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E-Mails/Letters From Mom & Dad November 2009 If you get some that I don’t post & want to just send it to |
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Newest on Top |
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11/12/2009 Dear Family, It is 10:30 am here in Tugugaray, we just arrived. We will have Family History and Indexing training at 5:00 tonight. Yesterday we visited the Banuae Rice Terraces which is one of the 7 wonders of the world. I took pics that I will send later. The terraces stretch for at least 5 miles on the sides of the Mts. very spectacular! We are very blessed to be able to travel and do training at the same time. Thank you for all your prayers so that we are safe as we travel. We have 3 companions as we travel, so all is well and we are not lost! We pray that each of you will be blessed also this day, we know that there are many challenges financially, health and just the everyday taking care of families is a lot of work! Megan and Poli and children we especially want to send our love and ask the Holy Ghost to comfort you and your families this week as you think about your Father, Poli. It is a bitter sweet time when we miss our families terribly, but we are grateful that they are with the Savior. There is a time to mourn and pour out our hearts for the emptiness, but I hope that then the time is changed to celebrating his life and what he would want all of you to be found doing at this time. He is busy doing missionary work, I'm sure, and to honor his memory by doing Temple work or service to family or others would I'm sure be pleasing to him. Love and hugs to you all. The valleys here are huge and full of rice paddies - what a huge amount of work to plant and harvest that rice! Mountains are all around in this area of the North. More later, just wanted all of you to know that we are thinking of you and are ok. Love and hugs, Mom & Dad/Carolyn & Garlan 11/10/2009 Dear Kids, Just a note before we leave the Office tonight for our trip tomorrow. I think Dad already sent you out an EM about going up North to Tuguereao til next Monday. We are going with our Bishop Loy and Sister Jay and then our Manager is taking his truck so we will be in good company. We are going over to the MRC - where they have Missionaries who aren't feeling well - so Dad's singing group, "The Elder's Four" can sing for them. They have some hymns, Barber shop quartet music and Christmas music that they are working on. Dad really loves it and they sound really good. 9 of the Missionaries are in quarantine for chicken pox for 21 days - may get boring over there. Anyway, we will try and send an EM or call while we are gone, but the problem is that so many places do not have a strong internet signal. That is our plight here with trying to get the members to do newFamilySearch or Indexing is that the connection is so weak in many places. In some areas several will have laptops, but 2/3 really don't have any computers, or if they do at home, no internet connection. But, miracles do happen and little by little it will improve. Dad's here so I'll sign off. We love you all and pray that each of you will be blessed with the answers to your prayers that you have going on this week with whatever challenges you have. May God continue to be merciful, and provide for your needs. Thank you for all of our little grandchildren - some of them aren't so little anymore! Love and hugs, Mom & Dad :) 11/9/2009 Jer and Jen, We want you to know we appreciate your contribution to helping families who were victims of the flood. We gave the money to the young Bishop who works here at the PAO, whose members lost all of their possessions during Ondoy, when we helped the neighborhood cleaning project of his Ward area. He was going to divide it up among ten families and expressed his appreciation for the help. He has since said the families were doing better and told us to thank our family again. Please forward this message to the Gunther's. What we have left over, we are going to use to help a Branch member's family in the area up north where we are going tomorrow. They were hit three times in the last two months. We are taking ten food bags with us from the Welfare Department here. Each bag will feed a family for about three days, with the rice we will purchase up there. The Welfare Department sent blankets and mats up there to the family this week. We hope this will help in the conversion of the family. Kiss the kids for us. We love you very much. Dad & Mom 11/8/2009 Dear Family and Friends, It's a bright, sunny Monday morning here, and you are closing out your Sunday. Hope you are ready for a new week. The past one went by in a blur for us, and this one we are beginning looks to be much the same. We left for the north last Friday morning, and over the next two days worked with FH Directors, Consultants, and leaders in three stakes in indexing. The area has recovered well after the flooding. Some water still covers miles of farmland, which will soak in or evaporated over the coming weeks. We arrived back on Saturday evening, drove out to Church Sunday, came up to the office early this morning, and are finalizing our plans for the trip starting early Wednesday morning. We are headed for an area that we have not yet been to, the Mountain Province, a rice farming region in the northeast, filled with mountains, and the famous rice terraces. Google it up under Banaue Rice Terraces; it is considered one of the wonders of the world!!! We will be gone from the office for five days, back on Monday next. The work is going well, and it is always enjoyable meeting again those we met in training months ago. I didn't realize how I was subtly becoming adjusted to life here until I ate breakfast this morning, noodles and pancakes!!! It is amusing that here in fastfood places like McDonald's, spaghetti, fried chicken, french fries and rice are popular items for breakfast and throughout the rest of the day. That hasn't tempted me yet, but it will probably happen. I am even getting use to clicking mirrors in traffic. If I have only three or four near-miss accidents on a trip like last week, I chalk it up to the angels watching out us. The $64,000 question here is: how many lanes of traffic can a Filipino drive in at one time? The answer is: all of them. It is not nearly so unnerving now than it use to be, to be driving in the inside lane and face an oncoming vehicle in your lane, who is passing everyone and headed straight for you. Braking to the right to void a head-on, without getting up tight and angry, becomes easier as time passes. I find it necessary to interrupt any natural thought process with the phrase, "it is his highway, so he can use it anyway that he pleases" helps to reduce the stress that results. I didn't say totally eliminates it, but HELPS reduce it. Besides, in the wild scramble to avoid contact, getting a good look at the driver, a description of the car, and the license number in case you occupy a space in traffic by him in the future, and have the opportunity to point out to him in a kindly manner the folly of risking people's lives to gain a couple of car-lengths is realistically rather impossible!!! As you can tell, I'm still working out the stress of one such incident two days ago. We loved the pictures of Gabe and Amber's wedding. They are on Facebook if you haven't seen them yet. Ryker is growing so fast; he is sooo cute. Josh, Britt, and kids went to the march in Washington D.C. Saturday. I hope they got home in good shape. They and millions of Americans are concerned about the Healthcare package. We appreciate the help we have received from family and friends for the people here impacted by the typhoons. Any who wish to yet help, it is appreciated. We will furnish pictures of those who have been helped. They are so grateful. Thanks for your prayers. They keep us safe and healthy. Love you all; may God be with each of you. E/S/ Fitz 11/7/2009 Dear Kids, We got back to our Apt. last night about 6:00 from our trip up North. Dad will probably write his weekly letter to you tomorrow. We are getting ready to go to Church now. All of you are probably still busy with Sat. activities. We know that there are always plenty of those. Please keep us updated on the happenings around with you all, and current events also. We got the news about the shootings in Texas which were such a tragedy. What about the shooting down on your base Josh? What about the voting today about the Health Care Bill? Glad your family went to the White House Josh. Those were great pics and we are proud that you represented us. We all need to take voting seriously & be registered to vote and make it count. All of this will affect all of us. It is up to all of us to know what's going on in the government and in the Church. We cannot help and protect our families if we are not prepared in both areas. The children deserve the best that we can give them - they are our future and will do as they are taught - we will reap the benefit when they are adults. It is a beautiful day here we know you days are a lot cooler. Cooler here means low 80's Baguio maybe 65 to 70 & they are freezing! ha Love to each of you and yours - it's a big job, but you are all our heroes and we are grateful to be part of such a wonderful family. God bless. Love & hugs, Mom & Dad :) |