Hey Family! Well this week has been good. The first part of this week was really rainy, and it flooded everywhere. The river in our area rose about 60 feet and flooded some places. The church in an area about 45 minutes away was flooded really badly. The water was about 6 inches from the ceiling. Lots of towns flooded cause they don't have good gutters and things here, they're full of garbage so the water doesn't flow out of them. But yeah, nothing too bad happened, and nobody died that I know of. I mean floods are bad, but not as bad as the floods that were in Cagayan De Oro that killed 1000+ people and destroyed everything. Here it just flooded, and the water flow was slow so people's homes weren't destroyed. But the last part of this week has been blazing hot. Thats how it is here. We did a service project this week, and helped a member cut down bamboo, carried it to his house, and made a fence. It was pretty intense work. It was about a half mile walk from his house to the river where the bamboo is, and it was just mud about knee deep. We didn't even bother wearing sandals or anything cause they would just get sucked off and be way slippery. So we cut it down, and then I carried 90 pounds of bamboo 1/2 mile in knee deep mud to the guys house. 4 times. Good exercise. My shoulders were pretty sore afterward! But it was a fun experience. Saturday of course was New Year. Filipinos like new year a lot more than they do Christmas, that's for sure. My companion, Elder Capinpin, said they spend about 20% percent of their budget on Christmas, and then the rest on New Years. They love fireworks, and things that make loud noises. They have these big bamboo cannon things and other cannon things they make out of cans taped together. Pretty thrifty. They also cooks tons of food! The fireworks here are way dangerous though. People are always getting fingers and hands blown off and other things injured. They have signs up everywhere with this bloody hand missing a couple of fingers that says be careful with fireworks and stuff like that. You'd think they'd learn after so many people getting hurt every year, but apparently not! We had to be in at 6 on New Years Eve. Pretty boring with just us two at the house! New Years is pretty crazy though. Once it hits 12:00 thousands of fireworks go off and they are so loud and you can't see more than 20 feet because of the smoke. This week wasn't very effective for missionary work however, since everyone was just busy preparing for New Years, or just drunk. So we're glad thats over so we can get some work done. Well, it was good talking to you last week! Thanks for all you do, and all your support, I couldn't do it without you! I love you all! Love, Greg