Blog 26: Aug 3 - 10, 2015

We have been waiting for help with the Filipino way of using family search and were directed by Elder Parjaro the area 70 we had dinner with last month, to contact Brother Felvir Ordinario.  Brother Ordinario is a manager in the family search church department in Manila.  He rode a bus for 10 hours to meet us at Baao and spend the day with us in the Baao church.  We had an amazing time with him.  He is very competent and was able to help with most of our issues with the family search work we do here.  This is the three of us in the clerk’s office.  We love you all.

While I was waiting on the highway for Brother Ordinario to arrive Valerie went nuts with my camera.  As you can see the local rr tracks don’t get used much anymore.  We have seen only one hand cart since we have been here.

On Wednesday I spent 6 hours with President Botor delivering posters to barangay offices and schools advertising the August immunization project the church funds for students from grades 1 to 6 for measles.  The church pays for the project for the whole nation.  President Botor wanted to deliver the posters personally so the politicians didn’t take credit for the initiative.  The picture is of one of the framed posters we delivered.  We went to two barangay offices, six schools who had members as teachers and three school division offices.  We only had 20 posters in the box but after delivering 12 we still had 16 left…go figure.  We counted the posters when we started then recounted when we went to a division office expecting to give them three for their 15 schools but had 16 left.  This is like a loaves and fishes story.  We both still can’t figure it out.

The bottom of the poster has two logos showing the churches involvement.

This is one of the schools we stopped to deliver a poster at to find all the principals of that division there for a conference. 

This is some of the staff at the La Madella school which is in the baragay we live in.  President Botor is holding the poster with the principal of the school and other staff.

After 23 years of teaching without missing a day of school for health reasons I began to brag.  Again I am sorry.  I got sick on Wednesday and feel terrible today.   I am not good at being sick as I have had no practice with it.    I went to a walk in clinic this morning but the doctor was not there.  I paid the water bill on the way into town and saw this picture.  The chickens are all alive and on their way to market on this trycie.

We had an appointment this afternoon in Iriga but I did business up town and stayed in the car until Valerie was nearly finished with the family history class.  It was with a Samoan missionary sister who was adopted by a father who was himself, also adopted.  They had quite a time figuring it all out.   I hope to stay in bed all day tomorrow because I have to teach a class to stake primary teachers on Saturday and I have no voice. 

We are behind in posting these so I will end this week with a big thank you to my amazing family who are all supporting us in many different ways.  This is a wonderful experience for all of us.

Blog 25: July 27 - Aug 3, 2015

It was another busy week.  It seems to be feast or famine around here.  Valerie has been very busy with all her assignments.  She is working very hard with the primary having primary presidency meetings trying to demonstrate how a primary looks.  She has put together a plan for each branch but it is difficult to get to every presidency with only the weekends to get them together.  Family History has slowed a bit but we are working more with the missionaries lately than with the members.  We are realizing that the time is slipping away too quickly.   We worked with Elder Lawrence and Elder Pring on Tuesday.  They are hard working men.  Disappointment and weather conditions do not slow them down.  We walked into the back country to teach several lessons until many hours after dark.  I asked how they found people to teach so far back into the jungle but they thought it was normal.  After walking down wet trails we would come into a group of huts and they would teach a few lessons then go on to the next group.  The people are very Catholic and it is difficult to get past the superstition of going against the church just to teach a lesson.  Those that do allow a lesson absorb it and feel the spirit.  These are the elders with a sister who is being baptized this Saturday.

They taught a lesson to this man’s family but he was more interested in playing with his fighting roosters. 

We taught this family but they showed more interest in us than the lesson.  Elder Lawrence leaves for home in two weeks.  He is agreat kid and yes, he is 6’6” tall.

Thursday and Friday we were in Naga for a mission conference.  All the missionaries had to come in for flu shots.  They came in over a two day period, four zones each day.  There were about 90 missionaries each day divided into groups of about 10.  They rotated in the groups to four different  30 minute sessions.  Valerie and I taught a session on how to use family history as a finding, teaching and reinforcement tool.  It went very well.  We had a good power point presentation with a few videos and slides.  It was very enjoyable to be around the missionaries.  This is day one with the zones from the north part of the mission.  We haven’t worked with most of these missionaries.  We are sitting next to President and Sister Reeder.

Saturday was busy with a good-bye brunch with the Baao missionaries.  We gave Elder Lawrence a farewell meal with the other local missionaries.  He goes home to Idaho next Tuesday.  We still had time for our crepes tradition on Sundays.

I will send this now as I have more pictures for next week’s journal.  Thanks to our family for all your support and work in our behalf.  Thank you Tab for posting our blog and making us look so good.  Thanks all of you for your communication with us by Skype.  Thanks to Mike and Becky for keeping the farm and banking going for us at home.  We love you all! 

Blog 24: July 20-26, 2015

The rain is beginning again but the heat is still oppressive.  It gets so humid after a rain you sweat just standing still.  We have fans going all day so our papers and documents are always blowing around and need to be weighted.   On Tuesday we spent the morning doing house chores and working on a power point we are doing for a mission conference for two days next week.  We are having technical difficulties but getting it done slowly.  Valerie has taken on a total revamping of the existing primary operations and is holding meetings with district and branch primary staff.  The district presidency have become very good friends and we work well with them.  We have a district primary training coming up in two weeks we need to get ready for as well.  Valerie is working with the presidency and I am doing a teacher training class.  It should be fun!

While we were waiting at the church for the sisters to arrive we watched this guy and his wife try to knock fruit down from a tree in front of their house.  He had a 12 foot bamboo pole but stood on his pudyak to get more height.  I was ready with the camera in case the pudyak rolled away.  His wife is under the umbrella so the mangos don’t hit her and their baby.

Tuesday afternoon was busy with a visit from Angela and Maria Moralis.  They came to say good-bye.  Angela has been called to the Cebu mission south of here and her mother is getting re-married to a black guy from Florida she met on line.  She has insisted he take the discussions and he has quit drinking and has a plan to be baptized soon.  They are meeting for the first time in two weeks.  He is coming here to visit and send Angela on her mission.  I wouldn’t advise this but many people are meeting this way and getting married so it must be part of the new age of relationships.  This is a picture of Angela and I in our home modeling our new hats.

Here is the group of us.

I forgot to mention a day last week when the sisters called and needed some help.  We visited them in their apartment and found both of them quite down and depressed for several reasons.  We had a great visit with them and ended by giving both a blessing.  Sister Bakly is from Great Falls MT and is a first time trainer.  She is an amazing missionary and we are so impressed.  Sister Barawidan is from Cebu and doesn’t like this area at all.  We live in one of the two poorest areas of the Philippines.  She may have expected a higher standard of living than what is here.  We have worked more closely with them recently and see them a few times a week.  

On Tuesday they took us with them and we taught a discussion to a new family they just met.  Then we went to a less active member family whose 9 year old daughter just got baptized and gets herself to church every Sunday.  The mother Michelle Salvenara was not well and asked for a blessing.  Her husband, Paul was home and heard the interview and blessing I had with her.  They were both touched and we had an amazing experience with them.  They have both had their patriarchal blessings but have lost them.  We are in the process of getting duplicates for them.  It will be a wonderful day when we can take their personal scripture to them.  This is a picture of the kids during our new member discussion.

We went from there to a single mother whose boyfriend is at sea as a merchant marine.  They have a two year old son.  She hadn’t heard from her boyfriend in two months and was, of course, worried.  She has been reading the Book of Mormon for a few months but her boyfriend doesn’t like her doing it.   We talked about prayer and we got to bear testimony of prayer.  I explained how personal a prayer can be and gave her an example of what language to use to talk to Father as a Father and she burst into tears.  She said the feeling was more than she could understand and loved to hear the words spoken to a Father in Heaven.  I was a little humbled by her reaction and will never forget it.  I realized I take prayer for granted too often.  I wish I had a picture of her and her son.  We will visit again and get a picture of her family. 

On Wednesday, we got stood up by a Brother Ordinario from Manila who works for the church as a family history consultant for the Philippines.  We have four pages of issues that prevent the people here from getting the same services and access to the same technology as in NA.  We did some member visits as we didn’t want to ask the missionaries to baby sit us again.

Thursday was Bato day.  We did a training with the Cotnogan/Bato/Nabua district at the Bato church.  Cotnogan is a small branch outside of our mission boundary but in our mission because it is like Rosemary.  It is always on the border of any church maps.  We pick up the elders on District training day to save them the long, expensive ride to Bato.  The interesting thing is their apartment is a half finished duplex with lots of unfinished room.  They occupy only a small part of it.  They said the place is haunted.  Their neighbor is a funeral home with caskets stacked beside their yard.  The elders live in the yellow part downstairs.  Just beyond the lady’s umbrellas is the gate and through the gate you can make out the casket displays under the red roof.  Their place may be haunted!

We had to race over to Iriga after the district training to get our phones and router juiced up for another month then go back  to Bato for an afternoon appointment.  The gate was locked but we had made arrangements with the elders to let us in at 1:30  The didn’t show up and wouldn’t answer our text messages.  Sister Magistrato arrived at 2:00 so we took out our router and laptops from the trunk and did two hours of family history work with her and Valerie in the back seat.  I sat in the front and when Valerie’s computer died I fired mine up and finished her work.  I am sure the locals wondered why the car sat idling  for nearly 3 hours but we had to keep the a/c on.  There is always a way!!  I had a discussion with the elders later that evening.   We understand each other a bit better now.

We worked with the Ressureccion family two weeks ago in Iriga.  The family got baptized on Saturday morning and the father is scheduled to get the Aaronic priesthood next week.  The missionaries started this family with a family history approach and they wanted to know about eternal families immediately.  It was a wonderful baptism.

Sunday is another busy one.  We begin at 9:00 AM in Iriga for Angela Moralis’s farewell then back to Baao for primary at 10:00.  We will skip out of primary a few minutes early for a 12:00 meeting of the primary in Bato.  We need 4 Saturdays and 5 Sundays a month to get everything done.  Our next big assignment is the mission conference next Thursday and Friday in Naga. 

Thanks again to my wonderful family!  We love you all.

Blog 23: July 14 - 19, 2015

This is supposed to be the rainy season and now the typhoon season and we haven’t seen rain for a week or a typhoon for 6 months.  We will probably get hit now just because I am whining about it.  We have our 72 hour kit ready and naturally Valerie had stocked a few extra items in case the local missionaries end up in need and in our place with us.  The Gardners who were in our house before us were without power for 10 days last year and no water for three days.  They were troopers and lasted without a generator.  They finally caved and went to Naga to a hotel until power and water were restored out here.  I won’t have any heroic stories like that to tell as we have a generator and the minute we are without water I am abandoning ship and heading to the city comforts of the mission home. 

While waiting for a baptism last Saturday we had a flat tire.  I had to change it in the rain but had lots of help from the locals.  The bad thing was the extra trip to Naga to buy tires on Monday.  We had a lunch meeting with President and Sister Reeder and Hoopes at the mission home.  After a great lunch of “Hawaiian haystacks” we planned a mission conference for the end of the month.  Then we went back on Tuesday because Valerie had a prescheduled hair appointment and I had an oil change scheduled from two weeks ago.  

It has been “hurry and wait” mode here for two weeks.  We don’t have enough time some days and too much on others.  We have planned a family history event for each of the branches in Iriga district but are having trouble meeting with the leaders to get them started.  It will happen but it is frustrating waiting.   Last Sunday was amazing.  After all our meeting we went to Iriga to help several members and one investigator family do family history work.  This 12 year old boy did all the inputting on the computer to do three generations of his investigator family.  That is his mom holding the baby in the background.  His father came and went but was interested in what we were doing.  Their family name is Ressureccion.  Cool name!

The missionaries were there to help as well and we got a lot of work done in a short time.  The district has a two computer with printer family history library.  It is a nice facility but most district members can’t afford to get transport from their home branches to the district center.

Here are some of the missionaries with us and a member who was supposed to hold up the ordiance sheet she produced but she forgot.  It is in her hand.

We had set up an appointment to visit our first high school at President Tino’s school.  We got there on Thursday only to find it was a teacher’s convention so we didn’t get to see the students.  We are interested in seeing a high school which are grades 7 to 10 .  The government is extending school to grade 12 next term and they don’t have the facilities, resources, teachers…to do it.  From what we have seen in grade school, they would do better by focusing on the quality of education in the grades they have now.

Friday was another busy day in Baao.  That branch is so alive.  We did family history work all day but our 5:00 PM appointments didn’t come.  We were beat by then anyway.  This is “Pretty Boy” Icutan working with Valerie.  His father left the family when Brother Icutan was little so he doesn’t remember him but always wanted to connect with him.  Valerie was helping him search for any records in the military because his dad was in the navy.  We have tried before without any success.  On Friday Valerie found his father’s death certificate and Brother Icutan was crushed that he never got to talk with his father.  It was sad to see his dream fly away.  He is such a great guy and has done so well as a husband and father.  His father will never knew what a great son he had.

In the afternoon we worked with the first councilor of the branch presidency and his wife.  This is President Vebal and his wife holding an ordinance sheet with Valerie and Sister Gloria Bacsain the branch consultant.

On Saturday Valerie had to see a local doctor to get some antibiotics.  My dentist has a sister who is an MD and she treated us very well.  Then we went to Buhi to the open house only to find the church locked and the gardener said the date had been changed.  We have found any communication around here is very unreliable.  We got back to Baao for an afternoon Family Home Evening that was supposed to start at 1:00 PM.  This is what it looked like at 1:30…and at 2:30

It finally got going at 3:20 and we had to leave at 3:30 for a stake meeting in Iriga.  It did not go well. 

On Sunday we made arrangements for a Family History Event in Bato and Baao in the next few weeks.  We can’t wait to try this idea.  It will take some management but once it gets going it will be an amazing tool for the branches and missionaries. 

Today the Sisters wanted to run with us as it is P-day.  We told them to meet us at 5:20 AM and they got there at 5:45 and then had to go to our house to drop their water.  We started walking through the city to get to the mountains and they began to lag behind.  They dropped out half way up the mountain and we had to run home 3 miles to get the car to go back and pick them up.  We fed them breakfast and took them home.  We love those girls but…

Hello to my world class family!  We love you all sooooo much and miss you horribly!  

Blog 22: June 23-Jul 13, 2015

I am so embarrassed about not writing the past two weeks.  We have been busy doing very little for some reason.  It seems like we just run from one project to the next.  We have had very poor internet service and had quite a problem with our provider, Globe.  Everytime we go in to the office with a problem they want more money.  We are targets because we are white but this time we had to get assertive until we got service back.  It took two days of negotiating but we finally got servie without trowing more money at them.  We have learned to get a signed receipt with the agent’s name and the agreement made at the time to take back for verification of what we paid for.  The last two months we have paid double the monthly rental for service.  That is taken care of hopefully.  Learning how to be treated fairly is a hard lesson to learn here guess.

The Baao Elders stopped in last Wednesday, July 1 so we could meet the new Elder.  When I walked them to the gate we noticed a huge star in the sky.  We had no internet to investigate but I did get a picture of it.

We had a few appointment fall through last week.  I thought of Raymond on July 1^st and all the gang that would be there.  I heard about Allen Heggie’s passing and sent a note to the family.  Ron Larsen has an email group called the Sons of Raymond Good Old Boys Club.  Most of the guys are 10 years older than me but I get my Raymond news from him.  I got so homesick for the Raymond July 1^st I started a Raymond Class Of  ’69 Facebook group.  I am trying to gather face book info on the group but the internet is not cooperative. 

I am helping a girl named Karen with her English for a test she wants to pass to get a permit to apply for work in Canada.  She is a nurse here and her husband is in Saudi working.  They have a son, Kirt in grade 6 who is doing family history work with Valerie while I am working with Karen.  She brought a special desert to our house last week as a token of her appreciation.  It was like custard that Valerie likes.  It was good!  This is Karen with a friend named Julius who walk together on the same mountain route as us.  That is where we met her.

On Saturday the 4^th (High Five all the Americans) we went to a baptism in Iriga for two kids from two different part member families.  We blew the sidewall out of a tire in Iriga in a back street you have to take to get on to the main street.  I had more help changing the tire than I needed.  It was raining and I got wet and dirty but made the baptism in time.  Sunday the 5^th was the dedication of the Buhi chapel.  We went and heard the area 70 talk and give the dedicatory prayer in both English and Tagalog.  The mission and district president both spoke. 

We had to go to Naga for tires on Monday and did business, bought food and used the dryer at the mission office to dry our clothes.  It has rained everyday for two weeks.  It pours then stops.  When the sun come out the humidity is so high you sweat standing still.  Our clothes were on the line for three days so we rewashed them and took them to the dryer.  It was a special blessing to put on dry underwear this morning!

We had two brethren from Iriga come to the house today to cut the grass.  They are amazing workers.  I wish I could post all the pictures of them working and the difficult way they did it but our internet won’t send such a big file.  They weed whipped the whole yard, swept the clippings into pile because they don’t have rakes, put the piles on a small tarp and drug the tarp around the yard until it was full.  They bundled the tarp and carried it to the compost pile in the back yard.  There is no way to do things easily here, but labor is so cheap they don’t look for easy or ways to do it with machines or even convenience tools like rakes for a lawn. 

This is Brother Marlin Rellores  dragging the tarp from grass pile to pile then carrying the tarp full of grass to the back yard.

After they finished the yard care they gave us a lesson in harvesting the fruit in the back yard.  This is the banana harvest.  We have eaten some of the bananas and they are very good.   The whole tree comes down and the banana bunch gets cut off.  It is amazing to me the tree grows back to a 40 foot length in one year.  This is the tree coming down.

This is the bananas being cut off the bunch.  President Chua (Chew a) is the one in the blue shirt.  He has been a branch president, a district president’s councilor twice, a high councilman, he is a RM and lost his wife to cancer in April.  He has a 16 year old daughter in college but still at home.  He is a remarkable man in every way and it was my privilege to meet him finally.

I am very embarrassed…I just realized I haven’t sent this to Tab for posting yet so here it goes…two weeks late.  Thanks again Tablet for making us look so good.  We love you all! ay and it was my privilege to meet him finally.

Blog 21: June15-22, 2015

This is disgraceful.  I have not written for a week.  When that happens the pictures have to tell the story because it seem each week gets a bit more complicated.  I will get the negative out of my system to begin with.  By the way, Pili, the house gecko is above me on the wall making his chatter sound.  Back to my rant…I am trying to keep a calendar on my ipod as I have for 10 years.  I started with a Palm Pilot and loved it then and went to the ipod about 4 years ago.  It has quit me twice since we got here and Valerie’s has needed repair once.  I got mine fixed two weeks ago but it won’t start up so I tried my ipad as a calendar but it is too bulky for some situations.  The old pen and paper might win yet.  I am back to Valerie’s ipod since she stole my camera and doesn’t use it.  Its nice to have all-in-one but I carry my iPad for scriptures, my ipod for calendar and camera and the mission issue phone that doesn’t work most of the time.  That was complaint number one.  (Because this is my mission journal, if you are reading this sorry for these diversions but they are there to remind me.)  Complaint number 2 is that I had a window of time last Thursday so I did a big load of wash and hung it on the line in time for a nice extra rinse from a rain on Thursday, 3 inch downpour on Friday, 2 more inches on Saturday and 3 more inches on Sunday.  Today is Monday and the sun is shining.  Valerie has dried a few of her things inside with a fan but there is no space.  Since it is supposed to rain this afternoon I made a clothes dryer. I put a fan outside in front of our clothes line.   Cross your fingers because I am out of undies!  Thanks for letting me vent that…I feel better, thank you!

On Thursday we had Elder Pajaro and his wife, Valerie, do a two day mission conference.  He is the area authority Seventy.  After our day with them, the Hoopes, and us had dinner with them at President Reeder’s home.  The eight of us had a great evening that Sister Hoopes cooked for.  They have served a mission in Germany so the meal was all German food.  The company was wonderful and we had many great stories to tell and to listen to.  This is half the missionaries from the Iriga and Goa zones.  President and Sister Reeder are on the far left, he is standing.  Elder and Sister Pajaro are seated in the front on the far right.  Hoopes attended the Wednesday session so they are not in this picture.  We know about half of the missionaries in this group and they are all world class Elders and Sisters.

On Friday we had to pay the electricity bill so we did other business and visited the La Medalla school.  It is smaller and is the school in our barangay just behind our house.  The parents and children see us walking every morning so I told them to knuckle us from now on.  We visited a few classrooms and gave each teacher a Canada pin, an Alberta pin and a county of Newell pin.  They think the county is our barangay. 

This is a grade 6 class holding up 6 fingers.  The teacher is directly in front of me.  See why I can’t guess age here.  The people pre-40s look like teenagers to me, then when they hit 50 they look 80.  

This is a grade 1 child that Valerie is scaring the daylights out of.  Check out the wooden desks.  Man I love this country!

This grade 5 teacher was very pleased when I  asked if I could send her picture to Canada.  I wanted to get her name tag on her teacher’s shirt.  I don’t know why it is blurry…darn!

We had a busy Saturday with missionaries, Hoopes stopping in, appointments at the church and rain.  While we were waiting in the car for the church to open it poured and we watched the kids play a game.  They would buckets of every size and pour the water over their own heads.  One kid filled a big white pail from a down psout then filled the other kids small toy buckets for them.  We watched them for 20 minutes.  They started a game of street soccer next.  The streets are their  playgrounds.

On Sunday we attended sacrament service in Nabua.  It has been a long time since we were able to go there.  We went to Bato after sacrament service and had a meeting with President Tino about a family history open house.  He is still grieving over his mother’s death.  We felt terrible for his suffering.  He is a great man and a good leader.  While in Nabua we set up some FH appointment and talked with friends.  This is a picture of the Dava couple.  They are amazing people.  She was born in the church and he joined to marry her.  They just got back from the Manila temple where they were sealed.  We love them very much for so many reasons.  He is an engineer on cargo ships so is gone for a year at a time then home for 6 months.  Luckily, she has a lot of family support when he is gone.  He makes very good money and needs the income.  There are only very hard, poor paying labor jobs locally.  Yes that is a sweat rag I am holding.  It is a necessity!

We went to Cotnogan to see President Oliva and visit the school.  The teachers were as accommodating as ever.  This is a grade 6 class singing us a local anthem about the Bicol district.  Whenever we enter a classroom the class say a memorized welcome.  Here we heard, “Welcome visitor.  We are happy to meet you.  Please come in and have a seat.”  Often there is no place to sit but we are popular from the start.

We toured a few room and ended in this grade one class.  Ther teacher was covering two grade one classrooms side by side because the regular teacher was gone that day.  Notice the little guy to the right of Valerie in the last desk.  He is in a blue shirt and is asleep in his desk.  The teacher told us that he is a special needs student who is malnourished.  He did not wake up through all the laughter and visiting we did.   

While visiting outside  with others on the staff we stopped at a small tindahon where a local woman sells treats to kids who have money.  I gave her and the teacher a Canadian flag and she gave us some Pili-nuts.  They are slightly like peanut brittle.  I asked for a wacky picture and this is what I got.  Valerie is talking with President Oliva, of the Cotnogan branch.  He is also the barangay chief.  This is his third term of elected office  and can’t run again.  From what we hear the barangay love him and wish he could stay on.

While we were visiting two boys brought drinking water to the school from the local deep well pump.

We followed President Oliva to a new member’s home where they were doing a service project.  We told the elders to let us know when these things are happening.  We know this woman because we went to her baptism in the river below her house.  They were building a fence for her yard way out in the country.  They cut branches from some kind of a tree, then sharpen the end and stab them in the ground for the posts.  The branch takes root and becomes permanent in a short time.  We have seen many fences like this and  the trunk gets bigger but the rails of the fence do not get much higher off the ground.  Because the posts are only stuck in the ground they wire the bamboo rails.  Pounding nails would loosen the post too much.  I asked what kind of gate they were using and they said there was no gate.  I asked why she wanted a fence and Elder Hermosa said to keep bad guys out.  I pointed out that there was only two (flimsy) rails and no gate and he didn’t get it.  The fence represents a boundary that no one crosses.  This is a young mother of 5 girls, the oldest is 14.  They don’t have a door on the house but they have a fence for protection. 

The rails are made from fresh bamboo that was cut in the neighbor’s yard.  He is the first councilor in the branch presidency.  The bamboo is 40 feet long.  They drive a bolo (machete) blade into the end pull the two pieces apart to split the bamboo into two halves.  It splits perfectly from the bolo cut. 

This is what the fence looks like in front of Sister Michelle’s home.

She fed us tilapia in a some green vegetable sauce over rice.  It was masarap!  (Delicious)

Sister Michelle is testing her new fence.  

It was the perfect close to a good week.  Sister Frenendo got baptized in Bato.  Her two daughters attended and her son came to church on Sunday.  She is the only member but in her testimony at the baptism she tearfully expressed her wish to have her family feel what she has felt in learning about the restored gospel.  It was one of those times that reminded you about your own commitment to the gospel.  Valerie and I both spoke at the service.  These are the missionaries with Sister Fernendo and her two daughters.  She has three daughters and five sons.  

It is always hard to say Good-bye to good missionaries that have served valiantly and leave to go home.  This is me with two missionaries from Nabua on my right is Elder Grospe and the other is Elder Fernandez who I called Billy Goat because he had stubble on his chin.  Most of the Filipino missionaries don’t need to shave very often.  We will miss these men!

To my family, thanks again for your support and for all the considerations and prayers in our behalf.  None of it goes unnoticed.  We love you all!