New temple missonary couple, etc.

October 7, 2010

The Ilagans, a Filipino temple missionary couple from California, arrived yesterday. When Sister Ilagan walked into our preparation meeting at the temple today, Sister Donoso, one of the Filipino ordinance workers, jumped out of her seat and ran forward, wrapping Sister Ilagan in her arms. Both sisters started to cry. “This is the missionary sister who taught us the Gospel thirty five years ago,” exclaimed Sister Ilagan. “We lost track of her and her whereabouts over the years.” Thrilled is not a strong enough adjective to describe their reunion. Little did Sister Donoso realize when she introduced the Ilagans to the Gospel what amazing things were in their future. This is at least their 3^rd if not 4^th mission: they served in the Manila Temple, he has been a mission president and they have had numerous other Church callings. He worked full time for the Church for 19 years. With their experience and testimonies, they will bolster our work here.

The baptistry has been busy all day. A group of 44 youth and their adult leaders from Mindanao traveled on a ferry all night in order to get here to participate in a 10 o clock baptism this morning. They came again from 2 until 5pm and were scheduled for a third session at 6 but their leaders called and said the kids were exhausted and asked if they could just wait until tomorrow for another session . Of course we said yes. I found out that the branch president who came with two of his children and some of the other families in the branch lost their homes in a big fire less than a month ago, and yet they are here! If a fire starts in a city area, it spreads like wildfire because of the materials that the homes are built from. A month ago a fire in Cebu destroyed 200 homes.

Yesterday afternoon Larry decided he would walk to check on Pablo and Gina, the young parents with 4 children that Elder and Sister Peck took us to visit. Pecks were transferred to an area north of here. Larry hiked close to two hours through mountainous, steep areas. I was amazed that he could even find their little house, it was in such a remote area and he took an entirely different route for walking than we drove, but find them he did. Maybe he was inspired to go. Pablo has a terrible open sore infection on his leg that covers a four by six inch area, but has no money to get medicine or see a doctor. They have not been back to Church since Pecks left, but that didn’t change the situation and need for medical help.

WE have had more power outages than usual lately. Two nights ago I was a follower on the last session when the power went off. Usually the temple generator kicks on within 30 seconds. It took about 5 minutes. Last night the power went off in the 5 o clock session about halfway through and the generator did not turn on at all. President Mortimer waited about 45minutes before cancelling the session in progress. Each person’s proxy name had to be collected to be done today. The sisters in initiatory tried to keep going with a tiny flashlight, but it wasn’t working very well, so that was cancelled also. Another historic moment! Because everyone went home early, Jodi Ganir came to visit to find out what we were doing and the two of us ended up watching a cute movie, “Leap Year”. Daddy tried watching one of the conference sessions on the computer but we were too much competition soundwise for him, so he took a shower that he hadn’t been able to take earlier because there was no water, and then he went into the bedroom and read.