Quail Eggs and a Boodle Fight

In the Philippines you can find quail eggs in the grocery store right alongside normal chicken eggs.

 See how small they are, and they are speckled.

 They come in these little egg cartoons that hold two dozen.  It cost 61 pecos for the 24, which is about 5 cents per egg.  A dozen chicken eggs cost about 87 pecos which is about 15 cents per egg.

 Here you see a quail egg, a hard boiled quail eggs, and one cut in half.  Also a regular chicken egg for comparison.  You have to eat quite a few quail eggs to equal one chicken egg.  The quail eggs taste pretty much the same only more concentrated.  They both taste a little different to me compared to eggs back home.

 One Monday we had an activity with the young missionaries in our Baliwag Zone.  It was a Boodle Fight.  Everyone brings rice and some main dish to put on the rice, and you lay it out on banana leaves.

Then you eat from whatever leaf you want.  They eat with their fingers.  It was good.

Baptism of three little girls and then a Dancing Activities

We had three baptisms on Friday.  Three little girls.  One was a child of record member baptism and two were convert baptisms.  They all live together in the same family compound.  Out here in the Philippines they often live all surrounded by their relatives making up a compound.

 On Saturday we had District activities where all five Branch met together.  In the morning was Youth Got Talent.  Each Branch put on a talent display.  Ours featured dancing and singing.  This is our Branch.

 This is an action shot during the dance.

   We took second place out of five.  Pretty good.  Many district activities for the youth involve the branch preparing a dance to perform.

 In between the youth activity and the adult activity Sister Swift had some of her institute students over for pizza to celebrate the end of the year.  The first pizza turned out great but the second one was supper thick, like bread with a layer of pizza on top.

 Here are two Joshua and Gilbert eating pizza.

 Then in the evening was an adult dance for 30 and above.  These are some members of our Branch dancing.  Each Branch had to do a performance.

 Here we are as part of the dance performance.   Sister Swift won a prize for the best dressed in our Branch. 

Here we are with four of our friends, the Vitangcols and the Wilsons. The title of the event was "You Can Dance."  Whereas the title of the youth activity was "Youth Got Talent."  What are they trying to tell us by the titles, that we can still dance even though we're old.

Sister Swift with some of the other Sisters: Gina, Gemma, Priscilla, and Jenny.

General Conference 2016

In the Philippines we have General Conference a week later than back home, because of the time difference.( 11:00 am Sunday in Utah is 1:00 am Monday in the Philippines)   It is recorded on the weekend it's held in Salt Lake City, then we watch it on the weekend after.

This is the Sunday morning session in San Ildefonso, our Branch.   We showed English in the chapel on a TV and Tagalog on our laptop in the Relief Society room.  It was interesting, we got about three times as many people going to the English version compared to the Tagalog room.  That's because it's dubbed in the Tagalog version so the lips don't match, and they talk really fast because it takes a lot more Tagalog words to say the same thing that was said in English, and also because they speak in Deep Tagalog (which is more formal and educated, and is hard for some to understand).

We heard a lot of great talks.  My favorite one was by Russell M. Nelson on joy.  He said that circumstances have very little to do with the joy we feel in our lives; but the focus of our lives has everything to do with it.  Read his talk to learn all about it.  I also thought a lot of the speakers talked about how challenging a time we live in, with the world in commotion because of natural disasters and economic and political instability and terrorism and such, and we should not be surprised by this because it has been foretold.

 We got to do our waffle tradition this conference since a waffle stand opened up in the mall near our house.  We went over on Saturday to get some of their waffles.

 They were pretty good (masarap), but thinner and not nearly as delicious as the ones we are used to back home.  They make the waffle and I chose a strawberry topping.

 Then we hurried home and I added mango fruit (this is the Philippines), ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup.  It was great, but it made me a little homesick and wishing we could watch conference and eat waffles with some of our children and grandchildren.

This is Elder Arcayos.  He had been assigned in San Ildefonso with us for seven months and is done with his mission now.. This picture was taken the Monday before he went home.  He was a great missionary and we really liked him.  A first I thought he was a big goof-ball but then I learned he was very hard working and just likes to joke around a lot.  He and his various companions had 17 baptisms over the seven months he was here.

 At church on Monday we had this private charity come by doing free medical screenings.  The Branch let them use our building and we helped with the event.  They look at people with eye or mouth or limb problems.  They advertised and people came for the free screenings.  We made sure anyone from our Branch that could benefit was also there.  The young woman in the bottom corner of the poster above is the mayor of San Ildefonso.

These are some of the volunteers from the mayor's office at the registration tables, and Brother Bert.  He's a member of the Branch that is almost totally blind.  They set him up with an appointment to have eye surgery.  Maybe he'll get his sight back.

Two local doctors donated their time to work with the patients  The man in the blue shirt is one of the charity foundation members that was sponsoring the event.

 This man was hoping to get an artificial leg and foot.

 Something wrong with this little boy's eye.  These people have no way to afford medical services to get these problems fixed if not for things like this.

 Here is  front gate of our building with a sign abouy the Mabuhay Deseret Foundation.  It was started by a former Mormon Mission President.   The foundation is private but partners with the church in that the church lets them use our buildings.

Group shot afterwards.  The two individuals in the blue shirts are the charity representatives.  One of the doctors is wearing the plaid shirt and and the other is in the green shirt.  The volunteers from the mayors office  are wearing white shirts.  And those wearing the yellow vest are the volunteers from our Branch.  I think we helped a lot of people.

Malacanang Palace

For a Senior Missionary outing this month we went on a tour of Malacanang Palace, which is the Presidential Palace of the Philippines.

 We started out meeting for lunch at Max's Chicken Restaurant, outside the palace gate.  We were waiting for our tour time and for all the couples to arrive.  This is Sister Rogers, Bremner, and Swift.  The Bremners are new here in the mission.  They live just down the street from us in Baliwag and are from Canada.

 The front of Malacanang Palace as we started the tour.

 Inside the palace was the presidential library.

 Nice wood work and elaborate molding designs.

 This is our tour guide who was very knowledgeable and funny.  She made the tour extra interesting.  This is the famous balcony where Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos gave their defiant last address to the Filipino people before fleeing the country to go into exile.

 A conference room where the chief ministers used to meet.

 Sister Swift and I on a marbled walkway.

Afterwards we went over to the Mission home and had a pizza party.  Bertins, Harringtons, Bremners, Swifts, Broadheads, Rogers.

 On Saturday we had a youth activity.  They build a big fire in the vacant lot next door and burned all the extra books and papers from cleaning out the library and file cabinets.  Then they roasted marshmallows.

Some had never heard of smores before but definitely liked the idea. Some of the youth already knew about them.

The next day I got sick and have been in bed most of the week.  Sister Swift had been sick a few days earlier, but she recovered quicker.  I even had to get x-rays and they said I have pneumonia.

Then on Saturday we had the baptism of Joshua Narbato (third from left) by Micoh one of the Priest in the branch.  The missionaries are Rasmussen, Arcayos, Jucutan, and Pelinggon.

Road Trip

We went for a drive with the Rogers.

 This is a lookout point over a small Philippine town in the rolling hills.

 A farm growing beans and kamote.

Rice fields.  Beautiful shades of green.

 A river that ran through the town.

 The smallest library in the world.

 Down in the river we saw children swimming while their Mom does laundry.

 Who needs a washing machine when you live by a river.

 Motorcycles and cars have to share the road with goats and other livestock.

 A cute baby goat with its mother.

 This is called the heart of the bananna tree.  We heard they eat it too.

 Going for a ride with Daddy.  At least one of them has a helmet.

 On Saturday we had a triple baptism.  Elders Arcayos and Jutuhan baptized John Mark Lopez and John Kevin Lopez from their area and Elders Pelinggon and Rasmussen baptized Ladilyn Vinas from their area.

 On Monday the missionaries in our zone had an activity.  We played Philippine games.  In this one you have two teams and you try to run past the other team, who can only move sideways, without getting touched.

In this game they protect their base and run back and forth trying to capture each other or the other teams base.  We played in the first game but not this one.