The past two weeks our work has been hyper-focused on literacy. We have been working alongside Kenneth Lee, who is now our Welfare manager. He has been very passionate about promoting projects that will hopefully shift non-readers and frustrated readers into readers. We have been talking to Stakes about the Stake literacy projects and school divisions and districts as well. We just had three literacy projects approved last week and already this Friday we had the training held at one school district not too far from here. We are also trying to get our materials ordered and sent to Palawan for large division projects there. With deadlines looming we felt the urgency to get the books selected and delivered. That’s why we spent four mornings this past week at the Books For Less Warehouse. It’s a very large warehouse that has massive amounts of books that we had to sort through to find books that were appropriate for mostly 4, 5 and 6th grade students who are struggling readers. No small challenge. We took Elder and Sister Meyer with us every single day (bless their hearts) and we sat on very small chairs while sorting through dusty boxes of books in a very hot place. We also had the help from some women from our ex-pat ward and then on Thursday we had the biggest crowd ever helping us. We had four missionaries as well as 6 other people. That was when we really made a dent in our book order. We had originally planned to ship out 20,000 pesos of books, but had to settle for about half of that (nearly a ton of books) because, believe it or not, we ran out of books to sort through. So this will have to do! We came across some genuine finds, including some specifically LDS books, lots of classics that my kids grew up with and a true gem called “All I ever need to learn I learned from Golden Books”. We are so grateful for all the help–we couldn’t have done it without them. We started in the mornings before it got too hot and went until around noon each day. It’s sad to think that most of these schools really don’t have books. And no public libraries. No wonder Filipinos aren’t really readers. By the way, in the first picture of two missionaries the one on the left of the one and only missionary serving from the country of Oman in the entire world and the missionary on the right is from Kaysville, Utah!
Ten of these boxes of books went to our first literacy project training and turnover in Angono. This is about 45 minutes away, so the logistics for this were fairly easy. I just called a company called “Lalamove” which is like Uber but with larger vehicles for moving stuff and they quickly and cheaply moved the stuff there. Amazing! The literacy projects involve cards that tutors use for a peer-to-peer tutoring model. It was developed by a school division in Sarangani, which is way down in Mindanao (where we aren’t allowed to go) so they sent two of their employees up to do the training. They have had so much success with this program so they came up to explain and get people motivated to try the program. They better try it! It’s a LOT of stuff that we are giving. Along with over 600 sets of tutor cards, we are giving laminators and film, paper, lots of supplies for tutor bags and of course the books. I think the trainers did a nice job and mostly tried to speak in English. I think the teachers here are still much more comfortable speaking in Tagalog, but we were trying to film the training so others can see it who weren’t able to attend. When it was my turn to speak, I felt impressed to talk about being “All In” with the program. I hope it sinks in that they really need to get in and work to make this successful and that it will be worth it in the end. We shall see! At the end of the training, in the hottest part of the day, we went to a very hot oven-like covered court where all the materials we were giving were being held and distributed them to the five schools that are participating. We were all fanning ourselves with pieces of cardboard that someone gave out. Thank heavens the bishop and young missionaries came to the MOA signing because they were also able to haul boxes into the vehicles for transport. I was amazed to see them using a tricycle for such a heavy load. Evidently, it was just going to a school across the street and they had to make three trips. Now their work begins!!!! We hope and pray that this will help with the struggling readers. All the schools are very concerned about their low literacy rates, especially post covid. They didn’t hold school for TWO YEARS!!! As Lennie said, “this week really felt like we were doing humanitarian work.” Which means we were gathering people to get in and help us with projects and seeing the projects through.
One more tiny project that we finished up this week was to assemble the hygiene kits for Mabuhay Deseret patients. This was a project that I presented a few months ago, but we just now got around to putting some of the kits together. Once again, we utilized young missionaries. President Willets dropped them off and let them find their way home. They were such good workers and had a great time. Melody Ledesma, the Director, gave them an orientation of what Mabuhay does before we started to assemble. They have different kits for men, women and children.
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