September 20th-27th

Can't belief another week has gone by already, seems like time is beginning to fly by, I will habe been here a month on October 1st.

We have a devotional every Monday morning here at the chuch office building, we sing a birthday song in english and tagalog to whoever has a birthday that week, have an opening song, an uplifting message and closing prayer. Really does get the week off to a good start. The speaker today said he had been assigned to speak last year and then the typhoon came so his talk had been waiting patiently in his drawer and of course his talk was on patience.

I am still doing the Tagalog lessons and they have turned hard, I have learned that I do not have a natural instinct of how to pronounce things, even when I learn it, it doesn't stick in my head for some reason. I mix peoples names up, we have a couple here with the last name of Ayres and I called them Avery until I was corrected, another couple's name is Dufrey and I called them Duprey, I really am embrassing myself. So am hoping learning a new language will help me learn to speak english better.

We attended the temple again on Wednesday evening. The Manila Temple has one of the most beautiful celestial rooms of any I've seen. When we leave the temple, everyone shakes our hand and thanks us for coming.

They have a place here called Mabuhay Desert where Filipino people, particularly children can come and stay while they are having medical problems taken care of. The people there also try to find free medical help. The people are usually from the providences and are very poor. Most of the children are there for cleft palates and club feet. Adults usually have cataracts or some kind of eye problem. A sister here whose husband is a church employe goes every Thursday morning and provides a fun short program for the children. They sing songs and last week they talked about families. They were given a picture of a tree, some cut out leaves and glue. With help they wrote the names of their family on the leaves and glued them to the tree. They were three adult women there who joined in and seemed to enjoy it as much as the children. One little girl Adrianne, who was 2 1/2 years old had a hugh cancer on her eye, it broke my heart. Her mother is 47 years old has ten children, Adrianne being the youngest, and then she has 11 grandchildren already. Her husband is a fisherman. Another little boy who was about 1 1/2 years old was born with a tumor on his nose and didn't get the attention he needed and now has a nose the size of a grapefruit. Really sad and I just wanted to hug them and make it all go away but the best I can do is go each week and help them have a fun time.

Thurday night we had a birthday dinner for the mission president at a greek restaurant. Elder Gunnerson and his wife sat across the table from me and in visiting found that he has worked for the church for over 30 years and a good part of that time was spent going around the world looking for temple and ward building lots. He asked me where my children lived and when I said Rebecca and her family lived in Franklin, TN, he told me that he had picked that lot for the temple, he had four lots he showed the prophet and he chose the one where the temple sets. I was surprised that he remembered it was built by an existing chapel next to an academy. Needles to say, I enjoyed my evening.

Elder and Sister Aguilar, who I met at the MTC, took me to lunch on Friday. They were so anxious for me to try more filipino food and were so excited when I told them I liked it, of course, I can't remember the name of it, but it was very good and they were happy when I told them so. They want to take me to a fancy restaurant, I will not tell them I am not impressed with the restaurants here and going out to eat is not one of my favorite things. They didi not invite my companion so I brought here back a cinnamon roll.

On Saturday one of the couple missionaries as us to go to the Asia mall, the biggest mall in the world, again not my cup of tea, but we went. You can imagine how surprised I was to find out the couple wanted to stay only 1 1/2 hours and visit only one store, so that is what we did. Since I found that sales floor at the top of Mega mall that is where I prefer to shop.

We still do not have a ward or branch assigned. The mission president wanted us to attend a branch that is over an hour away and since we don't have a car we would have to take a Taxi which would be very expensive, so Sister Clark is trying to get him to change his mind and in the meantime we are attending whatever ward. The filipino people have such simple, strong testimonies and understanding of the gospel and such a strong love for the Lord, even though I don't understand a lot of what they say, it is wonderful to part of their meetings.