Sister, Are We Poor?

Our Relief Society lesson in the Tanay branch a few weeks ago was a time of learning for me. The sisters were studying a talk from the Ensign. I cannot tell you whose, as my Tagalog includes how to say "good morning", "good afternoon", "good evening" and "thank you very much". But the language of the land is actually Tagalish: mostly Tagalog but with a smattering of Spanish and even more English. All Gospel terms are English.  So I knew the topic was self-reliance.

First, you must know that at that moment I thought these people were probably not as poor as many I have seen here. They dressed very nicely. The sister who taught the lesson spoke in such a manner as a good RS teacher in any ward. And they talked about the usual topics of self-reliance: taking care of what you have, putting away something for the future, not spending above your means. Sister Dalay was talking about using their swish card: a bank card, like a debit card. She talked about how easy it was with that card to spend more than they had. “What is it about us”, she said, “That we cannot resist the temptation to swipe that swishy card”. Then she turned to me and said, “Sister, are we poor?” 

The Sisters of the Tanay Branch

At the moment I just laughed it away, but I have given it a great deal of thought. The next week we were visiting in the homes of two of these good sisters and I realized that though they were not in the realms of the poorest, we in the North Logan 10^th would consider ourselves very poor indeed if we lived in their circumstances. The two homes in which we visited probably ranged around 500 sq. ft. Walls are made of cement block and windows are few. I think that some of the sister have better circumstances but  by my standard of living these could be called the “poor”. But really, are they?

Walking to visit Sister Elinda, an original member of Tanay Branch. Her health no longer permists her to come to church 

The door to Sister Elinda's home

There are some ammenities. Elinda had a TV. 

Elinda is going blind and uses a very small magnifying glass. I bought a small LED flashlight to help her. I wish I could find a  magnifying class with a light like the one Mom got from the Blind Foundation

All the neighborhood kids were interested in our visit (my white face mostly) and kept saying hello through the window

These people are in general happy. They smile and they laugh. They have lots of fun associating in activities outside of church. They are raising families with a large portion of their children serving missions. They keep themselves and their physical surroundings very clean. The members I meet have testimonies of the Gospel and take a “tricycle” to church each Sunday. (But who would want to drive a car on those narrow streets)! They have friends and family they love. The homes of “neighborhoods” are very close together and grouped into joined structures, and they know everybody and take care of each other.

Are they poor? Perhaps by the standards of the world they are poor, but in the things of the heart and the spirit, in the sort of gold that counts to God,  the saints of the Tanay branch are very rich indeed. So my answer would now be, “No sister, you are not poor. In fact, you are very rich indeed.”

Typhoon Ruby - Part Three: Our Sacks are Delivered

The only problem with creating 3000 food sacks here in manila is that the storm did not actually hit us. We just had a little rain. So one of the employees at our office, Willie, made some phone calls. This actually isn't a picture of the phone calls. That took a whole day to set up

Bruce and Willie

The humanitarian outreach of 2 of the TV stations sent vans to come and get a few hundred of our  sacks.

ABS-CBN, and Channel 5 each sent vans.

And finally, GMA, a third TV station,  sent over the marines. They loaded the majority of the sacks onto their truck and then they headed out to the base where the sacks were loaded on a C130 to be flown down to the Philippine island of Samar, the island most badly damaged by the storm.

This was such a great experience, everyone working together for a common good. We asked for volunteers and people spent all of Saturday and Sunday before or after their church. On Saturday we had 10 of the missionaries from the Quezon City mission helping. They were a lot of fun to talk to. As I worked I kept trying to imagine the people this food might go to..

And finally we had about 800 lbs. of rice left over which we donated to the Bubahay Deseret Hospice House. It was founded by the Jacksons to serve as a home where people could live while their children had their procedures. They treat club foot,, with people having to come for several weeks at a time for a year or more, as well as other conditions. I include a link here. It is a very worthy charity. 

http://www.mabuhaydeseret.org/

Typhoon Ruby - Part Two: Preparing for the Typhoon

No one was willing to be unprepared again. Yolanda taught lessons. So while we waited, we made food kits. The members made 3000 in Legaspi and 3000 in Cebu and Bruce was in charge of getting 3000 here in Manila. He ordered 140 50-kilo bags of rice, cases of corned beef, sardines,and ramen-style noodles.

The young man carried the sacks on his head.

         

Each sack had 3 kilo rice, 6 packages of noodles, 6 cans of sardines and 4 corned beef, enough for a family for 3 days.

    The rice had to be  repackaged  into 3 kilo bags. You put in one large scoop and one small scoop, press out all the air and tie a knot. We are working in the office garage, but this is not your normal garage. They wash and buff the floor daily.

You get into a rhythm with each person doing one of the steps and it goes pretty quick

and we ended up with 3000 sacks. Each sack carried our logo.

We put 1000 sacks right on the Mabuhay Deseret truck leaving 2000 piled in the office garage.   Mabuhay is a private medical charity run by  Dr. Jackson and his wife who, as a young man, was a missionary here in the Philippines. 

We put the food sacks inside the empty rice sacks so we could stack them more easily in the truch.

Typhoon Ruby - Part One

Typhoon Monday: I am sitting here in my “office”. Our area is in the Area Presidency Office or APO. We are in the basement, but I am looking out my window at the dark skies and gusty winds. I have never been in a typhoon. Bruce weathered a hurricane in Houston but it wasn’t too bad in our area. And now a typhoon approaches. It has been downgraded a huge amount, we are not expecting the 3 feet of water once predicted but precautions are in place. None of our area service missionaries have left their homes to join us here. For most of them it is a 2 or 3 hour ride on “public” transit. Schools and offices are closed in Manila. The ride into the office was 10 minutes as compared to 30 on a regular day. And I sit here looking out the window and wondering what this will be like.

Everyone is still remembering Yolanda and lots of preparations have been made. All the missionaries in the storm path were sent to wait out the storm in a stake center on the highest ground possible. There were supplies sent down to the areas of landfall before the storm arrived. But the greatest blessing is that the super-typhoon quickly wore away to a category 2 storm. We were blessed. But now I can add this to my category of first experiences.

We had live feed in the office conference room to monitor the path and the strength of the storm

Very gray and heavy but just rain.

Typhoon Tuesday: Everyone was praying for us all over the world. And the Lord heard and answered their prayers. The Typhoon downgraded just before landfall and then after going over the island of Samar it headed up the channel in between islands and is almost out the other side. It was the very best of a potentially very bad thing

“The wind and the waves shall obey thy will. Peace, be still, peace, be still.

  They all shall sweetly obey thy will. Peace, peace, be still.”

Tahanang Walang Hagdan

We went out to visit at Tahanang Walang Hagdan which translated is "a home without stairs".  It is a large facility that provides work for people with physical disabilities. We had previously worked with Tahanang and wanted to talk about another partnership.  Tahanang has a wood shop, where some furniture and a lot of toys are made,  a painting shop; a metal shop where they make some wheelchairs, a sewing room, where they were making bags and embroidering on a logo.  The best place to work is in the room where they repack medications into a physicians sample pack because it is air conditioned. A number of the clients live at Tahanang. They also make a lot of items that are sold at their gift shop and of course I had to buy as much as I could.

The sewing room

 This is the woodworking shop. They make some furniture and lots of wooden toys for their gift shop.home.

The painting shop.

This man is working on the lathe. It looks like fun to me. It is a skill I think I will learn when I get home.

Repacking pills. You might note that the hands of the gentleman.

 The gift shop had lots of handmade treasures. Sister Smith is looking at one of those dolls that is one  character and then you flip it upside down and it becomes another.

There were lots of puzzles and wooden games.

CULTURAL PRESENTATION FOR ELDER OAKES

I wanted you to see the pictures from Elder Oakes visit in October. I am trying to learn to do this blog on my own.  These were taken at the Cultural presentation and represent the native dances. I was told the kids learn all these dances in school. This was a wonderful evening.

Those bowls really could fall off!

I loved the children.

They were so excited to be in the room with Elder Oakes

Picture with all the dancers. 

This is  a Nipa hut built for a backdrop

Old Spanish Quarter Outing!

 The Senior Couples visited Intramuros, the old Spanish Quarter. (Notice the kids shoes.) They played those bells well! 

Philippino Cosco

Wllie, a church employee from our office took us to S&R. now the ride in the traffic to get there was definitely Philippino! But once we were inside - - -the Philippino Cosco! It is a tad bit smaller and there are a few things that you won’t find in the US. Other than that, we were right at home.

 1/2 a Pig.

Lots and lots of fish!

Traffic (Dun dun Dunnnnnnnnnn)!!!!

There is simply no way to describe Philippine traffic. There are very few hard and fast rules. One of the rules is “Go with the Flow”. Lines on the roads are suggestions. Drivers will easily make 2 lanes into 4 lanes. They move in and out. There is a certain sense of cooperation, as everyone just goes with the flow. A second rule is that he whose bumper is ahead has the right of way. People will signal (or not) and move directly and quickly in front of you. You have to learn when to give way. If you leave a space someone will quickly fill it, whether they need to or not. It’s a compulsion. And you’ll never get anywhere unless you learn to stick your bumper out and move into another lane. But don’t look over your shoulder or they won’t let you in. If you are trying to break into traffic, such as when you have to make a   u-turn (the only way to change direction on major roads. There are very few traffic light and left turns). You just have to keep slowly moving your nose into the traffic until someone is forced to give way. The next scary thing is the motor bikes. 1000s on the streets as they are cheap and they buzz in and out like they had a death wish. Elder Staton calls them “bumble bees” and we agree. They actually have frequent fatal accidents. The guy on the motor bike always loses. Then there are the jeepneys, which are an open-air small bus. They navigate as though they had road priority. There are lots of those too. And then there are the “tricycles”. These are motorbikes with a cab to the side. All in all the roads are an un-choreographed dance that simply has to be experienced to understand. Bruce is doing quite well. We have decided that if it take us 15 or 20 minutes longer because we are less aggressive, that it is okay. I think I will just let him do the driving until we do long hauls out into the provinces.

So What are We Doing?

We are trying desperately to learn as much as we can from the Statons, the couple who have run the Wheelchair initiative for the past 2 years. We have about 30 service missionary couples who have been called to help run the program. The first large problem is the corruption in the country. Many wheelchairs were given out in the beginning to government and private units to give to their people. Assessors were called and trained to fit the chairs to the people, but after time it was found the people those chairs were intended for never received them. The chairs were given out as political gifts or stolen. So now we have to be very careful and our wonderful service missionaries visit every recipient and make sure things have been done properly. There is just a lot of people to learn about, many organization to learn about, a huge computer program to learn to run, and a lot of people to co-ordinate. We know we can do it because we have been called to do it and the Lord doesn’t want the program to fail.

We have learned that Christ came to walk the earth to establish the church and through the atonement bring to reality the new and everlasting covenant. But the second great thing the Lord did was to care for the poor and the needy. Caring for the poor and the needy has been added to the mission statement as the 4^thprinciple. We are so glad to be serving the Lord in serving the poor and the needy “in this church, in any other church or in no church at all.” Joseph Smith

President Oakes

We arrived at a very special time. Shortly after our arrival Pres. And Sister Oakes arrived to spend a little over a week here in the Philippines.  He was accompanied by Bishop and Sister Couse of the Presiding Bishopric and Elder and Sister Robson of the Seventies. We joined with the church employees in their devotional with Elder Oakes in our building. We participated in a mission wide zone conference, and at the broadcast of an area wide broadcast from the Buendia chapel in downtown Manila. One of the really great highlights was the cultural program presented at the MTC cultural hall. The young people of the stake presented about 10 of native dances of the Philippines. The costuming was wonderful. Several of the dances were from the primary children and were great fun.

Elder Oakes messages were timely and wonderful. For the young elders he told us he never prepares a message but speaks to concerns he has felt. He spend some time talking about those who would like to serve but whose family responsibility prohibited it. He said that “the desires of our heart” can make up for what we cannot do when we try our best, our very best He talked to the Elders about Priesthood and Priesthood keys. He said that Priesthood Keys are the right to direct Priesthood authority and this gives women certain priesthood responsibilities, such as in the temple, while in God’s plan they do not hold the keys to direct.  

In the area wide broadcast Elder Oakes counseled the Saints to establish the Gospel culture. He told them to maintain what was good in their culture but their most important culture was that of the Gospel.

Another interesting point was that Elder Oakes mentioned a scripture about the Sabbath, “that we should go to the house of prayer and offer up they sacraments upon my holy day. But he didn’t know where the scripture was found, he said he uses the topical guide to find scripture. And it made me realize that even among the apostles, men are called because of their strengths and not in spite of their “weaknesses”.  One of Elder McConkie’s gifts was his excellence with the scriptures. But Elder Oakes great gifts lead him to succinct and logical treaties on gospel doctrine. Elder Oakes also mention that he had never been a full-time missionary, Elders quorum president, a Bishop, a Stake President or Mission President. As an apostle he was called as the Philippine Area President to learn the experience of those offices.  Prior to being an apostle he had never held a position where he held priesthood keys.

Arrival!

We have arrived! The flights to reach Manila is long and very tiring. SLC to Seattle is 1:40 hour , Seattle to Tokyo – 10 hours, and then Tokyo to Manila is 4 more hours. We left Salt Lake at 11:00am on Monday and arrived in Manila at 11:30pm on Tuesday night. Of course you lose a lot of hours. 

We were in a hotel for the first 5 days and have now moved into an apartment that was vacated by another set of missionaries. We have been looking for a nicer place but after a lot of looking we are just going to settle here until the broker can find something with some pretty specific parameters. The shower took me 3 days and a quart of bleach to cure. The previous missionaries were ill and had left under the assumption that it would be cleaned and it was, by me.

We work out of the Area Presidents Office. The compound is across from the temple and includes the MTC complex, Missionary Recovery Office (sick missionary go there to heal) and temple patron housing

We live in Eastwood city which is basically a very large outdoor mall with large condo towers. Philippinos buy the units, furnish them, and then rent them out as an investment.  Outside our building we can find a TGIFriday, IHop, Chili’s, Outback, KFC, McDonalds, and hundreds of other restaurants.  The problem for seniors here is gaining weight as it is just too easy to eat out.

 We left from Salt Lake at 11am on Monday, October 20, 2014

We arrived at 11:30pm on Tuesday, October 21, 2014 after 15 hours on a jet.

 View from our Hotel.  The building on the far left is our new home.  At least a very small part of it is!

They dry rice on the outside lane of the road. We saw the men out there working it with a rake and bagging it.