The San Ildefonso branch YW held a joint activity with the YW in the Manorwood ward in America via Skype. They enjoyed sharing information about the different cultures. They liked just talking and finding out about each other. Some are now following each other on Instagram.
After the Skype session, we decided to make some delicious food. Together we made lemon bars, chicken and pork adobo with rice, and a green mango crunch, We all had a fun time. I love working with the YW here. They are the best!
Below we are cutting up the green mango. I don't really think they are a favorite fruit here, but they reminded me of sour green apples, so I decided we would try to make a mango crunch. It was very tasty.
The picture below is prepared 'jack fruit'. It was cooked in a sugar sauce and was very sweet and a lot of work just separating the edible part of the fruit from the rest.
Here we are enjoying the reward for our hard work.
Elder Swift and I stopped in to watch a little of our District YM friendly basketball tournament. The Bustos Branch team was the overall winner.
On February 21st the Senior missionaries had an outing to the Sarao Dyipny (Jeepney) factory and the church with the Bamboo Organ of Las Pinas City.
The jeepney is built mostly by hand in this open air factory. They import used engines from Japan. The jeepney is one of the major methods of transportation used here in the Philippines.
The Jeep idea came from the American jeeps used during and left here after WWII. The decoration ideas come from the old rickshaw type carriages of the Philippines. Some are very elaborately decorated on the outside. The insides are crowded and not very comfortable.
Below is a picture of Elder and Sister Rogers next to a model of the Jeepney.
Next we visited St Joseph Parish Church in Las Pinas City that is home to this very old bamboo organ. It took 8 years to build from 1816-1824. It was built by Fr. Diego Cera, a very gifted man, who also built the church. A typhoon in 1880 damaged the bamboo organ so it wasn't playable until it was restored in Germany from 1973-1975 and then returned back to the Philippines. The organ is a Philippine National Treasure.
The inside of the church is much the same as 200 years ago.
This is typical street market; you can see how close the market is to our car as as we are driving down the street.
For lunch we stopped at the Outback in Makati, a very modern part of the Philippines (so different than the area where we live and go to church.) What a enjoyable day for a break from our work.
