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To start, I’d just like to say that this blog is for entertainment purposes.  While this deals with the life of a Mormon missionary, it is not meant as a tool of conversion for people who aren’t Mormon.  Rather, it is a venue for me to describe the life of a North American living in a remote part of the Philippines.

I served as a missionary in the Philippines Tacloban Mission from October 1998 to October 2000.  During this time, I diligently kept a journal.  This blog is a collection of most of those journal entries.  I will leave out only the most extremely personal entries and the extremely boring entries, but I will try to leave most in an attempt to paint a clear picture of what my life was like in southeast Asia.  My mission was the most interesting two years of my life, and it has been long enough now that the stories are fading in my memory, and I figure this is a good way to refresh them.

A note: a lot has changed in my life since late ’90s.  One of the major changes is my stance on politics.  Before, during, and immediately after my mission, I was quite conservative.  This will come across in some entries, and do not, in all cases, reflect my current liberal views.  Most notably is probably my stance on homosexuality.  Today, I support gay marriage and have no problem with the LGBT community as a whole.  Also, while I am still an active Mormon, my attitude towards the Church has changed.  For a full explanation on my religious beliefs, if you’re interested, go here.

If you're not in the mood for reading every entry (there are quite a few of them), click on the "Points of Interest" tab for links to some of the more interesting entries.

Anything written in (italics) is commentary that I am providing as I transcribe my journals.  Most of it is translations of Tagalog, Cebuano, and Waray-Waray.  Sometimes it's an explanation of missionary slang.  Other times, I'm providing further details and explanations.

Journal #1

Journal #2