March 26, 2013

We teach English Conversation class and the Planning for Success workshop which is a requirement prior to making an application for the PEF loan. We also are responsible for contacting all the PEF participants monthly. The good news is we have three missions of participants but two of those missions have local Church Service couple missionaries to do the contacts and visits for us leaving only about 200 for us. The real difficulty is finding the ones who have dropped out of school, stopped paying their monthly commitments and as a result usually go inactive. Thankfully that number is only about 30 and we continue to search for them via ward/branch leaders, internet, Facebook, and going to their last known address. In reality there are no addresses here in the Philippines though. They live in barangays(groups of shacks) and we can just ask if anyone knows them and then try to find them. We have never found anyone that way. I hope before we go home we find one that way. The most successful way is Facebook. I am so thankful for technology. I use it daily!! Well I use it when it is working. The Internet, electricity and water, etc. often goes on the blink and we are left waiting for it to resume. That is when we do the street searching because we just can't bring ourselves to sit in the hot office (part of the Institute) and wait. Our third mission was just added to our area of responsibility in February and we will be visiting the leaders after Holy week (we are told everything closes down here then). The mission is two large islands with the second largest metropolitan area after Manila. We live in a fairly large city called Bacolod, but it is very rural. I am excited to spend time in a real city. When we have gone for training in Manila I have loved it. There are real stores, malls, transportation and a more modern landscape including high rise buildings, unlike where we live. We will train the priesthood leaders there and beg them to call church service couple missionaries to assist in the PEF locally. The Philippino couples rarely can afford to serve couple missions (I have only met two) so the couples love being called, set apart, get real badges, and serve a real mission while they live and work in their own homes. These couples visit all the wards in their stakes to keep in contact with their students and that lightens my burden some. My contacts now cover about 7 larger islands. Prior to getting the new mission we would get to those islands in rotation seems once every three or four months. We expect to spend weeks in the new mission getting the service missionaries called and trained. We are excited about the new addition to our work.

It is summer now in the Philippines so the Institute is quieter and there is less energy here as all the students are off enjoying their time off school and Institute. I have to say I love this weather. It is much less humid so we do not walk around sweating all the time. The Philippino's think it is terribly hot, but it is so nice to have a little less humidity. Of course we are desert rats, so it is not our normal to live in this humid climate.

We have many new missionaries arriving ever couple of weeks. The Philippino missionaries only go to Manila Mission Training Center for two weeks and then are sent to their missions. Due to the lowering of missionary age requirement, the other couple missionaries are finding and furnishing apartments like crazy. In fact they have set up at least twenty new apartments in the last two months alone. They expect that to slow down a bit now. We are not part of that work and do not have to do apartment checks for cleanliness or do any of the moving of missionaries luckily due to the call of PEF. Our Bacolod Mission has 4 other senior couple missionaries that do the normal senior missionary work. Iloilo Mission also have 4 senior couples other than ourselves. Since we have not been to Cebu Mission we do not know how many they have. That mission will be split in July making our mission responsibility four total missions. We are hoping we get all the service missionaries set up before that split, but do not know for sure if that will happen.