Sagay visit. Oh to be Pretty!

January 28

Sunday we drove to Sagay to visit and try to meet the stake president.  It takes about two and a half hours to drive there.  When we got there the Bishop asked Dan to speak a little bit about PEF.  While we were there we met one of our participants Ronald Empleo.  He plays the organ and teaches Sunday School.  He is a great teacher and we enjoyed Sunday School very much.  He is teaching computers part time at the college he attends working on his 4 year degree.  He has the best smile.  He introduced us to the mother of one of the other participants.  The mother is a very kind and humble woman who expressed worry about her daughter.  The woman is unemployed, separated from her husband and has two small children.  I left a note with her to give to her daughter introducing ourselves and giving her our contact information.  The best part of the meeting was at the end of Relief Society.  The meeting was combined with the Young Women and after the lesson I was visiting with the girls and they wanted to take pictures with us.  While we were visiting and taking pictures, I asked the girls how their Personal Progress was going.  They were excited to find out I was working on Personal Progress also.  I gave them our business card and challenged them to finish their Personal Progress before we finish our mission so I can be there when they receive their medallions'. They took lots of pictures and took many of Dan also.  I think it is so funny that the Philippino people think we are so attractive.  Dan has had two different women compliment him saying "you are so handsome". Today, as we drove up to the church, there were men working on the road and they yelled out "so pretty”.  I was shocked.  I have not been told that I was pretty in so long.  When you get to be my age, "pretty" is not the adjective used to usually describe an older woman.  It was a little surprising. 

 

Favorite road sign

the kids and Dan

Don't touch my stuff

Can't take them anywhere

Faith and Josh with San Carlos Sisters

meet and greet

sunset

Faith and Josh in the Philippines

January 21, 2013

January 20, 2013

The last two weeks has have some of the best memories for me.  We have two new senior church service missionaries called that we were able to teach about PEF.  One couple is from Binalbagan, the Domingos.  Sister Domingo is the older sister of Sister Charry Santilian, the institute secretary, and her husband is also the first counselor in the stake presidency in Binalbagan Stake.  Talk about busy people.  The other couple is from Cadiz stake, the Alquisalas.  Saturday we drove to Binalbagan to orient the Domingo couple and Sunday we drove to Cadiz to train the Alquisaras.  To get to both places take about two hours to drive the 30 miles.  The next weekend we had to drive back to Cadiz to take the Alquisaras their missionary badges and to give them an assignment to find one of the young sisters who needs to finish her paperwork to receive her check for her tuition.  We decided to attend their ward in Manapala also.  What a wonderful ward.  My two experiences happened at their ward meeting. 

As we were driving down the street to the building, we saw an elderly man with his cane hobbling to church.  He was having a hard time, but he was at the next building so we did not want to make him feel bad by picking  him up that close to the church.  When we entered the building he was there and one of the young deacons was trying  to help him tie his tie.  The young deacon was struggling so Dan offered to help him.  As soon as Dan put the tie around his neck all the children surrounded him to watch how he tied the tie.  It looked to me like the pied piper at first.  Then the impression came to me that it was really more like the Savior as he would teach the children.  Tears came to my eyes as I watched Dan teach the children how to tie a tie and then as he placed the tie around the neck of the elderly man and adjusted the knot.  The service was so simple yet he assisted the little ones and the elderly with the same gesture.  Such a simple act but it touched so many!

Then a sweet sister came over to meet me.  I am still surprised at how much the members here desire to meet us and treat us like we are angels sent to minister them.  I have never felt such love and admiration from people who are so warm and humble.  These good people just want to tell us their stories and share their testimonies with us.  So this one sister came over and proudly started to tell me about her nine children.  All of her children served missions and all are married in the temple.  I asked her how she raised such a faithful family.  She said she did not have any idea.  She told me she  had "hit and miss" family home evenings like all families do.  She said they tried to have family prayer every day but sometimes they got so busy they missed .  She also said she took her children to church every Sunday but often her husband would miss because of his work and being tired.  Finally she said I think I was just blessed with obedient spirits.  She said all she felt like she did well was she loved her children, she prayed for them and she tried to set a good example through church service.  What a humble and wonderful woman. 

During Sunday School another sweet  elderly sister leaned over to shake my hand and kiss my cheek ( a traditional greeting).  After she introduced herself she said please don't forget me. I whispered I will never forget her or spending such a short time with her.  I looked into her eyes and tearing up she said, "sister, I love you and will never forget your love for me".  I could hardly contain myself as I thought of how much these good people love us just because we are missionaries.  I have never felt so much love simply for showing up.  Thankfully I have had these wonderful experiences to counter balance my hair disaster.  I ran out of Revlon medium brown hair color to cover  my roots growing out, so I had to by L'Oreal natural brown.  They picture looked the same and so I reasoned it would be ok.  Well I put the color on and left it for only ten of the twenty-five processing minutes just in case.  SURPRISED and HORRIFIED, after I rinsed our the color I had two toned hair.  Black front and roots and brown in the back where I cannot exactly see to cover.  The people and young missionaries love it, but I am so depressed and hope that someday soon the dark color will fade.  Every time I look in a mirror I am reminded again how much I miss my hairdresser, Laurie and her perfect every time color mixture and outcome.     The good news, Philippino women do not know how to say, "What the________"! They think I am "guapa" (beautiful) because I have white skin no matter what my hair looks like.

We had all the Bacolod Zone missionaries over today for a Zone activity.  What a wonderful  group of young people.  The Zone includes two sister companionships, the mission assistants, the financial clerk and office assistant and well as two American missionaries, one sister from Pakastan and the rest Philippino elders.  Dan cooked them lunch and I baked brownies. They all loved everything.  The Zone leader is a Samoan elder who grew up in Salt Lake City and he planned a wonderful  program.  We had a spiritual thought, a great lesson, singing, and  games.  The lesson was so simple yet so profound.  Elder Garcia (the assistant) had half of each companionship stand in the front.  He had each of those standing to choose a rock out of a basket.  They he gave them time to observe and get to know their rock. Then he collected each rock.  The group had to blindfold themselves and then try and choose their rock out of the basket again.  Amazingly we all picked out our own rocks.  Then he had us explain the tools of observation we used to choose our rock without vision.  Each of us had different explanations ranging from the simple "I just knew it was my rock" to "I chose last to I hoped that it was my rock because it was the only one left".  But there were profound ideas   also.  One was he recognized  his rock was flat and oval like a perfect rock to skip on water.  Another elder said he recognized the  nooks and pointed corners of his rock. Essentially, the overall tool of recognition was the time we spent getting to know our rock.  Then Elder Garcia said successful missionaries spent their entire mission getting to know themselves and their purpose for serving. They will have to be introspective and evaluative of their work and service to successfully evaluate the successes.  He also suggested that those reflections will be ever changing as their companions, investigators, and areas change throughout their missions.  It was an insightful lesson, I will ponder over and over again. 

I continually learn from these young missionaries and these humble members of the church here in the Philippines.  I am so thankful for the opportunity I have to learn new and inspiring principals each day of my mission here. 

Life

Well, life moves forward.

January 2013

 

Happy New Year.  Seven months have passed since we began this mission experience.  We are beginning the year 2013.  December was a relatively slow month as Christmas is really celebrated here in the Philippines.  Everyone travels to see their families and takes time off work and school.  Fireworks and firecrackers are a constant from December 24th.  New Years Eve they were so loud it sounded like a war zone.  The skies were filled with smoke and the noise was louder than anything I have ever experienced.  The tradition is to scare all the bad spirits from the previous year away to bring on a better year.  I was woke out of a sound sleep at about 11:30 with the sound of explosions outside our bedroom window and smoke pouring by from all the celebrating.  We were invited to the home of the neighborhood association president and would have walked down to their house, but the street parallel to ours was full of exploding firecrackers and I was too frightened to walk down any street full of smoke and explosions.  What an experience!  From the news we have learned that the injuries suffered from firecrackers this year was down to only 800! Even the very poor enjoy the use of firecrackers and noise even though they are expensive.  It was an experience I will never forget.  We have been told we may be in for a similar experience come the Chinese New Year.  I hope not.

Our daughter Faith and her boyfriend Josh came to the Philippines to visit us for five glorious days from Dec 26-31.  I was so excited to see them, that it seemed like they were the last ones to get their bags and head out of the airport.  I tried not to cry but that was useless.  They brought a suitcase full of needed items for us from home including q-tips, tide pens, tortillas, razors, onion soup mix, Iron out, chilies, salt, lotion, and many more things. We traveled over the mountain to San Carlos to introduce them to our Perpetual Education Participants one day driving through the rice terraces, mountain fern grove, and past he water falls to the summit where you can see the ocean on the other side of the island.   Everyone was thrilled to meet Faith and touch her blond hair.  Of course most of the people just stared at her because she is so fair and has that light blond hair and blue eyes.  By the end of the trip Faith wished she had a black wig to wear! We also drove to the mountain resort called Mambukal.  It is beautiful there with hot water springs, a butterfly pavilion and beautiful running streams running throughout the rain forests.  The final day we traveled to see an accessorial sugar cane home and then to the beautiful ruins of another sugar plantation.  The second plantation was built by a plantation owner for his beautiful wife and thirteen children.  When WWII began they family burned the interior of the home so the Japanese could not use it as one of their headquarters.  The walls are covered in a cement stucco with and egg white mix to make the walls glow at sunset.  It is very beautiful.  The grounds are well kept gardens with a fountain and large grass area used for weddings.  Faith and Josh were amazed by the poverty, traffic, people and the way things transpire day to day.  That is not surprising as even thought we have been here seven months we are still caught off guard by many of the particularities we see every day. 

We were sorry to see Faith and Josh leave, but with the new year starting it was time for everyone to get back to work (especially us) .We  have a list of things we need to handle before the month passes including training new church service missionaries, renewing applications, interviewing those close to graduation and our regular monthly work.  We are also expecting to be assigned to another mission soon (the Cebu Mission) which will add two more islands to our area and open the calls and training of many more service missionary couples.  That is a vital part of our call as the participants then have local mature couples who live close to them to assist and serve them as they travel the education and career start paths.  The local couples called are angels and work miracles keeping the young students successful in their school work and their loan repayment commitment.  We could never do our calling without their support and service. 

We are so blessed to live in a beautiful home on the water's edge and enjoy the air conditioning, hot water and comforts of our home here in Bacolod.  It allows us the rest from our labors we need to keep going.  We have also been blessed with good health and strong bodies which enable us to continue to do the Lord's work here.  May the Lord bless you with a prosperous and Happy New Year.