Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all had a filling and fulfilling feast. We certainly did! Thanks to Kim and Jared Morrison who opened up their lovely home to many, many young missionaries and three lucky senior couples as well. I always love spending time with Kim. She has such a good, humanitarian heart. She and her husband are chair and president of Mabuhay Deseret here and I know Kim is involved in some other foundations as well. She is so talented (an artist) and so real! Just down to earth, hard working and always striving to do good. We actually had REAL Thanksgiving food and she even supplied everyone with t shirts for the occasion. We had a fun evening away from our normal craziness.

Two Turnovers this week!

On Sunday night, we drove for 5 hours to get to our turnover in Alaminos. This was just a small project the Elder and Sister Hill started before they left so we got to finish it up. We had it at the church and it was set up very nicely. We only had to pay for the tables and set up from the caterers (and a small sandwich). The students at the school prepared the lasagna for us. This was fun because we actually saw them making the lasagna at the high school VoTech program when we visited the school earlier in the day. We really wanted to see the school that would be receiving the goods, so we drove for 30 minutes and paid them a surprise visit. Of course, the principal is hoping we can donate some equipment for this VoTech program. The teacher improvised the steamer for the lasagna noodles. They seem to do a lot of interesting things in this program. I hope we can help them! There were a lot of church members in the audience that afternoon, some who were from other schools. So of course, I think we will be getting similar requests from the other schools in the area as well. It was a fun and interesting day. And a very long drive, but very pretty up there, with interesting volcanic formations. The young man speaking is the mayor. When he first began, he was the youngest mayor in the Philippines at age 22!

Turnover at Taguig Integrated School – Fire Extinquishers

The second turnover of goods was at a very large school- 10,000 students. We held this one at the local church building also, but then had to go to the school for the fire extinguisher training. I was asked to order the food, which was so stressful! Our Waze navigator just couldn’t seem to find it so we drove and drove around tiny streets and finally had to just go to the church. I was in trouble! So I asked the relief society sisters if they could please go and order it from anywhere, which they did. They found a place that they said would be cheaper and better than the first place anyway. Since it was going to arrive later than anticipated, the stake president stalled, talking away and asking if there were any questions. So it all worked out in the end. I gave a talk about how important it is that the school is a safe place (they have had three fires in the past) and how it’s also important that the teachers and parents help light a fire of learning and help fan the spark in their students. I don’t think the young students got it, but I hope the leaders did! When we traveled over to the school for the demo, I was sad to learn that the army guys weren’t actually going to light a fire (not safe, I guess). Instead they talked about fire safety, then eventually got around to letting the teachers and some students use the fire extinguisher. It was so hot under the covered court. I thought us haoles were going to melt away! It was a successful event, though and glad everything worked out.