Visiting General Authorities

Angeles, Pampanga,

Philippines

15 June 2009

This week has been one of those special weeks that make a mission so worthwhile and fill you with the spirit of the work. On Tuesday we held an all mission conference (first time that anyone remembers) with 150 missionaries and five couple missionaries. Our meeting leaders were delayed so as we waited for their arrival we sang the songs of Zion – what enthusiasm and gusto was displayed. We gathered to be instructed by Elder Whitney Clayton of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy and Elder Ko of Philippines Area Presidency and of course the Angeles Mission President, President Puzey –each with their wives in attendance. When the party arrived they formed a reception line and shook hands with each missionary – what a treat for some of these missionaries who have never been this close to a General Authority. Elder Clayton had Elder and Sister Ko and the Angeles Stake President, President Briones tell their conversion stories – wonderful church leaders who found the church and joined with all their hearts.

Elder Clayton talked for almost two hours and gave instructions and direction to the missionaries while calling them to a stronger commitment to the guidelines in the Preach My Gospel areas of emphasis – missionary purpose, companion study, planning your weekly activities, learning the language, finding and being firm when inviting people to accept a commitment. The missionaries were strengthened and all verbally committed to “lengthen their stride” and work harder than ever before.

We were invited to attend a Welfare meeting in the Makati Employment Resource Center (ERC) with the three ERC managers from Davo, Cebu and Makati and a special guest Dr. Warner Woodworth from BYU (who happened to be in our bishopric when we lived in Ann Arbor, Mich.) These meetings were directed at helping the saints in the Philippines improve their lives through training and funding from NGOs for self employment projects.

This weekend we attended the Paniqui District Conference presided over by an Area Authority Seventy – Elder Fabian Sinamban. We received instructions from the district presidency, the mission presidency and Elder Sinamban.
We were privileged to participate in these different meetings all in one week’s time – we have been spiritually fed.

Elder NB & Sister MB

Start of the Rainy Season

Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija,

Philippines

We have just entered the Philippine rainy season, (June through September). It actually rained most of May too, so everything has really greened up. Last week it rained hard and heavy every day and flooded the main road into town with standing water. Everyone has to drive slower to keep the wakes down but the tricycles go very slow and have to watch out for spray from the car tires. We are careful to only spray the kids at the side of the road who are waiting for a splash.

We had a mission Zone Conference last week where we were able to see our little missionary batch* we befriended at the Prove MTC. When we were at the MTC we found the next batch going to the Philippines Angeles Mission and took them Halloween candies and treats before we left for our mission. They followed in December. They are now assigned in the same zone so we were able to get them together and took their picture with us. They are working very hard in the Camiling Zone.

Sunday we had the assignment to go back to our favorite little branch in the Paniqui District – Cuyapo Branch. It was made a branch a couple months ago and they were holding their meetings in the missionary’s carport. Now they have a rented house that has been remodeled for their use with class rooms, an office for the branch president and a very nice large room for their Sunday meetings. Their new building means so much to them and has really changed their commitment to the gospel. We are so happy for them.

Elder NB & Sister MB

* A batch is the group that studies together at the MTC and arrives in the mission field together.

May Flys By

Luzon, Philippines



What a busy month May has been and it has been great to be able to travel and visit Districts that have never been visited before and provide them our basic training packages. The groups have not been large but they have had the initerest in what we have to share that makes it worhtwhile. We have been as far away as a five hour drive and as as close as an hour and a half drive. Members here are hungry for any assistance they can get and they can come and participate in all three presentations, if they desire.

You saw on the previous blog where we took a detour to visit Banaue and it was very impressive and worth the time it took for the drive over there.

We ended up with a little illness that kept us from teaching all our scheduled classes in Santiago but we did recover and the next day taught eight departing missionaries at the Angeles Mission home on this transfer. A transfer is a six week cycle where new missionaries arrive and departing missionaries leave for their homes after spending a couple days with us in the Career Workshop. What a special treat it is to be with them and feel of their strength and their testimonies as they are leaving the mission field. The picture is of the eight missionaries as they graduated with us.

We are blessed to have this assignment.

Elder NB & Sister MB

Banaue Rice Terraces

Banaue, Ifugao,

Philippines

18 May 2009

Our weekend assignment for May 16 and 17 was to attend a regional meeting in Santiago, Isabella and provide training. Santiago is over five hours from Tarlac and required almost a full day’s drive over a couple mountain ranges and because the Banaue Rice Terraces are nearby we decided to drive up a couple days early and visit this site.

We left and drove over known roads to San Jose, Nueva Ecija then new territory into the mountains. Roads were fair but heavy trucks were using and abusing it in numbers. We saw beautiful mountain country with valleys that reminded us of home (except all the tropical plants, farms, etc., etc.) then back into a big open valley with mountains out in the distance. We did have our lunch at new McDs in Solano, Nueve Vizcaya which was a good time for our break. We drove from there into the mountains from Bababag to Banaue. Emong the serious storm that came through last week caused uncountable landslides on the roads with large rocks, trees and dirt in our way. Some had been cleared, some were one lane passage, some were being worked on causing some delay.

Arriving at the Banaue Hotel we were welcomed and given a room that from the balcony you could look almost straight down into the valley and see villages, rice terraces, mountains, and more mountains.

The Banaue Rice Terraces are over 2,000 years old and cover over 400 square Kilometres of these mountains. It is so impressive to think of what they were able to and are still doing. They have to make repairs in the walls after storms like Emong.

Rain is regular and so everything is very green. We took a day tour and rode in a Jeepney out into the mountains to visit the village of a mountain tribe. We walked down steps into the village over 1,000 vertical feet to be among them and saw a house of one of their leaders, inside and out with all of its uniqueness. They were reroofing his neighbour’s house so we took some pictures.
Our guide asked us how old we were when we hiked out and we told him and he was impressed with our strength and stamina. We were out in 30 minutes where many of his groups take over an hour. We did find an ice cold coke and it was refreshing.

At the main overlook there are hundreds of terraces in view and it is an impressive picture as you can see above. If you have not seen it in person it is worth the trip to see this world wonder.

Elder NB & Sister MB

Bayambang,

Pangasinan,

Philippines

11 May 2009

For those of you who have not heard, we in Luzon, Philippines have had Emong, a major Typhoon/ Cyclone/ Hurricane (depends where you live in the world) working us over for the better part of a week. We were not caught in the center of it but our friends up in Dagupan got hit hard with both wind and rain. In Tarlac we only got serious rain with some wind – when we say rain we mean rain. Your windshield wipers do not work fast enough, roads fill up with water, as you drive water is sprayed across the street, you just want to stay out of it because in less than one minute it is like standing in a swimming pool. We did have to drive a bit so we were able to see how the locals love to play in a lukewarm rain storm – they believe it is healthy. Note the tricycle drivers they have to put up with all kinds of weather with very little protection.

This last Sunday was Mother’s Day and we celebrated first thing in the morning because some of our children had sent greetings to MB. We had scheduled a fireside presentation in Bayambang in the afternoon so we drove an hour north to join them for their meeting schedule at 9 a.m. Their sacrament meeting program was put on by the Primary, Young Women and Young Men of the ward. It was sweet to hear the Primary songs about mother and hear the nice things they said about their own mothers. 90% of the meeting was in English so we felt almost at home. They passed out silk flowers to all the mothers as a gift on their day at the close of the meeting.

Sundays with faithful members make our week special.

Elder NB & Sister MB

Entrepreneurial Training

San Fernando,

La Union,

Philippines

27 April 2009

Monday we spent visiting four different mayor’s offices seeking training assistance for our members who want to improve their computer and other technical skills. We took our favorite Ward Employment Rep. from Victoria with us so we could communicate and see if we could duplicate what she was able to do in Victoria. We went to Paniqui and had reasonable success then on to Moncada , talked to the mayor and he was interested in helping his people. Over to the small city of Anao where they were very kind and willing to assist our members. An interesting product is produced by this city that is known around the world – they make perfumes, soap, laundry detergent and other things out of a tree blossom extract – Ylang Ylang. Sister MB bought some and it has a nice fragrance. The last stop was in Gerona where we visited with the vice mayor’s training coordinator and identified some opportunities. We really felt it was time well spent.

Thursday we left early to drive two hours to the ERC Volunteer Center in Dagupan to attend an Entrepreneurial training class for two days. We stopped for McDs breakfast in a small town but they didn’t serve breakfast so we had cheeseburgers and fries for breakfast. Yummy. The training was given by a non-member who started his own printing business after being a business professor for a number of years. He has grown his business into one of the largest printing shops in Dagupan. The training is for four days so next weekend we will be back.

Mr. Espiritu (the ex-professor) started with very business basics – by building the attendee up to increase self-confidence and then to motivate them to think about what their potential is to build their own business. He has taken this on as his own mission in life to help others become entrepreneurs. There are not a lot of job opportunities available to the people of the Philippines (even with a college degree) so building your own business takes on new meaning for them.

Sunday we were in San Fernando La Union (one hour north of Dagupan on the coast) to give a fireside on Prosperity. What great members were there (about 50), the fireside was well received and we enjoyed visiting with them afterwards. The country had the ocean on the west and beautiful mountains on the east. It was lush with rice, bananas, and coconuts.

Elder NB & Sister MB

The Hand of the Lord

Lapaz, Tarlac,

Philippines

20 April 2009

This week was a week for us to get caught up on things we haven’t been able to take care of for awhile. We have not been in the office for a couple weeks so we were able to spend two days with the volunteers this week. During our visit on Thursday we met a young man whose wife had just had their first child. She came back to Tarlac to be with family during the event. They were living and working in Manila and felt they wanted to live in Tarlac now that they have started a family. He needed a local job so they could set up their home here.

We offered to review his resume and help him develop his network of contacts as he looked for a job. There was a local job posted on our board in his field that we felt he could qualify for if he presented himself in a positive and confident way. On Saturday we met with him again and he informed us that on Friday he was registering his new daughter’s birth and saw a job opening like his current job with a company not far from where he is staying. He gave them a resume and had his initial interview and feels he has a very good chance at getting this job. How the Lord blesses his people and answers humble prayers.

During conference break last weekend we were asked to teach two sisters the Career Workshop so they could qualify for PEF assistance. On Tuesday we took the one sister from Tarlac and drove a half hour to Lapaz and found the other sister with all her Young Women and the branch president ready to be trained. We had a total of nine in the class and they did very well even on a very hot day (no A/C) in this branch building.

The rest of the month of April will be busy as we are assisting another Volunteer Center in Dagupan (central Luzon, west coast) with an entrepreneurial seminar for the next two weekends.

Elder NB & Sister MB