San Jose,
Nueva Ecija,
Philippines
30 May 2010
Last week we returned to “Baler – By the Sea”. We were there about a year ago to teach and train the members in employment skills or self-employment skills. Baler is a road trip over the mountains to a coastal valley on the eastern side of Luzon. The roads are very rough and we are driving our Corolla on these roads – 6 MPH was too fast in some areas. It took us six hours of driving from Tarlac. On the positive side – it is always worth the trip because the scenery is just beautiful. We were so happy to again visit with the Baler members and see the growth – the four little branches we visited before are now organized into a district. You can see that the missionaries have been working so very hard there. The Baler Sacrament meeting was full with hardly a vacant chair to be seen. We enjoyed the spirit and their strong testimonies of the gospel.
On Thursday we were invited to the college graduation of our District President’s son Kirby Nadado. He is such a very fine young man graduating fourth in his “IT” (Information Technology) class. He also received 4 different awards for outstanding performance in developing programs and applications. One thing that is unique in the Philippines is that when someone graduates, a parent walks across the stage with them to receive the diploma. Kind of special! He is preparing and is ready to submit his mission papers.
Saturday we traveled to San Jose, (yes we know the way) Nueva Ecija. We taught the Career Workshop to 50 members from that stake. Of course it is harder with that many people but they were an excellent group and participated well. The booklet we use and the workshop itself are all in English. They all understand English well but they get worried about responding in English, afraid they will say something wrong. After awhile they forget about their worries and the English seems to come to them quite easily. If they stay the whole 8 hours there is a little graduation ceremony at the end and they receive a certificate saying they have completed the Career Workshop. It is great to see how much this certificate means to them. We so enjoy interacting with them at these workshops. They are a loving and delightsome people – we love them.
Elder NB & Sister MB
1 comment:
I am so glad you got a chance to return to Baler, even if the roads are so rough. That is wonderful that the missionaires are doing so well and working hard to get the district organized. Missionaires Rock!!
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