Missed ANOTHER week... hate it when that happens, but the week just got away from us! We had another senior zone conference, AND a big humanitarian activity! Most of our pictures are fun ones from the humanitarian event BUT... to start with, we found red bananas this week. We are in the banana capital of the world and we don't see red bananas very often .... Verrrryyyyy yummy. They can be described as "creamy" and somewhat "flowry" and so far they are my favorites.
We are saying goodbye to a very wonderful senior missionary couple as they close out the work they have done for 18 months. Mike and Zinda Welch are life-long educators in the Utah/Idaho areas and have been working in our Cebu mission office and conducting a program called "English Connect" as well as other assignments. They work very closely with any missionaries who do not speak English as their first language, and work with them for the entire mission time of 18-24 months to help improve their English language skills. It is a voluntary program, but it works really well and most missionaries participate in it because of the enhanced business & life skills the course provides. The Welches teach weekly lessons to hundreds of missionaries. They work hard and we LOVE them and will miss them! We take them to the airport tomorrow and there WILL be tears!
We participated in an area fast the past two weeks to ask our Heavenly Father to bless the area with rain and to help alleviate the problems of the drought in the Philippines. We also participated in a huge humanitarian activity to assemble emergency food and water kits for the local people suffering because of the lack of water and crop failures. I have never had SO much fun at a hard-working activity! Many businesses donated food and what wasn't donated, was purchased by the Area Office. We met for 2-3 hours to assemble kits. They set up long lines of tables and started assembling various food items ranging from mung beans to ramen soup, canned fish, water, and other items. They blasted fun rock music and little kids were dancing to the music on top of giant pallets of five-kilo rice bags while the rest of us worked to assemble 4,000 (yes 4 thousand!) food kits! Two days later folks gathered again to distribute those food kits to all of the local area people in need. The whole activity was organized chaos and we had a LOT of fun! I'll try to include some pictures.
BELOW: My FAVORITE picture is our very own President Fernandez carrying water containers down the hall!
BELOW: our very own mission doctor (Elder Heath).... with the heat and humidity we saw some pretty interesting hair that night! EXCEPT the gorgeous Filipinos!! (its NOT fair!)
BELOW: happy young people who worked their butts off!
BELOW: Roy in the back counting bags
BELOW: some local, HARD working folks helping Pres. Fernandez
BELOW: "organized chaos"
BELOW: Sisters Torres & Amai smiling about their homemade mango jam AND a big jar of peanut butter. We LOVE these sisters!
ABOVE: Our Kamputhaw sister missionaries Sis. Dela Cruz and Sis. Edrada ... we LOVE - them! and the cute boys in the front are some of our Bishops nephews. What do I keep telling you - alllllll Filipino children are beautiful!
BELOW: a picture of our senior zone conference; left to right (back row) elders Heath, Webb, Hansen, Welch, Pres. Fernandez, Damstedt, Cary and Epperson. Front row left to right: sisters Heath, Webb, Hansen, Welch, Sis. Fernandez, Damstedt, Cary, Beesley and Epperson
Finally last picture (bad hair day for me AGAIN!) our 'Filipino pose" ... Filipinos ALWAYS look gorgeous in photos. When you ask to take a picture they pose in a very specific way and it works! Look how good us old ladies look! (Therese Heath, me & Wendy Beesley)
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