The blessings of serving others in a mission experience are almost without number... BUT ... there are challenges when we are so far away from "home"! When a beloved family member is ill - we can't be there to hop in the car drive to where they are so that we can offer help that might be needed when they are hospitalized or struggling with health issues. I love my family AND we love the Lord and want to do good work! Sometimes balancing those two things can be challenging! My wise father and sisters have counseled me to focus on the commitment we made to come to the Philippines and work & they will hold down the fort at home. I recognize that I have an amazing family that take turns stepping up to help each other when there is a need. I am VERY thankful for them and that is probably the thing that is foremost in my mind today as we fast and pray for healing of a family member. Many prayers are being offered and miracles requested... but more importantly... praying that our Heavenly Father's will can be accepted by all of us. Our prayers are always answered ... but sometimes they are NOT answered in the way that we hope. We pray for healing, but we also pray for the strength to accept the will of our Lord in the event it is time for them return home to Him. Sometimes the waiting can be agonizing but we are trying to exercise faith. For those of you not familiar with the LDS Church, there is a "prayer roll" in every temple in the world! Anyone that we are thinking of or worrying about, can have their name entered on that prayer roll. It doesn't matter which religious affiliation they have... just that someone loves them enough to ensure that anyone attending the temple can add their prayers to ours. It is comforting to know that and is something I LOVE that about the temples!
OK... I'll leave that subject for now and continue to wait on answers. We had a busy week helping with the new missionaries and assisting with the training of those young leaders. After the training was completed all of the Office Missionaries (handling medical, secretarial English training, and housing) all piled into a van and traveled to the new Bogo District/Zone of our Cebu Philippines mission. We welcomed 20 new missionaries into our mission and got to spend a day with them orienting them, sharing food and introducing them to the President and Sis Fernandez. It was so fun to get to meet them and start getting to know them. One elder is Elder Mendoza and like many Filipinos, is multi-lingual (Tagolog, English, and now Bisaya) BUT... when he learned English, he learned it with a British accent. It is so cute! At first, I thought he was joking but he was fun and has an English vocabulary to match many highly educated English speakers! The drive to the Bogo area was great and encouraging... only taking just over two hours to get there because we left so early in the morning. On the return trip however, it was discouraging and the two-hour drive turned into a four-hour-plus drive because of traffic; it was CRAZY. But we had lots of fun conversation and got a few great pictures on the drive. I'm sure when we finally find a place to live in that area... it will feel far away from where we are now!
I tend to really ramble when I do the blog entry, so I am going to try to include some fun pictures and call it good for this week. So many things.... only happen in the Philippines and we have SOOO much fun with that!
BELOW: This darling sow was clean, pink and pretty and very happy to be going for a ride. Being a fine, healthy, female she has a great chance of being a breeder instead of being eaten which more than can be said for most pigs in the Philippines!
BELOW: More pictures of "Miss Piggy" and one could tell that the folks driving with her were very proud of their pig!
BELOW: A picture of our new Bogo Zone with Pres/Sis Fernandez in the front middle. They are all Filipinos except there is one Sister Training Leader from Australia - Sis Tangilanu.
BELOW: Some of the Elders having fun with Roy! Elder Mendoza is the second from the front on the left side. We don't even know everyone yet, but we WILL know them very soon since we will be LIVING up there and feeding them a LOT!!
BELOW: As usual in this humidity BAD HAIR DAY.... and holding what is left of probably my 100th batch of the new recipe my sister Laura shared with me called "Carmelitas" they are a HUGE hit with the missionaries, and they keep begging for them. This was the last of a huge batch of 100!
BELOW: A quick stop-and-shop for baskets on the way home from Bogo! There is a new couple that hasn't even been here a month. This is Kimber Millard and her & her husband are EASY to love! She is a sourdough queen and brought her own starter from home in San Diego! One more reason I'm fat as Miss Piggy above! Her and her husband Dyke came to do several programs but leading the "English Connect" groups is one of their main duties. Dyke is a computer architect and BOY has he come in handy. Between Kimber being an amazing cook/baker and Dyke doing everything else... our mission is truly blessed with senior couples! It is amazing to share time and space with people like we have met here. Their willingness to volunteer their time and pay their own way to live/work in the Philippines is pretty amazing and we are finding our other senior couples to be new life-long missionary friends!! I'll try to get a good picture of some other missionaries AND... our amazing language trainer Sister Carillo!
We love you all... Amping ... or "take care" in the local dialect.
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