17 September 2023 Week #51: Our testimony of the Savior can get us through a lot
Dear Family and Friends,
Several amazing projects were presented again on Monday. It was about a three-hour meeting. In the afternoon Clyda had the three sister service missionaries over. While we worked on projects, Sister Manatad taught the other two how to cut out Kangaroo Tubes. They cut the final bolt of cloth. They had a good time doing it. Clyda is so good to them, and they love her.
Tuesday was office work again. All three members of the translation team were at the office. That is a rarity for all five of us to be there at once. We sure enjoy those guys. At noon another gentleman showed up and they needed the conference room, but we needed to go anyway.
At one o’clock we met five sister missionaries at McDonald’s in IT Park for lunch. We told Sister Valesquez we would take her to lunch. They created a new zone out of the city zone and so now the Apas area is in another zone. They can’t leave their zone, but we have no restrictions so we went to their area. They have a threesome with Sister Valesquez and Sister Wheeler(from Farmington, NM) as Sister Training Leaders. The Talamban Sisters joined us also. Sister Beauchamp is from some place in Utah. That was fun to be with them. I always get long winded, and our lunch time turned into a two-hour lunch.
That evening we had four elders over for Taco Tuesday. The three Filipinos enjoyed some tacos. Elder Christofferson from Homedale, Idaho, (by Oregon) also enjoyed them. He is fairly new. He is in his first area but not in our ward. He seems like a great kid. He was a wide receiver and safety on his football team. He is a good size kid, a big kid by Cokeville standards. Clyda fed the Elders well, and she and they enjoyed it.
Wednesday was a slow day. Project works. We did a little shopping and stopped in at the templex to listen to the missionary choir. The three zones here close by have been preparing some musical numbers for a big conference on Thursday. They practiced on Sunday and Monday, and then a last practice on Wednesday. Elder Bangerter came Thursday to address all the missionaries in the Cebu Mission on the Cebu Island. They were in Dumaguete on Wednesday to spend the day with all of the Cebu Missionaries on Negros. Of course Sister Bangerter is with her husband and President and Sister Hernandez are with them.
Thursday was the big day. We passed missionaries at 5:30 a.m. who had been up since 3:00 to get here. They came from the Carcar and Toledo Zones, a long way away. As we went for our walk to the templex we passed Elder Sorenson, from Casper, who is now serving in Argao. That is three hours away and he was already here. They were going to get something to eat. By 6:30 when we were done with our walk there were close to 80 missionaries here. We got to see Elder Quicay, Elder Hartvigsen, Sister Bernaldez, Sister Simmons, and finally meet Elder BuBose. They had a good day. We had some meetings with Mabuhay Deseret and then later with Brother Colipapa about a chicken welfare project that we need to get straightened out. We finally made it to the conference at 4:30 for the last half hour. It went from 10:00 to 5:00. We had hoped to make it to quite a bit, but other things for us came up. The last half hour listening to Elder Bangerter was great!
We started meetings on Friday at 7:00 a.m. It was quarterly reports by all the different committees so basically no projects were presented. Kenneth presented two for Jairus who was travelling with his new assignment. One was a hospital with the same copy machine that I was told we couldn’t get for our school project of 7,500 students. I imagine hospitals print out a lot more papers than big schools so all is good. We went to the 11:00 a.m. session at the temple. It has just opened back up after being closed for a month. It was good to get back. We came home and worked on projects until we were too tired and then both took a two-hour nap.
Sister Welch had needed 60 cookies for Friday. Clyda baked them on Thursday evening. Thursday evening wasn’t really good. We have a big project coming at us for prosthetics. We are up against a timeline so to speak because they are bringing a group (BYU 2FT) over from the US to train technicians on how to make the prosthetics. They would like to have the tools and equipment before the training in mid-October. It isn’t going to happen at the rate we work. On this project Clyda has been doing the majority of the communication with Nathalie from Mabuhay Deseret. Nathalie communicates some with email, some with texting, mostly with messenger, and then wants us to open documents in google docs, google sheets, etc. There is so much back and forth with questions, answers, etc. We both knew we had received a certain paper that we needed information from, but neither one of us could remember where it was. I was trying to put the Project Development Worksheet together and needed the paper. Clyda couldn’t find it. It was while she was baking the cookies. Not a good time. Burnt cookies, total frustration on Clyda’s part for not being able to find the document, a husband that couldn’t find it either. Someone who just wanted to go home where she could help someone by doing something she knew how to do. It turns out it wasn’t in any of those forms of communication, it was in a group chat (GC) which they are big on here. We are a part of quite a few of them. They enter us in but then they are always speaking in Cebuano so we haven’t a clue what is going on. We see some pictures which we enjoy, but they keep us in the dark. Well on Friday afternoon Clyda found the paper we needed in the group chat, and this is the only one I’m not a member of. I probably wouldn’t have found it anyway.
Clyda baked cookies again on Friday night to redeem herself. These cookies weren’t going to help Sister Welch, so I have enjoyed the dough and the cookies. They, as always, were dang good.
Saturday, we walked, had scripture study, cleaned up, and drove to the market taking the Koyles and Taylors. We went to the office and watched Cokeville beat Pinedale on the big screen LIVE, and then watched the girls beat Little Snake River in volleyball ON DEMAND, thanks NFHS. We did spend a lot of time in the afternoon and evening on projects again. We still don’t have a Decision Point on the project I was up all night preparing for last week, Dr. Vicente F. Gustilo Memorial National High School. It is totally frustrating. It was okayed in the meeting, but on the agenda it had listed (pending items). The pending item was a change in the copy machine which I had already changed before I presented the project on Friday. Here we are a week later, and I am so poor at communication that we still don’t have a Decision Point so we can get a Purchase Order to buy everything and get it to the school. Needless to say, I am a little frustrated. I realize my lack of communication skills with English speaking Americans. It is triple that with somewhat English-speaking Filipinos.
I’m so impressed with Clyda’s love and concern. As I watch Clyda try to navigate this mission my heart goes out to her. She is very concerned that her mother won’t recognize her when she gets home. She is so grateful to her good sisters for taking such great care of their mom but she would like to be doing some of that.
Then, for those who don’t know, Tyson was scheduled for a kidney transplant this Friday, the 22nd of September, with Tami as the donor. Her concern for Tyson and Tami, their spouses and families has weighed heavy on her mind. It is difficult to be so far away when wanting to help your children, knowing you could be a great help at home, and then feeling like you can’t do what you are supposed to do here. It all hit the fan Thursday evening. As a trooper, though she has bounced back, had a good conversation with her mother and Tyson. However, it was just discovered that Tyson’s blood has developed an antigen that will reject Tami’s kidney, and now we just found out that it would reject Olivia’s also. So, we are in a case of “what now”.
Please pray for Tyson’s health and for this process to be solved. Tyson’s health is going downhill. We need something to happen. The Lord is in charge, but I’m confident Tyson’s name is on a lot of temple prayer rolls, and some fasting petitioning Heavenly Father for help, would be a good thing for us to do.
Even with the frustrations here, we are grateful for the wonderful people we get to see who choose to live the gospel and develop their relationship with their Savior. Today’s meetings were excellent. Of course with the topic “Be Ye Reconciled to God” came the discussion of forgiveness and overlooking others imperfections and not being offended. Like Elder Holland said, and I paraphrase, It must be hard for the Lord to operate his church with imperfect people. I know He has scratched his head a lot of times with the things I have done or not done while trying to serve in callings. I hope people will be forgiving of me. One lady also mentioned Elder Bednar’s remark about if we are offended, we need to look inside ourselves, because if we have the Holy Ghost with us, we will never be offended. That should be our goal!! along with forgiving seventy times seven if we have been offended. We are all different with shortcomings and imperfections, we need to give each other credit for all the good things imperfect people are doing.
With love,
Dad and Mom
Grandpa and Grandma
Briant and Clyda
Week #51 9/11-9/17
Several amazing projects were presented again on Monday. It was about a three-hour meeting. In the afternoon Clyda had the three sister service missionaries over. While we worked on projects, Sister Manatad taught the other two how to cut out Kangaroo Tubes. They cut the final bolt of cloth. They had a good time doing it. Clyda is so good to them, and they love her.
Tuesday was office work again. All three members of the translation team were at the office. That is a rarity for all five of us to be there at once. We sure enjoy those guys. At noon another gentleman showed up and they needed the conference room, but we needed to go anyway.
At one o’clock we met five sister missionaries at McDonald’s in IT Park for lunch. We told Sister Valesquez we would take her to lunch. They created a new zone out of the city zone and so now the Apas area is in another zone. They can’t leave their zone, but we have no restrictions so we went to their area. They have a threesome with Sister Valesquez and Sister Wheeler(from Farmington, NM) as Sister Training Leaders. The Talamban Sisters joined us also. Sister Beauchamp is from some place in Utah. That was fun to be with them. I always get long winded, and our lunch time turned into a two-hour lunch.
That evening we had four elders over for Taco Tuesday. The three Filipinos enjoyed some tacos. Elder Christofferson from Homedale, Idaho, (by Oregon) also enjoyed them. He is fairly new. He is in his first area but not in our ward. He seems like a great kid. He was a wide receiver and safety on his football team. He is a good size kid, a big kid by Cokeville standards. Clyda fed the Elders well, and she and they enjoyed it.
Wednesday was a slow day. Project works. We did a little shopping and stopped in at the templex to listen to the missionary choir. The three zones here close by have been preparing some musical numbers for a big conference on Thursday. They practiced on Sunday and Monday, and then a last practice on Wednesday. Elder Bangerter came Thursday to address all the missionaries in the Cebu Mission on the Cebu Island. They were in Dumaguete on Wednesday to spend the day with all of the Cebu Missionaries on Negros. Of course Sister Bangerter is with her husband and President and Sister Hernandez are with them.
Thursday was the big day. We passed missionaries at 5:30 a.m. who had been up since 3:00 to get here. They came from the Carcar and Toledo Zones, a long way away. As we went for our walk to the templex we passed Elder Sorenson, from Casper, who is now serving in Argao. That is three hours away and he was already here. They were going to get something to eat. By 6:30 when we were done with our walk there were close to 80 missionaries here. We got to see Elder Quicay, Elder Hartvigsen, Sister Bernaldez, Sister Simmons, and finally meet Elder BuBose. They had a good day. We had some meetings with Mabuhay Deseret and then later with Brother Colipapa about a chicken welfare project that we need to get straightened out. We finally made it to the conference at 4:30 for the last half hour. It went from 10:00 to 5:00. We had hoped to make it to quite a bit, but other things for us came up. The last half hour listening to Elder Bangerter was great!
We started meetings on Friday at 7:00 a.m. It was quarterly reports by all the different committees so basically no projects were presented. Kenneth presented two for Jairus who was travelling with his new assignment. One was a hospital with the same copy machine that I was told we couldn’t get for our school project of 7,500 students. I imagine hospitals print out a lot more papers than big schools so all is good. We went to the 11:00 a.m. session at the temple. It has just opened back up after being closed for a month. It was good to get back. We came home and worked on projects until we were too tired and then both took a two-hour nap.
Sister Welch had needed 60 cookies for Friday. Clyda baked them on Thursday evening. Thursday evening wasn’t really good. We have a big project coming at us for prosthetics. We are up against a timeline so to speak because they are bringing a group (BYU 2FT) over from the US to train technicians on how to make the prosthetics. They would like to have the tools and equipment before the training in mid-October. It isn’t going to happen at the rate we work. On this project Clyda has been doing the majority of the communication with Nathalie from Mabuhay Deseret. Nathalie communicates some with email, some with texting, mostly with messenger, and then wants us to open documents in google docs, google sheets, etc. There is so much back and forth with questions, answers, etc. We both knew we had received a certain paper that we needed information from, but neither one of us could remember where it was. I was trying to put the Project Development Worksheet together and needed the paper. Clyda couldn’t find it. It was while she was baking the cookies. Not a good time. Burnt cookies, total frustration on Clyda’s part for not being able to find the document, a husband that couldn’t find it either. Someone who just wanted to go home where she could help someone by doing something she knew how to do. It turns out it wasn’t in any of those forms of communication, it was in a group chat (GC) which they are big on here. We are a part of quite a few of them. They enter us in but then they are always speaking in Cebuano so we haven’t a clue what is going on. We see some pictures which we enjoy, but they keep us in the dark. Well on Friday afternoon Clyda found the paper we needed in the group chat, and this is the only one I’m not a member of. I probably wouldn’t have found it anyway.
Clyda baked cookies again on Friday night to redeem herself. These cookies weren’t going to help Sister Welch, so I have enjoyed the dough and the cookies. They, as always, were dang good.
Saturday, we walked, had scripture study, cleaned up, and drove to the market taking the Koyles and Taylors. We went to the office and watched Cokeville beat Pinedale on the big screen LIVE, and then watched the girls beat Little Snake River in volleyball ON DEMAND, thanks NFHS. We did spend a lot of time in the afternoon and evening on projects again. We still don’t have a Decision Point on the project I was up all night preparing for last week, Dr. Vicente F. Gustilo Memorial National High School. It is totally frustrating. It was okayed in the meeting, but on the agenda it had listed (pending items). The pending item was a change in the copy machine which I had already changed before I presented the project on Friday. Here we are a week later, and I am so poor at communication that we still don’t have a Decision Point so we can get a Purchase Order to buy everything and get it to the school. Needless to say, I am a little frustrated. I realize my lack of communication skills with English speaking Americans. It is triple that with somewhat English-speaking Filipinos.
I’m so impressed with Clyda’s love and concern. As I watch Clyda try to navigate this mission my heart goes out to her. She is very concerned that her mother won’t recognize her when she gets home. She is so grateful to her good sisters for taking such great care of their mom but she would like to be doing some of that.
Then, for those who don’t know, Tyson was scheduled for a kidney transplant this Friday, the 22nd of September, with Tami as the donor. Her concern for Tyson and Tami, their spouses and families has weighed heavy on her mind. It is difficult to be so far away when wanting to help your children, knowing you could be a great help at home, and then feeling like you can’t do what you are supposed to do here. It all hit the fan Thursday evening. As a trooper, though she has bounced back, had a good conversation with her mother and Tyson. However, it was just discovered that Tyson’s blood has developed an antigen that will reject Tami’s kidney, and now we just found out that it would reject Olivia’s also. So, we are in a case of “what now”.
Please pray for Tyson’s health and for this process to be solved. Tyson’s health is going downhill. We need something to happen. The Lord is in charge, but I’m confident Tyson’s name is on a lot of temple prayer rolls, and some fasting petitioning Heavenly Father for help, would be a good thing for us to do.
Even with the frustrations here, we are grateful for the wonderful people we get to see who choose to live the gospel and develop their relationship with their Savior. Today’s meetings were excellent. Of course with the topic “Be Ye Reconciled to God” came the discussion of forgiveness and overlooking others imperfections and not being offended. Like Elder Holland said, and I paraphrase, It must be hard for the Lord to operate his church with imperfect people. I know He has scratched his head a lot of times with the things I have done or not done while trying to serve in callings. I hope people will be forgiving of me. One lady also mentioned Elder Bednar’s remark about if we are offended, we need to look inside ourselves, because if we have the Holy Ghost with us, we will never be offended. That should be our goal!! along with forgiving seventy times seven if we have been offended. We are all different with shortcomings and imperfections, we need to give each other credit for all the good things imperfect people are doing.
With love,
Dad and Mom
Grandpa and Grandma
Briant and Clyda
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