Mahal Y'all

Mahal y'all! This might be the perfect phrase for an American southerner living in the Philippines! The translation is something along the lines of "I love you all" but "Mahal y'all" is so much better. 

The list of things I am grateful for here in the Philippines is long, especially since it's been over a month since I've posted. Life got really busy and I actually had a fairly major "crisis" for about two weeks. I am deeply committed to my faith and to the gospel of Jesus Christ but I am experiencing a higher than normal dose of what I have to call patriarchy and it landed me in a tailspin for a good while. I'm back in the saddle, confident in my thinking, learning to use my voice in constructive ways, and feeling incredibly grateful for remarkable friends who helped me navigate this. 

Now back to our lives as missionaries and mission leaders in this remarkable Philippines Olongapo Mission ...

We continue to be blessed with terrific office sisters, who I am privileged to interact with frequently. We recently went on an outing to Olongapo, which is about 45 minutes south of where we live in Subic. Our finance secretary needed to make a deposit at the bank and our supply manager needed to purchase replacement chargers for our missionary phones. I happily went along as the chauffeur, pleasantly surprised to discover that the phone store was inside a lovely mall, complete with a fun Christmas display. 

Speaking of Christmas, yes, wait for it, wait for it ... here's my first mention of a nativity ... look closely in the center and you'll see it. I was walking in Waltermart a few weeks ago and found this gem in a kiosk. It changes color and makes me quite happy flashing on our front door.   

We have also been blessed with lovely Christmas decorations that were purchased by prior mission leaders and which our sweet housekeeper, Mercy, has had many years of experience putting up. She did a lovely job putting up a Christmas tree in our family room (which twinkles merrily in the room where I abide), a Christmas tree in our living room (which our missionaries absolutely love when they're here), a garland on the banister in our front hallway (which is a sweet reminder of home) and, wait for it ... a magnificent nativity in our family room (which joyfully reminds me of the reason I'm here). 

One of the joys of working with talented young missionaries is their technical and creative abilities. Steve (aka President) and I are hosting an online Christmas devotional on Sunday, December 6 and one of our missionaries put together this digital flier ...

The devotional is good timing for our friends here in the Philippines (6pm) and it's not good timing for our friends in the US (2am, 3am, 4am and 5am!) but all are welcome to join. 

 

A few weeks ago we went on our second mission tour, visiting all of our missionaries in their apartments. We overnighted for two nights in Candelaria, a small fishing village on the coast in the north of our mission. My morning walk took me past these colorful fishing boats.  

And we were both quite enchanted with the peacocks that roamed our hotel grounds, especially the white one, which we'd never seen before. 

On our mission tour, Steve had the opportunity to visit with one of his old missionary companions who lives in our mission and he also had the unique privilege of inviting him to be one of his mission counselors. It was a sweet reunion for the two of them and Steve is looking forward to working with Elder Echaure again after all these years. 

On our mission tour I was pleasantly surprised to discover Shakey's Pizza Parlor, a throwback to my childhood. The pizza was exactly the same as I remembered it, complete with the big bubbles in the crust for anyone who happens to remember Shakey's pizza.  

Preparation for our mission tours still includes getting medical certificates and travel authorities so that we can pass through checkpoints. Our assistants took these pictures of us filling out the forms and waiting in line. The line can be quite long and I am happy to report that Steve can get us to the front of the line as a senior citizen.    

The ever rotating assignments of missionaries makes for sweet and tender moments for me. We said goodbye to a second office sister, Sister Redondo, as she is finishing up her mission back in the mission field. 

And we welcomed new office sisters, Sister Mediado, our wonderful supply manager, and Sister Allera, our amazing office secretary. Also pictured is our wonderful finance secretary, Sister Leduna. These sisters save my sanity with their bright and cheerful personalities. I adore them.

We continue to love our association with our missionaries as we frequently teach and train together, mostly in Zoom. We just finished zone conferences this week and have also conducted leadership training, orientation, and mission leader council in the past little while. Teaching and training might be the best part of the mission for me. I love the preparation and the interaction with our bright and inspired and diligent missionaries, who day after day after day study and teach and do challenging missionary work. We feel a tremendous responsibility to teach and train and inspire them and we are grateful for the time we have for our own personal study, which is our best preparation for all of our teaching and training.

We had the unique privilege of accompanying our new missionaries to the Manila temple for their first experience there. I am grateful for the temple, for our Savior Jesus Christ, and for covenants that I've personally made in the temple that unite me with my family for eternity.

A few other little points of interest ... our weather right now is typical tropical weather with a high around 90 each day and mid 70's at night.

We continue to love the fruit, clockwise from top, lanzone, rambotan, langon, mango, papaya, mangosteen. Langon continues to be my favorite. 

I love Filipino food but I did have to supplement with a shipment of Cheerios, which I decided I needed, not wanted.

And as tired as I am of living in a Covid world, we do have the coolest face masks on the planet. Look closely ... Philippines Olongapo Mission. Someone before us ordered these and although we actually wear the lighter weight standard PPE face masks on a daily basis, our mission face masks are awesome.

We have much to be grateful for and even though we are not celebrating Thanksgiving this week with a big meal surrounded by our children and grandchildren, we are counting our many blessings. I am still wearing the tag (I wasn't so sure for a while there) and I am deeply grateful for my testimony of the gospel, of Jesus Christ, of the Book of Mormon, and of God's love and I am grateful that my testimony holds steady despite the storms that beat against it. As I was navigating out of my crisis, I found inspiration from an unusual source, from our newly elected US vice president, which I shared with my family in a text and I'll share here:

As I consider my many blessings, I am most grateful that I can say with full conviction: "Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life." (3 Nephi 5:13)

 

Happy Thanksgiving and Mahal Y'all!