Santa Monica is Great!

Wow!
I just read that article about those 10 sister missionaries, almost cried about 15 times while reading it.

Article: Surviving the typhoon: Fear, faith and miracles for 10 LDS sister missionaries trapped in the Philippines

I cannot believe what they had to go through. It is amazing how hard the church has worked to make sure all those missionaries where safe. I can't believe how hard that must have been for them. What a miracle that they were all safe. Especially being a missionary here, and knowing the culture and everything, that really would be a very, very difficult thing to do.

I hope I can answer all your questions... there was a lot in there.
So this past week, we did a service project for the survivors. It was coordinated (sort of) by Abs-Cbn here in Puerto. We packed supplies and clothes and things to send to the people down there in Tacloban. They actually filmed us serving... and being one of the only white guys there, I actually ended up on the news here, pretty cool. I cannot believe the destruction from the typhoon..

Oh, yes things are great here in Santa Monica. It's one branch but there are two areas, Santa Monica A and B. President Maico is our branch president. He is super awesome! Super cool that the Sister you met served here way back when.

We are going to be getting 15 missionaries here on the 18th of December. They were originally going to come here today, but they are going to wait for the next transfer. I was going to get 4 new sisters in my district, but now they will come on the 18th. All of the names of the missionaries in my district are: Sister Fancisquete- from Davao, Sister Jones - Utah-I think? Sister Bechichino-from Tacloban, Sister Delietubuna-from Fiji. Yep, my whole district is Sisters, except for me and Elder Aguinaldo of course...there is another district pretty close to us here though. Sister Brockbank-Utah, Sister Thompson- Idaho, Elder Osguthorpe-Utah and some more... but those are probably the ones you will be able to find. Sorry, I am out of time now.

Love you guys,
Elder Schroeder