Last month I had the opportunity to attend a real live and very big gathering of Relief Society sisters! Such a great experience. It feels like it's been a looooooong time since I've gathered with a group of women. We celebrated the 180th anniversary of our church's women's organization. When we arrived, the organizers asked me and Sister Scott, one of our senior missionaries, to share a few thoughts. I shared how grateful I am that we as women share the sacred bond of being daughters of God, regardless of cultural, language and other differences. I love our missionaries, AND, my heart was full of joy and gratitude to gather with sisters again. The sisters put on a fabulous showcase of dance, costumes, food and decorations highlighting cultures from around the Philippines.
Covid continues to stay at low numbers here in the Philippines and we couldn't be happier about this. Finally. We actually don't know how to do missionary work in a non-Covid world and we're slowly transitioning to a new normal. One of the biggest evidences that life is moving back to normal was the arrival of international missionaries in March, the first in two years. We welcomed one Canadian and three Americans. I anticipated the blond hair ... what I didn't anticipate was the blue eyes and I was quite taken by surprise with the reminder that eyes can be blue. The four elders arrived in two batches, three missionaries in one batch and one in the other. All four have been serving in missions in Canada and the US and we were happy to welcome them to their original and permanent assignment here in Olongapo.
In addition, we welcomed three Filipino elders last month. You'll see more than three missionaries in the picture below and that's because we now have the trainers meet their trainees in person, another evidence that Covid is waning. This is so much better than a Zoom introduction.
Last month also brought the departure of three missionaries who have served their entire missions here in Olongapo, their home mission. We welcomed these missionaries way back in September 2020, just a month after we arrived and we have learned how to do missionary work together. All three missionaries live close to the mission home and we were able to join them and their families as the stake president released them from full-time missionary service.
We continued last month with in-person zone conferences and I still love the classic zone conference pictures. We do not take these whole-zone in-person pictures for granted!
With the help of several kind and generous church members throughout our mission, most of our missionaries, including me and President Colton, have now received our Covid boosters. About half of our missionaries gathered in Samal, Bataan, in the southern half of our mission, and the other half gathered in Iba, Zambales, in the northern half of our mission. We have a few remaining missionaries scheduled for their boosters in Olongapo next week.
In addition, we continue to administer regular immunizations and we have a smooth system in place for this. I am grateful for a generous and kind doctor (in the middle below) who travels from Manila to administer these vaccines to our missionaries. This time instead of traveling to each apartment, which takes a significant amount of time, we had our missionaries meet us in various chapels throughout our mission. It still takes two days to do this but it's so much easier. I am also grateful for the nurse who helps us, as well as our driver, who can land anywhere in our mission without GPS. Sister Scott also joined us for this immunization outing.
As I've said before, one of the blessings of having missionaries serving here in their home mission is that we cross paths with them in Sunday meetings.
And we have also been blessed with missionaries from around the Philippines who come back to visit after their missions.
I'll end on this ... recently new emojis were added to the emoji pool and one of them is particularly meaningful here in the Philippines. If you look closely at many of the pictures above, you'll see us making this wonderful Filipino heart sign.
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