Career Workshop

Tarlac City

Tarlac, Philippines

28 February 2010

We are enjoying our assignment as Employment Specialists. Sometimes we wonder about the sweet and fun people we teach, we don’t often get to hear the end of the story – if they were successful or not.

Last Feb. 2009, we were asked by our Employment Resource Center (ERC) office to help teach the Career Workshop to about 1,000 graduating seniors from the Angeles University Foundation. It took us and another team about 4 weeks. AUF is basically a Catholic university with classes beginning with prayer at the start of each day. We were not sure how the students would feel about “Elder and Sister Costley”. We tried to make the workshop fun and tailored to the needs of someone graduating in a week! Among other things, the workshop prepares them for job interviews with confidence building exercises and mock interviews. One thing that we left in our presentation was all the quotes from our prophets with scriptures to match that we normally use when we are teaching members. It was so wonderful to watch their faces when Elder Costley read this quote from President Hinckley, “The Lord would want you to be successful, He would. You are his sons and daughters. He has the same kind of love and ambition for you that your earthly parents have. They want you to do well and you can do it.” (Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, 1997, p.614). Their faces would just light up, it was a great sight. We encouraged them to involve the Lord every step of the way in the job seeking process.

As you can well imagine, we had a lot of fun working with these well educated students – nurses, medical technicians, media students, computer technicians, teachers, etc. We enjoyed talking with them after class and wished them all good luck.

Last week we were in a mall in Angeles and a young lady said “Sister Costley, do you remember me last year from AUF?” She was so cute and she went on to say that she got a job teaching English to Korean students. She thanked us so sweetly and we were so happy for her. It just made our whole day.

On Sat. Feb. 6th, we gave the Career Workshop to a group of young adults here in the Tarlac Stake. Then last week we received notification that one of the young men attending the workshop was starting a job in Manila the following day. We were so happy for him. These young adults are so sharp, we just love them and we feel blessed to be here. Once in a while we like to hear the “end of the story”.

Elder NB & Sister MB

Taught by Children

Tarlac City,

Tarlac,

Philippines

15 February 2010

Yesterday we enjoyed a wonderful Stake Conference in Tarlac. It was a very spiritual and uplifting meeting although it was 3 hours long – sitting on hard wooden benches even made it seem longer. One of the speakers told about a special boy named Jake, who was intent on honestly practicing the principle of tithing that he had just been taught in Primary. Jake’s mother gave him 10 pesos each day as he left for school for his expenses. He lived too far from school to come home for lunch so the money was to be used to buy lunch and he also needed to save 1 peso to pay for a boat ride to bring him across the river at the end of the day. Jake decided to pay his tithing from the 10 pesos he received each day (10 pesos is about $0.20 cents in the U.S.). When Jake would get home from school, he would proudly give his mother the 1 peso he had saved and she would hold it until he could pay his tithing to the Bishop on Sunday.

One day at school, Jake realized that someone had stolen his 10 peso coin. He was so sad, he hadn’t missed one day of giving his tithing to his mom. He felt in his pocket and discovered he still had 1 peso that he had not spent the previous day. After school, Jake was very late getting home. His mother was starting to worry when Jake arrived, hot and tired. He told his mom about the stolen coin but instead of taking the boat across the river with his only remaining peso, he had decided to walk the long way home so that he could still pay his tithing! Did we mention – Jake is 6 years old.

Our children can teach us many things by example if we will but watch and listen to them after we teach them correct principles.

Another uplifting story was about a young man who is now eleven. Two years ago his area was closed to missionary work due to a shortage of missionaries. The elders were removed but the small branch continued under the direction of the branch president. A month ago the mission was able to reopen the town and sent two elders back to teach the people. The first Sunday the missionaries attended the branch this young man eagerly approached them and asked if he could be baptized. He told them he had been attending church since the elders left and had not missed one Sunday in two years. The missionaries were so excited about him and asked him if they could meet his parents – now the whole family is being taught the gospel.

Elder Lesa pictured above with Pres. Puzey is one of the missionaries working with the family.

Elder NB & Sister MB