Week 65--September 18-24, 2016

The flowers at the mission home are beautiful.

 The orchids grow from baskets that are attached to the tree.

The roots wrap around the tree and get moisture from the air. 

 The roots of the palm tree lifts the whole tree out of the ground as it grows.

 One of the fruits that in season right now. This is a rambutan. It has spines on the outside. It is peeled like an orange. The fruit inside is translucent with a pit. The fruit is very juicy and  tasty.






Our Senior Activity on Wednesday, September 21, was to visit Malacañan Palace Presidential Museum and Library. It was originally built as summer home for a wealthy Spanish merchant in 1750. It was sold in 1802 to the Manila governor for P1000. It was later sold to the Spanish colonial government. The palace has survived fires, earthquakes, typhoons, and World War II.

The couples gather for a group photo. Left to right: Elder and Sister Rogers, Elder and Sister Swift, Elder and Sister Harrington, President and Sister Bertin, Elder and Sister Broadhead, and Elder and Sister Bremner.  

 Our guide telling about the famous balcony where Ferdinand Marcos made his last public appearance before being exiled to Hawaii.

 We pose for a photo on the same balcony.

 The wood carvings in the palace were beautiful. This carving was above a doorway. The ceiling was amazing.

Chess set displayed in what was once the ballroom. Today it is the Presidental Palace Walkway.

 Hand carved table.

Colonial style arches on the marble walkway.

 Inlaid floors were neatly crafted.

We are all ready to dive into the pizza to end our day.











We had Stake Conference on Saturday and Sunday, September 17-18, with one of the Philippines Area Seventy, Elder Tobias. He spoke on Saturday about Ward Councils and  changing from Philippine culture to Church culture. Sunday he spoke about patterns of righteousness. As an introduction he told the story of Juan de la Cruz. Seems Juan de la Cruz, a Filipino, spent some time in Paris, France. Juan didn't speak a lick of French, so on his first morning, when he opened his window, his neighbor said, "Bon Jour." Juan presumed that Bon Jour meant Ano ang pangalan mo? (What's your name?) So he replied, "Juan de la Cruz." After several days of this routine of responding "Juan de la Cruz" he decided he would ask his neighbor what his name was, so the next morning when he opened the window, Juan spoke first and said, "Bon Jour." His neighbor replied, "Juan de la Cruz."Some of our patterns are not based on truth. After the conference we attended a funeral for a sister who lived in our Ward.

The last of the Zone Conferences happened this week. Garnalee and Tom went in to listen to Sister Bertin's talk on Diligence. Just as Garnalee sat down, she received a text that she was going to speak in church on Sunday and her topic was "Families Can Be Eternal." Sister Bertin shared a story from Elder Marvin J. Ashton about riding on a train and the conductor asking, "What is your destination?" and responding to Elder Ashton's answer with, "We will be at your destination in 10 minutes?" We many times think we have arrived at our destination when in reality we have just reached a station along the road to our destination. The story fit in perfectly with the talk Garnalee prepared for Sunday.

Saturday evening we went to see the remake of "Magnificent 7." Denzel Washington stars in the Western. There was some excellent acting in the movie and we enjoyed it. 

Week 64--September 11-17, 2016

A hammock strung between two trees along side the road provides the perfect place for an afternoon siesta. The hammock was barely wide enough for his body. He was resting along side Camarin Road that has provided us with an obstacle course for several weeks.

We can only speculate but this car looks like it was involved in an attempted escape from the drug deal. We suspect this vehicle will be left on the side of the road for some time as a warning to would be drug dealers.









Tom had the opportunity on Sunday, September 11, to exercise his priesthood and give a blessing to Brother Richard Jayme Mondejar. He was giving a presentation as part of his certification process to become a teacher of English, Math, and Science.

The highlight of this week was Mission Tour with Elder Evan A. Schmutz, second counselor in the Philippine Area Presidency, and Sister Cindy Schmutz. He was in our mission Tuesday through Thursday. We had the opportunity to attend the meeting on Thursday. He talked about the Doctrine of Christ. He put on the board faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. He then bracketed the first four and asked the missionaries how long they work with an investigator to achieve those four items. They said about four weeks. Then he pointed out that the last item, enduring to the end, the new member has the rest of their life to work on. The goal of the missionary should be to get the investigator well founded in the gospel and pointed to the temple so that they have the basis for enduring to the end. He shared many personal stories while serving as a missionary and Mission President of the Philippines Cebu Mission. We were spiritually fed.

On Wednesday, September 14, Elder and Sister Bremner arrived from Canada as the newest senior couple in our mission. They are excited to be serving. He said that when he joined the Church at the age of 28 they set a goal to serve a mission together. They will live in Baliwag and serve in the Bustos Branch fulfilling their calling of MLS (Member Leader Support) missionaries. They will do whatever the Branch President asks them to do and to assist the young missionaries.

Thursday evening we had the opportunity to have dinner with Elder and Sister Schmutz and to be taught by a General Authority of God. His focus was on the amazing work happening in the Philippines, since missionary work began with only four missionaries in 1961 only 55 years ago. Today there are 21 missions, thousands of foreign and local missionaries, and 3/4 of a million members. There are more church buildings per member than any other country in the world.

We had our Stake Conference this weekend. Our Ward had been asked to sing in the Saturday night adult session. We have been practicing for several weeks. The songs were to be on the Restoration of the Gospel so we sang: What Was Witnessed in the Heavens? (Hymn No. 11) and An Angel from on High (Hymn No. 13). The focus of the adult session was on Ward Councils and Filipino culture vs Church culture. The members were encouraged to replace the Filipino culture with the Church culture of Family Home Evening, scripture study, going on missions, keeping the Sabbath Day holy, attending the temple and being sealed as families, and being a full tithe payer.

Week 63--September 4-10, 2016

Blue Sister Day: Tuesday was the first day of Zone Conferences for this transfer, Sister Bertin, Sister Gamolo, and Sister Harrington just happened to all dress in blue and white.

Our drive to the office has become similar to an obstacle course. A new water line is being installed and then the road is being resurfaced. We are going to slow for the motorcycle. Usually they pass on the right side of the car but this one did pass on the left of the car.

You have to be careful not to get too close to the edge as you drive by where concrete will be poured for the new road. It has been pretty scary as Tom had to be pretty close to the edge when there has been a car on the opposite side of the road. With the one foot shoulder, if we were to drive off the edge, we'd have to call a tow truck.

 The motorcycle can go around the barricade on the right side and continue on down the road however we had to do as the Jeepney is doing, and go around the left side.  Pretty dicey when two vehicles pass each other.

The worker is waving us on past this barricade. You can see the pock marked pavement which is done by a huge jack-hammer.  They seem to be really good at tearing up the road, but it takes forever to finish the project.

Another barricade. Fortunately no cars from the other direction so we don't have to squeeze by.

Then we come to the heavy equipment. They expect us to make two lanes out of narrow lane.










Tom has been busy preparing rent papers and tax forms for each of the 70 apartments for the last quarter of 2016. The next time will be when he training his replacement, Elder Dickson.

Garnalee is always working on several batches of exiting missionaries. The work on a new batch starts five months before they actually exit. This week she had to move the folders for the February batch to the Departing drawer.

Just to show that we don't work all of the time this was movie weekend. The remake of Pete's Dragon arrived in the Philippines. Garnalee would show the original on reward days when she taught fourth grade. As the movie started she thought she was going to be disappointed but she wasn't. A great move for the family. Then on Saturday we went to see Sully with Tom Hanks. We loved the movie Captain Phillips that he stared in about the container ship off the coast of Ethiopia. He did a great job in Sully.

Week 62--August 28-September 3, 2016

Tom has been busy making book safes in the evening for the recent batch of arrival missionaries. He is making them from copies of the Book of Mormon that were printed incorrectly with the covers attached upside down. He does that cutting out the centers of each page and then when the cavity is through all of the pages, He glues the pages together. The result is a what looks a regular book but upon the front cover one sees a space for budgeting envelopes of other valuables. The whole process take about five hours.To receive a  book safe the missionary has to be faithful in keeping a budget for a month and knowing where the money from each support has been spent. When Tom does his finance presentation on arrival day he gives each missionary a set of labeled envelopes to put the money in which teaches them how to budget available resources and realize that each category has limits. The missionary gets to choose how much goes into each envelope but they quickly understand that once decided the goal is live within their means. Each missionary needs to report to Tom a couple of times during the month to let him know how they are doing.

Garnalee has been asked to teach Sharing Time once a month in Primary. Sunday was her turn. The theme this month has been "My Body is Temple of God." She was to teach about keeping the mind clean. She did some online searching and found a great lesson using a quote from President Thomas S. Monson, "Your mind is a cupboard, and you stock the shelves. Let us make certain that our cupboard shelves, and those of our family members, are stocked with the things which will provide safety to our souls and enable us to return to our Father in Heaven. Such shelves could well stocked with gospel scholarship, faith, prayer, love, service, obedience, example, and kindness. (2005)" She then had different cans of food labeled with each of those traits and discussed them with the children, and then the can was placed in a pretend cupboard.

On Tuesday we went to the Fairview Zone and attended the Elijah District meeting. Elder Antonio gave a workshop on ponderizing scriptures using the talk from last General Conference by Elder Durrant. Tom and Garnalee left the meeting with a renewed commitment to start again selecting a weekly scripture to ponderize.

Tom gave the spiritual thought at our weekly office meeting on Friday. He used the thought a week ago when he was asked to be the concluding speaker in Sacrament meeting as we arrived at Church. He was grateful that he had prepared the thought early.

When we went shopping on Saturday, Christmas decorations were being put up at the entrance of the mall and Christmas music was being played over the speaker system. Only in the Philippines.