Mission Tour

We just had another great experience in the mission, the Mission Tour.  These are visits by a member of our Area Presidency and his wife, and they occur annually. This time we had President and Sister Ardern. They went to Palawan and had a zone conference, and then the next two days had two here, each for one half of the mainland Manila Mission. We went with our Zone on Thursday. Sister Ardern spoke first, and introduced their family to us, including pictures of the temple near their home in New Zealand, and of her family, which joined the church when she was a young girl. President Ardern is also a convert, whose parents joined but were never active.  He and his twin brother rode a bus 15 kilometers to get to church by themselves each Sunday. A very influential missionary kept track of them and encouraged them, and at the end of his mission, gave his bicycle to Elder Ardern. Elder Ardern stayed active and eventually served a mission himself.

Sister Ardern went on to teach us, and Elder Ardern would pop up and add his views on whatever she was saying. It was a very interesting and effective way of teaching.

We had a lovely catered lunch with white table cloths and covered chairs, perhaps the nicest meal many of the missionaries had ever experienced. After, we took zone pictures, then returned for the afternoon's teaching by Elder Ardern again, and President and Sister Ostler. After the conference, Elder Ardern had requested that they be able to visit some nearby apartments. We loaded Arderns and Ostlers into a van and headed off to pre-chosen apartments, but when we got about a block from the chapel, President and Sister Ostler realized they would have no way to get their cars home, so they ran back to the office and we took the Arderns on. We had picked ten apartments that are fairly close to the Buendia chapel and told the missionaries to be sure their houses were clean in case they got a visit! It was late and the Arderns were tired, so we ended up going to the very closest, one sisters' apartment and one elders'. They were both very clean and thrilled to be visited by the Area President.

We then drove them back to the mission home through very heavy traffic, and on the way home, met the other office couples for dinner at one of our favorite spots, Gulliver's of San Francisco, with the DuFords, who had come over from Coron for Zone Conference.

This is our zone.

Another Farewell

We had another farewell, two weeks ago now. We have been so busy I've been too tired to post at night. Farewells are getting harder, as we get to know the missionaries better, having known them longer. One especially hard one was one of the Assistants to the President, Elder Stephens.  We see the APs a lot because they work in the office a great deal, and handle a lot of the business of Missionary Leadership Council meetings, and Zone Conferences, etc.

Sisters Romero, Grant and Gubac, and Elders Vang, Stephens, Burkhart, Woolsey and Bayatan. The going-home missionaries at the Manila America Cemetery, resting place of over 17,000 World War 2 dead, and the place from which Elder Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the Philippines for the preaching of the gospel.

The going-home missionaries always sing us a song together.

Sister Gubac

Elder Bayatan, who learned to be quite the negotiator of contracts on his mission. He was involved in acquiring something like six new apartments during his tenure!

Sister Romero

Sister Grant

Elder Stephens, one of the first APs we got to know

Of course, we know that these young missionaries need to return to the real world and move on with their lives, but, selfishly, we certainly would like to keep them around!