Book of Mormon

Sister Swift set a goal for the Young Women in our Branch to read the Book of Mormon cover to cover this year.

 These are two of the first Young Women to finish, Micalyn and Hazel.

 We went to the temple one morning.  Tis is Elder Bremner who is one of the new Senior Missionaries from Canada.  After going to the temple we went to the Mission Home and had a Thanksgiving dinner with the other Senior Missionaries.  Sister Bertin cooked a delicious turkey and everyone brought some side dishes.

 They have Christmas decorations up at the Manila Temple, including these statues  depicting a nativity scene.

 Indoors at the mall by our house they put up this winter ice house display that is really pretty.

 They also have a tiny little ice rink set up.  Most of  the people we've seen willing to try it mostly just hug the walls.

 One day we helped a member of the Branch go and get some surgery from this charity, Deseret Cranio Facial Foundation.  She has been tongue-tied, where her tongue is not loose from the bottom of her mouth, since she was born.

 Inside I liked this wall mural that was painted by some US Marines that come by periodically to help out.

This is the doctor that did the surgery for free.  She let Sister Swift come in the operating room and watch.  The surgery was a success and the doctor said her tongue is now like normal, except the muscles aren't developed in her tongue so she will need to exercise them. She will be able to swallow and eat better and probably improve her speech.

Life in the Philippines

We opened our own hot dog stand here in the Philippines at the mall in San Jose Del Monte.

 We thought it might be a hit with the local Filipinos.

 We use fresh goat meat fresh from the nearby road side stand.

 Chicken of course.

 And pigs.  We find these small ones routing around in the garbage piles alongside the road.  To get a feel for how small there are, those are coconuts on the top of the pile.

 Joke lang.

 They really have started the Christmas season out here.  The sisters made snow men at this Relief Society Activity.

 Sister Swift put up two trees in front of the house.

Here's a closeup.  She spay painted the trees silver and hung Christmas balls.  Quite pretty.

 

One of the Bishops in a different Stake has a shop where they make products to sell from Carabao (water buffalo) horns.  He gave us a tour of his workshop.  This is the bishop by one of the stations in his shop.

 

 Another station inside the shop.

 One of the employees hard at work grinding or polishing a piece of something.  Do not ask me how how he could see and he wasn't wearing any goggles, gloves or hard shoes.  But the bowls and spoons and belts and things they make are quite beautiful.

 Another station that was partially outside with a lot better ventilation and light.

 The CR.

In Angat we ran across the Ten Commandments carved in stone in Tagalog.  Cool.

Missionary Farewell

Joyce Vitangcol began her mission on October 28th.

 She and Sister Swift have been good friends.  They were in the YW Presidency together and also Visiting Teaching companions. 

 The Branch had a farewell activity at the chapel for her.  There were games and testimonials and singing.  Sister Swift made cupcakes and got a pillow case and had everyone sign it.  Here's a picture of people at the activity with Joyce in the middle.

 We went with the family, and other friends, to the Mission Home, where she was set apart.  Then out to the Philippine MTC in Manila.  This is some of her family:  her sister, father, Joyce, little sister, mother, and grandmother.

 She will be a great missionary.  She is going to the Naga Mission in the Philippines.

 Some cute children were following us around one day and talking to us when we went to visit a member in the Anyatam Burangay.

We often visit people on their birthday.  It is a Philippine tradition to make food and invite people over and feed them on your birthday.  Here is a family picture taken at Charlie's birthday celebration..  We home-teach this family.  He's 59.

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.