Craigs in Cauayan

Tuao is a beautiful town of about 60,000 people in Cagayan Province.  It is nestled in the hilly country on the borders of the Apayao and Kalinga Provinces in the far northwest corner of our mission.  Yesterday I took the 3 hour drive there with one of my Assistants (Sister Craig had a prior commitment in Cauayan) and 2 of our beautiful Sister missionaries serving in downtown Tuguegarao City.  Our purpose was to attend the baptism of Myriam Gumiran.  It was my privilege to meet Myriam when I interviewed her before her baptism.  Myriam is impressive; kind, smart and spiritually adept.  Her baptism has been a long time coming.  Her husband Alvere joined the Church 12 years ago and has remained faithful to it.  Currently he serves as the Elders Quorum President in the local Branch.  Their two sons are also faithful members of the Church.  Myriam stubbornly held to the faith traditions of her childhood.  She was born into a Church and w...

We were excited this week to be able to have Zone Conferences in person again.  We look forward to Zone Conference every 6 weeks as it is an opportunity to be trained and edified.   Because of Covid restrictions it has been a few months since we have been able to gather in our tiny zones of about 20 missionaries each.  Current regulations now allow for a gathering of 30% capacity of the venue, so our small numbers are well below that percentage.  We used to have 10 Zones, and would have 3 or 4 Zones gather together at 3 different locations over 3 days, with 60-70 in attendance at each.  We still hold them over 3 days, but now we only have 3 Zones in total and only include one Zone of about 16-20 missionaries in each conference.  Even with the smaller numbers, it is a lot of work to put it all together, but we were able to get everything ready.  We used to rely heavily on the Senior Couples to help with the physical set up and details, but now we a...