The big news around here is
that President Russell M Nelson and his wife, Wendy Watson, are coming to tour
the Naga mission in 3 weeks. President
Reeder has assigned the Hoopes to put together a mission choir of the local districts. It will be nice to see Wendy again. We haven’t seen much of her since she married President Nelson.
Monday was a business day. In the afternoon we took a road trip to find
a high way that shows on the map but not on the internet map, Maplandia. Sister Watson wanted to drive the van for
experience because it is full sized and hard to park here. We had a beautiful drive, saw lots of
activity, rice was drying down every road, and we got several great pictures of
life and agriculture. Sister Watson
drove dowm this road because the map said it would connect us to a major
highway and we would have a short cut to Libmanan but about 500 yards down the
road it went into a single lane with 2 foot drops on either side and no place
to trun around. We could not see far
enough down the road to see if it widened again so she had to back up to the
last intersection. The van has good
mirrors so we got there with people staring at two white giants in s full sided
van on a trycee trail. I am going to
burn the map.
The
road is 8 feet above the rice field levels with squatter’s huts on either side
squeezed between the road and the fields.
This picture doesn’t give and idea of the depth of the drop down to the
housed but it is quite steep.
The road becomes the only yard the kids have to play on. We call the roads, “Multi-use areas” because
they are places for living, playing, drying rice, businesses, tents for wakes,
playgrounds, walkways, parking areas, work areas for mechanical jobs…and
driving. On the drive we accidently
found the Calabanga church building.
Now we know where Calabanga is.
On Tuesday we trained the
sister companionships in Pamplona. It
was splits with the STL sisters from Daet that day with. Sister Cruz, one of the STL (Sister Training
Leader) stopped at the church with Sister Mariano because she wanted to learn
what we were doing. We gave her a fast
training and she invited us to do a zone training in Daet. We said we would make something happen after
transfers. Forgot to take a picture…my
bad!
Wednesday was hot and
humid. We hope summer isn’t going to be
bad this year but that is dream we won’t see.
The kids will be out for summer break on March 1 so summer officially
starts about 10 weeks from now. They
get March and April off. The heat in
the open, unfanned classrooms would kill you!
We went to Pasacau and trained three elders. We had a great time with the guys then went for Halo Halo to a
restaurant. Two of the Elders do not speak English very well. One Elder is from French Malaysia and is a
professional fighter like his father.
That is how he wants to make his living. I will get a picture of the Pasacau elders on Sunday. Again…my bad.
Thursday was supposed to be a
full day with Iriga but they changed their zone schedule so we had to change as
well. We went to the hospital to visit
Elder Heaton and did some food purchases.
We had some home work to do for the Pasacau elders and finished the day
preparing for Iriga district training.
We made it to Iriga for their district meeting
and did a 30 minute crash reminder and role play. They went for lunch and we did companionship training's. You can see how focused they are on the
instructor. Being ignored like that
brought back great memories of my Springside Students ignoring me 6 hours a
day. AAhhh the good memories of
Springside…
Saturday was a great
day. We drove to Libmanan to help them
with a branch family history event. We
were supposed to pick up the 4 sisters in Pamplona along the way so they could
help with the primary children but Sister Pasina was in hospital with dengue
fever and Sister Mariono started pucking minutes before we were pick her and
Sister Stackhouse up. We went alone! Libmanan is where Sister Cedron, the
district FH Consultant lives. Bad news,
she is gone to Manila to work in a bank and her husband and year old son are still here. The family plan to be together in a few
months but it is a great loss to us!
The elders were amazing with the members and
investigators. Elder Afoe, the DL and
Elder Key were very helpbul. Elder
Baker, the ZL was on splits there so he helped too.
The
local FH history consultants were very busy and did a great job.
The
best news was the branch sisters fed us twice and it was good! This is the cooking and kitchen crew. Two of them are teachers so we had a great talk with them.
We missed Sister Cedron who
is the district FH specialist but has moved to Manila to work while her husband
and 2 year old son wait for a place there with her.
On Sunday we went to Pasacau
to church and met with the FH consultants after. They are planning a branch FH event and we will help.
My tooth is hurting again so
I picked up some antibiotics with the prescription from last August. You really don’t need a prescription, just
the name of the meds. Since they have
no narcotic meds here it is easy to buy meds.
They sell pills by the “piece” or each pill. It is much cheaper here but they don’t have all of the meds we
have in North America.
That finishes this week. We love you all!
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