Briant and Clyda Teichert; LDS Charities; Cebu Philippines

Dear Family and Friends, Week #22 2/20-2/26 Last Monday evening we had our Senior FHE. The sister that gave the lesson is an older Filipino Sister that has lived most of her life in Sandy, UT. She works in the office of the Cebu East Mission. She was raised in the Philippines. She was born here in Cebu and then raised in Manila. Her family migrated to the U.S. after high school. She went to college in the U.S. and married and lived there. However, she went on a mission as a young lady. She came back here to the Philippines and served in the third mission establish, Davao, on Mindinao. Manila mission 1967, then Cebu 1973, then Davao 1975. She gave some great insights into the LDS and U.S. history of the Philippines. There are now 23 missions. Davao Temple will be the 4th to be dedicated and should happen before we leave. The Urdaneta is soon to be finished. Anyway, she talked about how after WWII it was required in all schools to speak English. That was out of gratitude to th...

Dear Family and Friends,  Week #21 2/13-2/19 It is a beautiful day in the Philippines. It has been a good week. Monday of course was meetings and office work. In the afternoon the Koyle’s and Taylor’s took us to Lander’s to get groceries. Our refrigerator was starting to look a little bare. We hadn’t been for 3 weeks. Tuesday was a virtual meeting along with the others on the LDSC team. We were learning about “Single Drop for Clean Water”, another relief organization we partner with. They are really good. They help with delivering water to schools and communities, etc. We provide the materials, and they organize the labor, the engineering, and most importantly the training for the beneficiaries. The people need to be taught what it takes to have the project be sustainable. Without that training the project almost shouldn’t be done. Otherwise, it won’t continue to work for the people. It was a very good meeting. It was encouraging for us to help out on water projects for...

Dear Family and Friends,  Week #20 2/6-2/12 We had a good week. The only downer was not getting an email from Connor in Chile. I guess he had a real busy day. We look forward to hearing from him each week. He is having a great mission with all kinds of neat things going on. We love his growth in the gospel and his strong testimony. We are proud grandparents. Missions are hard, like life, but they bring great growth in ways that only a mission can. The ups far outweigh the downs. Through our trials and discouragements, we are truly being blessed. We finally got our passports back and now we can go get a drivers license. It has been 5 weeks now without being able to drive. I hope I can still remember how to drive in this traffic. I pray we won’t ever get into an accident here. Brother Colipapa is taking us to get the licenses on Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday are full. Thursday is also full. On Monday we had a full day with meetings and office work. Then in the evening we ...

Dear Family and Friends,  Week #19 1/30-2/5 Transfers came for the missionaries. Sister Bangcong and Sister Noble will stay together and here. We are excited for them and us. They had a baptism last week and one again today. The one today was a 17 year old girl who has been coming to church for a year now, but her parents wouldn’t allow her to be baptized. They finally let her. The Sisters have been working with her for a while and have retaught her the lessons. Elder Quicay is being transferred and Elder Willis will stay. Sister Bangcong knows Elder Willis’s new companion, and she says he is a real good missionary. We hope Elder Willis will get along with him as well as he did with Elder Quicay. Elder Willis is pretty easy to get along with. We had the Sisters over for dinner on Monday and they told us Elder Quicay was leaving on Wednesday, so we got a hold of the Elders and had them over for dinner on Tuesday. We wish Elder Quicay the best. It has been fun getting to k...