Briant and Clyda Teichert; LDS Charities; Cebu Philippines

Dear Family and Friends,  Week #13 12/19-12/25 We spent Monday at the office, meetings, then working together to get all of our photos categorized into files. We have a ton of photos already. When we need to submit some for our projects it takes time to find them, so we decided before it got worse, we’d better make it better. That evening we had the sister missionaries, Sister Bangcong and Sister Noble, over for dinner. It was fun to have them and feel of their spirit. Sister Bangcong is training Sister Noble. It appears she is a good trainer. They get along great. They are in their second transfer. Sister Noble started her mission about the same time we did. She is from Santa Clarita, California. Clyda made homemade chicken and noodles. Sister Noble loved it, it was new for Sister Bangcong, she was very gracious. We also had vegetables and fruit. Sister Bangcong loved the fruit, so she got plenty to eat. Clyda made homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. On Tuesday w...

Dear Family and Friends,  Week #12 12/12-12/18 Monday went as usual with exercise, morning study, and then the TEAMS meeting at 9:00. A neat project was presented for a wing in a hospital that deals with mentally disabled children and youth. It is in a hospital that treats up to 3500 patients, but this wing currently has 33 people in it. Some are very challenging cases, some are moderate. It is good to be helping there. Then, training on finances, travel, purchasing, etc. The guy doing the training is so quiet that we couldn’t hear hardly any of the presentation. They are sending it to us in a powerpoint. We will watch it and then ask questions as needed. Then, we tried to catch up on correspondence. One of our projects on Mindanao, the island where we can’t go, has run into a problem. It is a school in a poor place that we are building wash stations for. The school’s supply list wasn’t quite right with their drawings, and then our interpretation of the supplies wasn’t quite ...

Dear Family and Friends,  Week #11 12/5-12/11 Last Monday we started with our weekly meeting. One project (not ours, presented by the Haynes) is a $190,000.00 project for a hospital. If we go over $100,000.00 we have to have special permission from Salt Lake. So we decided to break it into two parts so we could pass it ourselves. It really is two parts anyway. We are helping a NICU and an ICU at the biggest hospital in Manila upgrade equipment, etc. With babies born at the hospital they have pretty good survival rate. However, a lot of babies are brought in that are in trouble, and with those they have a 40% mortality rate. That is a lot of babies not surviving. They say that can change with proper ventilators, incubators, etc. Hopefully this will help. Another project is the fixing up of damaged rooms in 26 schools and providing some TVs, computers and other things for enhancing learning. (presented by the Huffs). Another school project with technology, plus water catchment s...

Hello Family and Friends, Week #10 11/28-12/4 Another busy week. We only got to exercise the first three mornings of the week. After that we didn’t exercise because of leaving early or trying to get a little sleep as we both came down with nasty colds. We are feeling better now, but it was a miserable 3-4 days. In our Monday meeting 3 projects were presented. One needs to go back to the drawing board and two were passed. Then we spent time catching up on emails. There is a lot of constant communication going on. We are checking on if supplies have been ordered, delivered, paid for, etc. Also, emails from people requesting our help. Then getting back with them on filling out a more comprehensive form of exactly what they want. Then conference calls. In the afternoon we headed to the Lahug Chapel to get bags for the food supplies. We then went to Mandaue to the stake center. We met Brother Henry Patalinghug. We call him Henry. I wonder why. He was the supplier for the goodie bag...