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Fond Farewells

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Thursday, June 30 - 9:00 PM.  Two pathetic, lonely people quietly walked down Burgos Street, each pulling a small bag and carrying another. It was dark and quiet.  We felt alone.  I looked back to where we had come from and tears welled in my eyes.  It was the end of a day we had anticipated with a mix of excitement and dread.  We have lived in denial these last few weeks, thinking we could wish away the end. But everything was ready for the arrival of the new mission leaders.  They arrived a little after noon, and we took some pictures, went for lunch and had a brief orientation.  We felt for them, remembering our first day in the field; feeling like we were being flooded by a fire hose.  Finally, we needed to rip off the bandaid and head upstairs to finish our packing.  2 hours later, we emerged, leaving behind this life we have lived for the last 3 years, and slowly walked down the street to the hotel.   Missionaries live in a world of hellos and goodbyes. Friday, July 1 was a day o
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Learning at the Feet of an Apostle

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Last Thursday morning at 4AM almost all missionaries in Cauayan Mission were awake.  Most were too excited to sleep and wanted to be ready on time.  Sister Craig and I managed to sleep in until 5AM.  Typically missionaries are up at 6:30 but this day was an exception.  A man esteemed by members of the Church as a prophet, seer and revelator, Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, would meet with the entire Cauayan Mission at 8AM in Cauayan.  With over 16 million Members of the Church in almost 200 countries across the world, this would be a rare treat indeed.  Few if any of our young missionaries had ever met a member of the Quorum of the Twelve before.  Their excitement was contagious.  Elder and Sister Renland made a 10 day trip to the Philippines and our mission was fortunate enough to be chosen to be one of the missions he would visit.  The sheer volume of travel and work that the Apostles and other General Authorities of the Church undertake is amazing to say the
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Milestones

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Milestone: a stone serving as a milepost; a significant point of development. I love the milestones on the highways in the United States.  They particularly help on a long trip in the middle of nowhere, helping to keep our sanity as the roads go on, seemingly forever.  It is good to know were are making progress on the trip, especially when there are no other visible markers.  The ones I seem to watch the most closely are the last 40 miles in Montana, approaching Alberta once again.  One of my favorite songs is "Alberta Bound" by Paul Brandt.  That song gets listened to on full blast many times over as we reach the 40 mile mark. We reached a few milestones this week. We had our final round of zone conferences.  We prepared for our trainings as we usually do, and hoped to make the time spent at Zone Conference meaningful for the missionaries.  We feel a strong need to quickly prepare all these new missionaries to lead out quickly.  We trained on the basics, focussing on Doctri
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Cebu

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Cebu is a remarkably beautiful island in the south-central part of the Philippines.  We were privileged to visit Cebu for our Mission Leadership Seminar.  Twice a year, the Area Presidency gathers all the Mission Leaders from the 23 missions in the Philippines Area for three or four days of training.  We gathered to Lapu-Lapu City and sat at the feet of four especial witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  One of the greatest things about being a member of the Church is the opportunity meet some of the most amazing people who teach, train and love you because of your shared brotherhood in the Church. Where else will the CEO of a major corporation or a surgeon choose to spend an hour answering questions of a 20-year-old student, just to help and guide him?  I felt like an old mule at the Kentucky Derby: I felt I did not really belong there with these great leaders, but it sure was fun to be there.  It was not just being with four General Authorities and their wives, but also with twen
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31

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This was a week we have been looking forward to with dread and anticipation.  And the good news is that we survived!  It was transfer week.  But this transfer week was like no other since we arrived in the mission, because we welcomed 31 new missionaries! We have known for a couple of months that we would be getting a lot of missionaries at the beginning of May.  Once a missionary accepts their call, their name and information appears in IMOS for us to see.  It allows us to prepare for their arrival and it also gives us an opportunity to see their picture and learn a little about them before they arrive.  We also are able to plan for the transfer, knowing how many Sisters and how many Elders will be arriving.  Ideally the same number would arrive as are leaving, but I do not think that has ever happened here.  Since March we have watched the May list get larger and larger, finally settling at 31.  31!?  What on earth would we do?  We had 2 go home, so it was a net of 29 new missionarie
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A Great Day

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One of the most universally loved mission experiences is Zone Conference every 6 weeks.  It is a day-long gathering of a large number of missionaries where they are trained and inspired.  It is a big deal for the missionaries.  The Elders usually arrive with a fresh haircut and often the companions will wear a tie that matches.  The Sisters are likewise often matching, and take extra care to look their best.  Some travel 3 hours or more to attend the conference.  They arrive early to ensure they are on time.  New missionaries arrive unsure what to expect and a little nervous.  Old missionaries come wanting to spend time with old companions and batch mates (those they came into the field with). The day starts with a group picture to preserve the moment.  At the Cauayan Conference the Sisters decided they wanted a picture with just the Sister missionaries in it.  When they were done, the Elders decided they needed a picture as well.  After a more formal picture, we decided that each miss
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Growing

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In the last couple of weeks we have had a departure and three arrivals.  We are gradually bidding farewell to our local missionaries from the Cagayan Valley.  They have been a great blessing over the last 18 months as new missionary numbers have been so low.  They have been our precious gift, our manna from heaven.  At one point, we had more missionaries serving here in their home mission than we had from elsewhere.  We called our missionaries from here in the Cagayan Valley our native missionaries and those from Manila and elsewhere in the Philippines our foreign missionaries.  But that is changing.  As those faithful local missionaries are completing their missions and going home, missionaries have started to arrive from areas outside the mission.  This is a testimony to us that the Lord is in the details, and His work will not fail.  The batches are beginning to be larger and larger as young people are answering the call of the Area Presidency to not be afraid of the pandemic and to
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