Elder and Sister Shamrell. 

We even got to see a real bearded Santa Claus.  His cute little daughter was there.  I showed her my magic glasses, she asked "Santa" if he would please get it for Christmas for her.   We learned she is the Krispy Kreme Poster Child.  We gave her and many other people the Jesus Christ pic with   articles of faith  card.
 

Then we went outside to the lights in the yard, and the Carnival.

The next day, we went to see The Mansion, the summer residence of the political Pres. of the Philippines.  We didn't get to go inside though.  We met Scott and  Lolita Smith, an LDS family from Bountiful Utah, visiting  family here.    Here is also Sister Shamrell and Sister Bell.

 We went to the SM mall.  We learned we can be just as satisfied with our smaller mall where we live.  There was an interesting Bread Store.    When we left to go home, there were about 150 people in line to grab a taxi.  But, since we are "Sr. Citizens", we were grateful-they put us at the  front of the line.  We gave out many Articles of Faith cards today.

We tried to Skype our families at the Martin Christmas Party on Temple Square in the Joseph Smith bldg. in a beautiful Empire room on the main floor.  But the Skype didn't work well in our Hotel room.  We only got to make a Skype phone call and talk to about 4-5 people.  

Here is a pic of the party last year in 2013, before we came on our Mission.  Look at the beautiful Temple Square lights outside.  I am sooo honored to have be here in this room with our families, now every Dec. 23, it is reserved for us for 20 years ! Thank you my parents, David and Virginia Martin for making us feel so special here, while thousands of people walked past us.   

The next day, Christmas Eve, we all rented 1 van and went to see the sites, the first was Mines View Park, a touristy area.

 
 We put on the Traditional Igorot or Cordilleran outfits. The horse is alive, the mane is colored Pink !

There were lovely flowers for sale.

We saw a delightful gift shop.  There is - no "gift shops" of "Native crafts" where we live. Elder Roberts saw some rocks - that he believed was real gold ore.  But they weren't for sale.  We talked with the owners, and gave out Article of Faith cards.

We went into the town of Baguio.  Some hills were covered with Philippine homes, some nice, some very humble homes, many were so close together, you'd think there is no building codes....

Then, we got to go to the Strawberry Fields, which also grows other vegs.  Here with us is Elder and Sister Shamrell.  

  We had fresh strawberry ice cream.  Pres. Monahan is showing a boy the "disappearing thumb trick". 

We had a great buffet back at the Hotel that night for our Christmas Eve celebration.   Later, Elder Roberts read to Sister Roberts from the Bible about Jesus Christ's birth in our room.

Again on this Christmas Eve night, we share with you the wonderful video of Jesus Christ- He is the Gift.

Click on these words:   He is the Gift

We are grateful for our blessings to be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  We love our families, friends and love to serve in our Urdaneta, Philippines Mission.  We have loved meeting new people, new towns, beautiful new sites.

Love,

Elder and Sister Roberts