It's National Family Week in the Philippines and every takes it seriously. The Stakes, Districts, Wards and Branches plan multiple events. Saturday the Bongabon stake started at 7:00 am and the branches walked in a parade around Palayan each holding their own banner. After they spent the rest of the morning playing games and eating. They passed out T Shirts but forgot that some of us American's need big sizes. No party is complete without Candy and so there was a lot of candy being thrown to the crows. The green "marbles" being used in one photo are actually a fruit like a key lime but tastes much sweeter. They grow everywhere and served with meals to squeeze the juice on your food. We feel like celebrities because everyone wants a picture with the senior couple. When we left the party about noon, there was a very competitive game of basketball going on in the parking lot. Later there was a ward and mission baptism.
Sunday night, the Cabanatuan Stake held a Family Devotional at the their stake center and President and Sister Clark were the speakers. That stake is continuing the week with events every evening including a fashion show on Thursday. Since the week just started, we'll see how much the rest of the community supports National Family Week.
Visit to Baguio
We received permission from the Mission President to make a day trip to Baguio which is an hour outside of our mission and 3 hours from Cabanatuan (including 40 minutes of the wonderful toll road.) Baguio is a totally different environment than the plains because it is built in the mountaintops at 5,000 feet. Trikes are outlawed so the streets were full of cars. The city runs up and down the hills kind of like San Francisco. The city grew from mining in the late 1800s and became the headquarters for the military leaders during WW II. We went up a windy narrow road constructed in 1904 by American engineers, Filipino and Japanese laborers. They blasted their way through rock and historically it was an engineering feat despite over 500 workers died building it. Today it's being repaired with sections under construction and so the 32 Kilometer drive up the canyon took an hour.
The temperatures were perfect 70 degrees. People were wearing long sleeves and sweaters. Baguio has one fertile valley that grows vegetables and strawberries so we prefer to buy veggies at Robinson's Supermarket since they feature Baguio vegetables. Since there is very little agriculture, the city looked more like a typical US city with colleges, office buildings, dozens of real sidewalk restaurants.
We hired one of the 7,000 white SUV taxis for 2 hours to get a quick tour since the traffic was heavy. When we left we took a newer, wider road back down the mountain but found out that is the road for all the buses and trucks so it was still a long drive down the mountain with little chance to pass. They don't have passing lanes. Since we were going to inspect/repair apartments in the Guima zone, we stayed overnight at a nice (?) hotel for $33. Breakfast was included in the morning....rice with either fried pork or fish. So we headed for Guimba and enjoyed hotcakes at Jolibees. (a low priced McDonalds) Sister Dansie liked Baguio because we found a DQ Express in the SM Mall and a blizzard just like home. Here are pictures of Baguio.
Guess What Is In This Picture
Can you figure out what this picture describes? Click on it to enlarge. Email your answers. You need to include at least 5 things you see. First 20 correct answers wins a prize!
Faith Promoting Stories
We haven't been sharing many faith promoting stories but they happen every day. Here's two.
Story #1:
In our daily prayers, we ask that we may be guided to make a contribution to missionary work today. In Baguio, (unlike the rest of the mission) people were not very curious about who we were and as a result very few smiled or said hello. As we were walking through SM mall to get back to our parked car, a lady called out "Elder." It was a Member with her mother and daughter who had moved to Baguio 6 weeks ago. They had not been able to find out where to go to church. I explained that we had only been in Baguio for 3 hours but that Google should know. My phone battery was almost dead but it lasted long enough to locate a chapel on Google Maps within walking distance of where they were living.
Story #2:
Wednesday night I was packing the trunk with all our inspection & repair supplies and I had an impression to verify that the car did indeed have a spare tire with air and that the jack and wrenches were functional.
Our prayers Friday morning included a request that our car would get us safely through the Guimba mission as we marathon inspected 9 missionary apartments. We turned off the paved highway onto dirt to drive to San Antonio. Crews had been laying some sections of concrete on top of the dirt road as a "road improvement" project. The crews just pour 10" of concrete and don't bother to back fill the shoulders or build dirt ramps to get onto the concrete. So our right rear tire was gouged severely in the side wall by the sharp concrete. We drove 2 more miles of dirt to San Antonio and inspected the damage when we got to the apartment. The tire appeared to be holding air. After the house inspection we drove another 5 miles of dirt and concrete, then down broken bumpy crowded concrete another mile, onto the crazy main highway for a mile and swung into town to navigate through the trikes and traffic of Munoz for another mile until we stopped at the Sisters apartment on an unbelievably quiet street. (red gate in the photo) It had a sidewalk and gutters!
While inspecting the house I ran out to the car to get some tools and the tire was flat and thunder rumbling overhead. The zone leaders were with us, so together we unloaded all the tools and supplies (ironing board, fan, toilet seats, light bulbs, tool box and more) onto the sidewalk and changed the tire. Neither the zone leader nor assistant had changed a tire so they learned something new. We repacked the trunk just as the first raindrops fell. 15 minutes later the rain was coming down in buckets full. Why did the tire hold air so long? You know the answer.
Neighborhood Beautification
This week we added some plants on our balcony and in front of our gate. It's not as elaborate as most houses, but it's a start. Best thing is that we don't need to water them ever!
