Saturday, May 23, 2015

23 May 2015

This has been a busy, busy week.  A rundown by day follows:

Sunday: May 17 - Up early and on our way to Buhi with President Flores who is a councilor in the Mission Presidency and his wife.  Buhi is where the new chapel is being completed and we were informed that the first meetings were to be held there on the 17th.  President Reeder was speaking at a Stake Meeting in Goa and so could not go but President Flores asked if we could take him and his wife down.  It was a great day to be there and see the new building and be with the members and missionaries again.
There was a lot excitement and great turnout.  Usually they have about 80 to Sacrament Meeting.  Today about 160.



From the back of the new chapel before meeting started.  

At Buhi chapel with some members in front.








Monday: was Pday and get ready for the rest of the week.  It was a good day for me as I prepared myself for the career workshop on Tuesday.  Sister Hoopes was involved all day with the English testing.  All had to be finished that day because they were going home on Wednesday.






Career Workshop during a writing/thinking exercise.

Tuesday: Career Workshop which is nearly all day.  I will give more about this later but we went home for a couple of hours late afternoon and then back to the Mission Home to help clean up after the dinner.  Ate some leftover Chinese food and got home later that evening really tired.

Wednesday: Back to the Mission home to help with the processing of the 17 new missionaries which just arrived that morning.  We were there through lunch and then able to take a little time off.



These 10 Elders along with me and Elder Watson made a great Choir.

Thursday: On our way to Bato for a combined district meeting of Bato and Nabua districts.  The 10 Elders from these districts were asked to sing at a Funeral on Friday in Bato for a Sister Missionary who had died.  She is from Cotnogan which is a small branch near Bato.  She was serving in the Philippines Angeles mission which is in northern Luzon.  She just got very sick and died while serving there last week.  They think maybe a ruptured Gall Bladder. We practiced a song with the Elders and me with Sister Hoopes accompanying on the broken down piano.


Pres & Sis Ardern are in this picture along with the Reeders.
The family is also here with a picture of the missionary who died.


Friday:  Back to Bato for the funeral service which included the Area President, Elder Ardern and his wife who had flown into Naga the day before.  We stopped on our way and picked up the Watsons who wanted to go with us that day.  The Funeral started at 8:00 am and so we got up at 5;30 and were on the road about 6:30 in order to get there on time.  It made for a long day even though we got back in pretty good time that afternoon.  Sister Hoopes ended up playing the piano for everything including a choir of youth from Iriga.  They were planning to sing acapalla but that would not have been good.   Sadly, the piano didn't play the right note all the time and the pedal made noises but the music turned out very nice.


This young man volunteered to sing a solo part in our song.
I am thanking him for his service.


We see this mountain named Mayon which is an active volcano every time we go to Buhi.  It is usally covered by clouds.  This time we actually stopped and got a great picture.  It is just outside our mission so we will probably never get any closer than this shot.  You can see the smoke coming from the top of the cone.

My thought for this week is regarding the teaching of the missionaries in the Career Workshop.  I have mentioned before that we are trying to inspire each missionary and give them courage and knowledge about what the Lord desires for them both temporally and spiritually. We use the talk from Elder Todd Christofferson from last October as the basis.  I have never seen anything better.  It is a powerful message of how the Lord will work in our lives once WE choose what we want and ask Him.  We teach them how to show by their actions what they want to be or have.   One young man, a Philippino, came up and thanked me for the workshop.  He said he had always wanted to be an electrical engineer,  He said, "I was afraid to go home from my mission". Now I am not afraid anymore and I know what to do.  This is a message for all of us.  Quit being afraid and go do what you want to do.  Show the Lord what you want and ask Him and he will help you.  If any of you want our Power Point presentation, just ask.

"The Lord will not make us something that we do not choose by our actions to become". (Elder Christofferson)

That's all this week.

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