25 February 2024 Week #74: The funniest, saddest, coolest, most spiritual experience of my life
Dear Family and Friends,
Good job, Mylie in basketball. Sad that you lost to Pinedale and have an injury, stress fracture, your mom knows about that one. You can beat Pinedale if you play them again. Great win against Lyman on Senior Night. Good luck this week at regionals.
Congratulations to Kimball and Tel on a great wrestling season. Kimball taking first at 4A state with a dominating tournament and pinning his kid in the Championship match. Tel also dominating all week and winning his second state championship with a 11-0 score in the championship match. We are proud of these young men and the way they conduct themselves in victory and defeat. It is nice to end the season with victories!!
We enjoyed having Sister Hogan, Sister DeLoso, and Sister Carillo for dinner on Tuesday. Sister Hogan is from Syracuse, UT, and has been here for two transfers now. Sister Deloso is new here and has been out about a year. She has excellent English. Turns our she spends time in Australia. Sister Carillo also has very good English. She is a Service Missionary and has been here several times. Her whole mission will be here in Cebu area. She lives really close to us so we have her join the other sisters.
Across the street in the JY Square Mall is a new bookstore that is a miniature Deseret Book Store. It is owned by a member of the church from Manila. He has hired two gals from Mindanao, both about 25 years old. One is a returned missionary and has been home a couple of years. She has lived here in the Cebu area for a year. The other one is her good friend that has just arrived a week ago to help her run the store. The one that just arrived is an older sister to Elder Manahan who went home about 3 transfers ago. His last area was here in Lahug. She called him on the phone, and it was fun to visit with him for a few minutes.
This week they had Mission Leadership Training for all the Zone Leaders and STLs. We showed up outside the temple when they came out from their session. It was so good to see Sisters Noble and Simmons again. Sister Noble goes home when we do and Sister Simmons next August. They will room together at BYU and live just off of 9th East and about 9th North. Needless to say, a trip to the BYU Creamery will be in store for us to treat them to a “Kids Meal”. We also met Elder Gennald Balicsa. We hadn’t met him before. He noticed our name tags and asked where we were from. We told him and so he asked us if we knew Lochlyn Teichert. This Elder is 25 years old, but had done some missionary work with Lochlyn when he was here on his mission pre-pandemic. He said Lochlyn might not recognize him with this short of hair. Too bad I didn’t get the info on why it has taken him so long to come on his mission. That would be a great story.
We enjoyed our weekly session at the temple on Thursday. However, we had attended on Tuesday morning also. Elder and Sister Hall were in town from Calape to be with some members as they attended the temple for the first time. They arrived on Monday, joined our wonderful FHE, and let us know about Tuesday. We decided to go to the session with them. Also, the Peters from Iloilo said that two families were going to be in the temple on Tuesday receiving their endowments and beings sealed. Both the Peters and the Halls told us that it would be the 11:00 a.m. session. So, we signed up for the 11:00 a.m. session. Well, the families the Peters knew ended up in the 1:00 p.m. session and the ones the Halls were with ended up in the 3:00 p.m. session. So, it was just us with some other people in the 11:00 a.m. session. It was meant to be! It was the funniest, saddest, coolest, most spiritual session I have ever attended.
We had 13 men in the session. The front two rows were filled with 10 members from a branch in the Sagay Stake on Negros Island. They were all older except one. I don’t know what his calling was, but he did know what he was doing. One other older gentleman (I visited with him afterwards and he has been a member for 17 years, taught by the missionaries) seemed to know basically what he was doing. We had two receiving their own endowments. They were both about 45 I would guess. They had two escorts about the same age and I’m pretty sure it was probably only about the second time they had been to the temple. It was a comedy watching them try to put on the robes, etc.: wrong shoulders, wrong articles of clothing on in the improper order, bows in the wrong places, people not dressed correctly trying to help others. There is only one leader for each session here. He was helping the best he could, trying to put out one fire after another. Finally, the older gentleman that seemed to know what he was doing left the room to go to the bathroom (not uncommon at all here, men and women, I haven’t been through a session yet where more than one and sometimes several, go out to the bathroom while dressing in the robes, and while waiting their turn at the veil. Sometimes, they leave just when putting on the apron. Well, when this older gentleman left the others must have thought that was what you were supposed to do and five, still dressed wrong, followed right behind him. It was one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed.
Well, it was sad also. It was sad because of the fact the temple is so far away and they can’t come more often. There were eight out of the ten in this group that didn’t seem to know what was going on. They looked like weathered people who I guess are either fishermen or work in the sugar cane fields. Sad that they can’t come more often, financially, or time off work.
It was cool to think that soon they will have a temple in Bacolod about an hour and a half away on a bus on their island. Hopefully, that will make is so they can attend more often.
As we got the session under way again, after about 20 minutes of this going on, I had had the thoughts of funny, sad, and cool, then the Spirit overcame me and brought me to tears thinking how Heavenly Father and Jesus were looking down on these humble people and so excited that they were in the temple wanting to make covenants, knowing that was the thing to do even if they didn’t know what was going on. THEY WERE WHERE HEAVENLY FATHER WANTED THEM TO BE, DOING WHAT HE WANTS ALL OF US TO DO!! If you can only attend once a year, or once in your life, Jesus makes up the difference, but for those of us who can attend more often, it should be a priority. Respect the Lord, give Him of our time, and he will bless us beyond measure.
Holy Habits
Righteous Routines
Lift Where You Stand
With love,
Dad and Mom
Grandpa and Grandma
Briant and Clyda
Week #74 2/19/24-2/25/24
Good job, Mylie in basketball. Sad that you lost to Pinedale and have an injury, stress fracture, your mom knows about that one. You can beat Pinedale if you play them again. Great win against Lyman on Senior Night. Good luck this week at regionals.
Congratulations to Kimball and Tel on a great wrestling season. Kimball taking first at 4A state with a dominating tournament and pinning his kid in the Championship match. Tel also dominating all week and winning his second state championship with a 11-0 score in the championship match. We are proud of these young men and the way they conduct themselves in victory and defeat. It is nice to end the season with victories!!
We enjoyed having Sister Hogan, Sister DeLoso, and Sister Carillo for dinner on Tuesday. Sister Hogan is from Syracuse, UT, and has been here for two transfers now. Sister Deloso is new here and has been out about a year. She has excellent English. Turns our she spends time in Australia. Sister Carillo also has very good English. She is a Service Missionary and has been here several times. Her whole mission will be here in Cebu area. She lives really close to us so we have her join the other sisters.
Across the street in the JY Square Mall is a new bookstore that is a miniature Deseret Book Store. It is owned by a member of the church from Manila. He has hired two gals from Mindanao, both about 25 years old. One is a returned missionary and has been home a couple of years. She has lived here in the Cebu area for a year. The other one is her good friend that has just arrived a week ago to help her run the store. The one that just arrived is an older sister to Elder Manahan who went home about 3 transfers ago. His last area was here in Lahug. She called him on the phone, and it was fun to visit with him for a few minutes.
This week they had Mission Leadership Training for all the Zone Leaders and STLs. We showed up outside the temple when they came out from their session. It was so good to see Sisters Noble and Simmons again. Sister Noble goes home when we do and Sister Simmons next August. They will room together at BYU and live just off of 9th East and about 9th North. Needless to say, a trip to the BYU Creamery will be in store for us to treat them to a “Kids Meal”. We also met Elder Gennald Balicsa. We hadn’t met him before. He noticed our name tags and asked where we were from. We told him and so he asked us if we knew Lochlyn Teichert. This Elder is 25 years old, but had done some missionary work with Lochlyn when he was here on his mission pre-pandemic. He said Lochlyn might not recognize him with this short of hair. Too bad I didn’t get the info on why it has taken him so long to come on his mission. That would be a great story.
We enjoyed our weekly session at the temple on Thursday. However, we had attended on Tuesday morning also. Elder and Sister Hall were in town from Calape to be with some members as they attended the temple for the first time. They arrived on Monday, joined our wonderful FHE, and let us know about Tuesday. We decided to go to the session with them. Also, the Peters from Iloilo said that two families were going to be in the temple on Tuesday receiving their endowments and beings sealed. Both the Peters and the Halls told us that it would be the 11:00 a.m. session. So, we signed up for the 11:00 a.m. session. Well, the families the Peters knew ended up in the 1:00 p.m. session and the ones the Halls were with ended up in the 3:00 p.m. session. So, it was just us with some other people in the 11:00 a.m. session. It was meant to be! It was the funniest, saddest, coolest, most spiritual session I have ever attended.
We had 13 men in the session. The front two rows were filled with 10 members from a branch in the Sagay Stake on Negros Island. They were all older except one. I don’t know what his calling was, but he did know what he was doing. One other older gentleman (I visited with him afterwards and he has been a member for 17 years, taught by the missionaries) seemed to know basically what he was doing. We had two receiving their own endowments. They were both about 45 I would guess. They had two escorts about the same age and I’m pretty sure it was probably only about the second time they had been to the temple. It was a comedy watching them try to put on the robes, etc.: wrong shoulders, wrong articles of clothing on in the improper order, bows in the wrong places, people not dressed correctly trying to help others. There is only one leader for each session here. He was helping the best he could, trying to put out one fire after another. Finally, the older gentleman that seemed to know what he was doing left the room to go to the bathroom (not uncommon at all here, men and women, I haven’t been through a session yet where more than one and sometimes several, go out to the bathroom while dressing in the robes, and while waiting their turn at the veil. Sometimes, they leave just when putting on the apron. Well, when this older gentleman left the others must have thought that was what you were supposed to do and five, still dressed wrong, followed right behind him. It was one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed.
Well, it was sad also. It was sad because of the fact the temple is so far away and they can’t come more often. There were eight out of the ten in this group that didn’t seem to know what was going on. They looked like weathered people who I guess are either fishermen or work in the sugar cane fields. Sad that they can’t come more often, financially, or time off work.
It was cool to think that soon they will have a temple in Bacolod about an hour and a half away on a bus on their island. Hopefully, that will make is so they can attend more often.
As we got the session under way again, after about 20 minutes of this going on, I had had the thoughts of funny, sad, and cool, then the Spirit overcame me and brought me to tears thinking how Heavenly Father and Jesus were looking down on these humble people and so excited that they were in the temple wanting to make covenants, knowing that was the thing to do even if they didn’t know what was going on. THEY WERE WHERE HEAVENLY FATHER WANTED THEM TO BE, DOING WHAT HE WANTS ALL OF US TO DO!! If you can only attend once a year, or once in your life, Jesus makes up the difference, but for those of us who can attend more often, it should be a priority. Respect the Lord, give Him of our time, and he will bless us beyond measure.
Holy Habits
Righteous Routines
Lift Where You Stand
With love,
Dad and Mom
Grandpa and Grandma
Briant and Clyda
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