A Pioneer Passes On

Last week the man, who was known as the "Living Legend" of Mapandan, passed away. Brother Calixtro Castro was baptized in 1983. He was faithful and truly converted right from the start. He rode his bicycle 20 Km to the Dagupan branch to be baptized and he continued to ride his bike to church every Sunday to attend meetings. He became a stalwart in the branch and district as a leader and a shepherd extraordinaire. He would be seen riding his bike all over the area visiting the members of his branch and quorum. Up until just a few years ago he rode his bike to church with a few of his grandchildren on the handlebars.
  
We visited the family in their home last Sunday right after he passed away and learned that members and friends show their love and support by just being present at their home. When we arrived many of the family and friends surrounded this little shed with canopies of tin or canvas pieces laced together to shelter them from the sun and rain. The roof of the home was made of sheets of corrugated tin that was visible from the inside... hot in the sun and noisy in the rain. We greeted his wife who subdued her grief and expressed gratitude for our presence. 

The funeral was held in their home on Friday. The branch leaders brought the keyboard to the funeral and Sister Lindsay played the hymns... Oh, My Father, I Know That My Redeemer Lives.

Some branch members at the funeral. We shed our tears, but also found hope and smiles through our faith in Jesus Christ and his Resurrection.

The couple sitting next to Sister Lindsay were former members and branch president, now living in another town an hour away.

This woman is a member of the deceased's family, but she and her palsied daughter sat at her home watching the gathering. Sister Lindsay saw her and went over to greet her and her daughter. They talked and Sister Lindsay expressed words of comfort and hope.

The visiting took place on Sunday and the funeral was held on Friday. I was honored to be invited to speak at the funeral along with two members of the branch leadership. As I was about half way into my talk heavy rains started to beat down on the tin roof and created a deafening roar so that no matter how loud I yelled no one could hear me, so I concluded. The cloud burst subsided a few minutes later and the funeral was concluded with a hymn, I Know That My Redeemer Lives. I knew that the members of this family, indeed, knew that Jesus Christ lives and they have hope through his Atonement and Resurrection that they too will live beyond this veil of mortality. "Oh, what joy this sentence gives, I know that my Redeemer lives."

Miscellaneous

The towns are divided into neighborhoods called barangy (ba rang guy). This barangy must be larger. It has a fancy entry gate over the highway.

Member trikes; note the "Liahona" and "LDS" signs.

The trees and vines are growing right before our eyes.

The government has posted signs all over the country that point the direction to the LDS chapels. I don't know the whole story, but our church is the only one that  has this signage. It sure helps us find the chapels as we drive into a new town.

They buy the rice plant starts in these clumps.

The clumps of starts are placed in rows in the fields and the workers separate the starts and plant them individually into the mud of the rice field. You can see the progress of the workers in this field. It's back-breaking work, you stand in mud and can get parasites under your skin. This is not fun work.

A view of the rice fields in different stages of growth. The land owners loan the farmers the money to buy the clumps of starts, fertilizer, pesticide and the money to pay the workers and gets 75% of the crop in return. The farmer gets the other 25%.

All in A Days Work

We start the day with a shower, personal scripture study, joint study, daily planning, breakfast and a little more study. Today we left the house at 9:00 am to meet the zone leaders an hour away. So at 10:00 we met the zone leaders and waded through traffic to review some apartments. We approved one that was newly re-painted and looked great... even had a toilet seat! The elders were concerned that others would beat them to the landlord and rent it before they got there, so we drove them directly to the landlord's home. While they were busy working arrangements out with the landlord, we went to the end of the block and took a peak at the South China Sea.

Driving through town this morning was a breeze!

 Fishermen coming in from a morning of fishing. 

 They hoped out of the boat and all lent a hand to get the boat out of the water and up on the sand. A few well placed logs and a lot of grunts and groans...

 ...and they got the boat out of the water and safely on the sand.

Other fishing boats have already come in and the fishermen are telling their stories of the day under a palm frond roof along the shore.

This man came in solo on a little raft. No big waves in sight, but if there was one he would be in for a swim.

The apartment agreement was finalized, so we returned to pickup the zone leaders and take them back to their apartment on the other side of town. We dropped them off and drove a half an hour to the next town to join the missionaries in their district meeting. The power is out, so no A/C or fans on this hot humid day. We shared a can of honey roasted peanuts with the elders during interviews and a couple of Hershey Kisses. It was a good training and the elders strengthen one another by just being together. We always enjoy being the investigators in the workshops.

After the district meeting we left the chapel with another set of zone leaders to review another apartment. the apartment looked great and we gave our hearty approval. While we were getting out of the car I saw the elders walking up the street and had to take a picture of the wonderful sight of these Sons of Helaman marching down the street on their way to proclaim the restored gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world!

 After the apartment inspections, back in the car, through town, down the "highway" to home for a quick bite of dinner. Whoa! What was that? It was a big flash of light followed by a deafening clap of rolling thunder. The clouds burst with the moisture they have been gathering all day and pour it down for hours. But the work goes on. We got our dinner and left home to meet the Primary president who will accompany us to the less active families and our reactivation visits. We got to the meeting place and waited in the car while the rains poured down. Our sister from the branch arrive a little late because there were no trikes to hire for her ride due to the heavy rains. She was faithful and found a way to get to us. We traveled down the road to a turnoff onto a gravel road, with lots of holes and no shoulder. We traveled on this road in the pouring rain about 3 Km (1.8 miles) and there we found our families. We visited for a couple of hours, talked of their conversion and their missionaries, gave a lesson, bore testimony and invited them to come to church next Sunday.

The sister on the left is our primary president and the other sisters are those we are inviting back to church. We had a very sweet experience with them, felt the spirit and shed tears of joy together. They know the gospel is true and love the Lord, but travel is expensive and difficult. We think they have the faith to do it and we know the Lord will help them find the way. He certainly delivered us today and know that somehow we will make it back to the highway and to our cozy little home.

We dropped the sister off at her home and got back to our home by 9:00. It was a busy day... a rewarding day... a day of deliverance of the Lord. We approved apartments that were exceptionally good. We met with the missionaries and lifted their hearts and they lifted ours. We bore testimony and felt the spirit all day long. We forged some flooded roads to meet some wonderful saints and shared a spiritual experience together. We were filled with joy all day. What a wonderful work we are engaged in! Thank you dear Lord for letting us be a small part of thy great work and receive such a bountiful blessing of joy.

First Baptism in July

Sister Kalulu (on the left) was baptized in May and she has been actively working with the missionaries to teach many others in her family. The is her granddaughter that is getting baptized today.

First Fruits Experience

Jack fruit grows on trees and looks like a prickly watermelon hanging in a tree.

 We received this jack fruit from our landlord as a gift from the bountiful harvest in his backyard. We also got some small bananas that were very good.

 This jack fruit weighed about 12 pounds and was a little painful to hold with the pointy spines on the skin of the fruit.

 Sister Lindsay cut it open with a great deal of effort, to reveal a strange looking inside. The white sap that started to flow was like very sticky glue. The yellow part is the edible part and it is formed in pods with seeds.

Mmmmm... sweet, but not as sweet as a ripe jack fruit. We took this one to share with members after a baptism and they didn't want it because it was not ripe yet. They got us a ripe one and it got picked up by someone else that must have thought it was theirs.

The sticky sap required about an hour of work and a half a bottle of finger nail polish remover to clean the knife.

 

Now this is more like it! A yellow watermelon. It was labeled as a Dark Beauty melon.

It was very sweet and reminded us of our yellow melon experience in Egypt.

It's really sweet and good. Here is the proof. this is our way of celebrating the summer and its holidays.

Our First Trip to Lingayen

We passed a lot of rice fields along the way to visit the missionaries of the Lingayen Zone. There are a few bumps in the fields like the one here, but otherwise it is flat. There are a lot of volcano craters in the Philippines, so maybe the bumps are fumaroles or something else associated with volcanoes.

Here the people are starting to plant their field. The clump of rice plant starts is in the middle of the field and they break that into smaller bundles and place them in rows in the field. Then the workers come and place each individual start into the mud. The workers get paid about 120 pesos ($2.76) for a day of work, about 10 hours in the mud. Food for a week for a family of four costs about 700-1,000 pesos. Sometimes they go without some meals, but they are always very generous and would make a meal for you even if it meant their family would go without food. We are very sensitive to that fact and have not compromised anyone's food for their family.

This is a rice field across the street from the missionaries apartment. When it rains the fields fill with water and overflow over the roads. The missionaries told us that last week when it rained hard they were working in knee deep water and they had wet shoes, socks and pants to prove it.

There is precious little shade around, so this patch of shade that looks out onto the rice field is special.

One of the missionary apartments is next door to a rice wholesaler. I wonder why the are having problems with mice in their apartment?

We stopped at a bakery along the way to get a loaf of their famous cheese bread. It was wonderful. I should have taken a picture, but the bread was gone before I thought of a picture. The bread was soft, moist and yellow, with a sweet cheesy sauce in the middle. That and a liter of water made for a nice lunch.

The zone leaders, Elders Smith and Frost, showed us around Lingayen. They were the perfect leaders to the missionaries and even though they are new zone leaders they accepted the responsibilities of leadership with great zeal.

We stopped to review one apartment at lunch time. I had to take a quick picture of a missionary lunch. Doesn't it bring back great memories!? Leftover rice scraped in with the new rice, chicken hot dogs and a bowl of hot vegetable soup and a liter or more of water.

Missionary clothes and shoes drying. The missionaries always look clean and fresh in their white shirts and ties. They also look hot and wet with their sweat clothes in hand, wiping their face and arms to stay dry.

Smiling faces of four missionaries at the door of their apartment.  They were in their apartment doing planning for the week when we arrived. They don't have to wear a tie in the apartment, but two of them were still committed to mission attire!

Sister Lindsay talked with the sister missionaries while the zone leaders and I reviewed the apartment. We found a few repairs that were needed and the zone leaders will take care of those issues with the landlord.

We went downtown Lingayen for a dinner at ChowKing... you can see their red and white CK sign towering above everything in the picture. After a dinner of chicken, rice, noodles, chicken noodle soup and apple dough balls. We needed a sweet treat, so we walked down the street to the Ice Cream House to satisfy our craving. Chocolate ice cream made from milk and not water hit the spot for me. Others enjoyed mango and a variety of fruit flavor treats. It was a great day with the missionaries in Lingayen.

Some of Our Special Friends

There are so many wonderful people and they each have their own story. We don't take pictures all the time, so we can only share a few of our experiences, but a few are better than none.

 Sister Datuin, Sister Lindsay and Sister Ramos

This is Sister Datuin.  She is the new Relief Society president in Mapandan.  She had worked in Primary for many years so when she was called to Relief Society, she read the Handbook to learn what she should do.  It said to visit the sisters and take their names so they could be remembered and nourished by the word. 

She asked the Branch clerk to give her a print out of the sisters on record in RS.  There were 300 names.  Only 29 come to church.  She has begun to visit all 300 on record to see what has happened to them.  Many have moved, a common occurrence here.  People move on the spur of the minute and no one knows if they will be coming back or not.  Some have died.  Some didn’t want to be members anymore.  On a Saturday, she and her sister, the Primary president went to a large neighborhood and tried to find 30 sisters.  It took them all day.  Two were found who want to come back.   Sister Datuin will continue until she has learned about all of them.

This is remarkable because Sis. Datuin works all week from 8:30 until 5:00.  She has four little children, the oldest just turned 8.  Her husband is in Saudi Arabia working.  He will be there for two years and they won’t see him until then.  He went because she had to have a gall bladder operation and it put them so far into debt that there was no way to get out.  They counseled together and decided it would be a terrible sacrifice, but it was the only way.  They told their daughter, “You are in first grade now.  Daddy won’t come home until you are in third grade.”  Sister Datuin said it is a sacrifice for all of them.

Sister Datuin asked if I would come with her to visit the new members.  She said she felt that she could take one hour after work to see two sisters.  She asked these sisters how they were doing, when was their birthday, what skills they had and told them that each month a sister would come to visit them.  She expressed delight in these sisters’ experiences.  One had been a chambermaid in Baguio and also packed peanut brittle.  Now she washes bottles for a warehouse close to their home so she doesn’t have to be in Baguio away from her family.  Sister Datuin thought perhaps she could teach the sisters how to make beds in a professional way.   She says when she is doing the dishes or working, she is thinking of the sisters and what can be done to help them.  She would like help teaching them to preserve food, to store it, to do useful things at home that will earn money for their families and to help them be faithful saints.

She has taken the names of the sisters and organized them by neighborhoods and she said now she is almost ready to make the visiting teaching assignments.  Sister Datuin doesn’t have counselors right now.  One moved away and another asked to be released.  She has  a quiet, lovely secretary though.   And she has the Lord and her Handbook.  She is a remarkable, faithful woman of God ministering to her sisters.

 We had district conference for the Mapandan District in our building and it was wonderful. We had a visiting general authority, Elder Sinamban. He shared many faith promoting stories and challenged the saints to walk to church if they didn't have money for a trike ride. His often quoted phrase, "Strong faith and strong feet." resonated in the hearts and minds of the saints. We invited the Jensens and Perkins to our home for dinner after the conference. It was a wet rainy day but the rains cooled it off. Marlene made a delicious chicken dinner in the crock pot and we had brownies and ice cream for dessert!

This is part of the Lalangan family. Pres Lalangan is the branch president of the Mapandan branch and is a wonderful leader there. We went to his home to demonstrate the FHE we are sharing with members to encourage them to have family prayer, read the scriptures daily and have FHE.

Getting to Know the Saints

We were prepared to do some leader training and attended a branch social last night. The leaders didn't show up so we were ready for the social . It was scheduled to start at 5:00... by 6:30 we had an opening prayer. We started with a hymn, two devotional messages and then into the games and some fun with the saints. The sisters had on sweaters and one had a jacket on, but it was not cool inside, about 85 and extremely stuffy. No one was bothered by the heat in the room but me. We had some fun together and got to know the saints better and they got to know us better.

 Sister Lindsay would ask questions of her group to discover the word written on the blackboard, "eraser". She was the first one and did it in about 90 seconds.

 Her team was delighted with their success.

 I was next. The phrase I was looking for was"name tag". I got my phrase in 87 seconds! Our team was ahead and elated.

Sister Lindsay started round two... a game like pictionary. She was drawing a "sacrament cup" and they got it in 9 seconds! Great job!

We had a nice evening and learned a lot about their families and lives in general. We enjoyed some rice treats and called it a night. The air was cooler than inside and we were refreshed. We got home to our drying clothes and the comforts of home and fixed a quick spaghetti dinner, checked email and did our scripture study and into bed by 10. Tomorrow is a big day with district conference with our mission president, President Jensen and a visiting general authority.