I will get to this story shortly. First of all, though, I need to back up a few days. We actually went to the women’s prison closeby. We learned that they have some needs, so Elder Parada lined up a time for us to meet with the Superintendent of the prison. Off we went, way down the road, which had a gate and guards, but strangely, regular people live here. When we reached the gates of the actual correctional facility we were met by more guards. Unfortunately, the super had to go to an emergency meeting at the senate (Elder Parada said they have lots of these time-wasting meetings) and the assistant didn’t seem to know what to do with us. She finally lit up when we explained the full scope of what we are able to do for them. At first she was talking about us donating coffee and diapers. NOPE! Not what we do.

We finally got an audience with the person over education, then we got our tour of the facility and found their needs. Hopefully we can help them repair their classroom building. There are over 3,000 women in this prison and it was surprising that most are middle aged. And most are in for some sort of drug charge (the past president was a vigilante when it came to punishment for drug offenses). I was wondering why I was the only one who had to get a stamp then it dawned on me: I am a woman!! Glad I got back out! On Thursday we had a chance to go with Haidi from communications (she is the one whose family Elder Huff baptized all those years ago) and John to visit Caritas Manila to see how we can help them with their efforts. They are a Catholic service organization who helps the urban poor. I love their feeding program and we are really hoping to be able to donate a lot of money to their cause. We will see…

After our visit, Haidi and John needed to go to Ikea , so I was more than happy to go along! This is a huge Ikea! Especially the cafe. It tasted so good to me and we stocked up on some yummy things. On Friday, it was our normal WSR meeting with the heads of various departments where our projects meet their final approval or denial. We had so many projects we had to break up the meeting in two parts. The first went from 7 am to 8:15. There were around 7 projects approved in this meeting. Then we had a big area workforce activity for a few hours (which was so nice because it included an hour of yoga then some really quite fun team building activities) then back to the part two of the meeting where another 8 or more projects were approved. It was a marathon but we all got very good at presenting quickly. We had a zone conference for senior couples that evening at 6 so we were at the office from 7 am until 8:30 pm. What a day! We sang our duet again for this meeting. Nerve-wracking, but good. We are getting good mileage from our one piece of music we brought with us because we also had to attend a different ward today to sing it again. The locals were so appreciative . I don’t think they have musical numbers very often.

On Saturday, we got up early to meet some Rotary Club members to be taken up to Gerona, close to Tarlac to look at the site where they are planning to build a two room classroom building. The old building was destroyed a few years ago and this is the school that the division felt most needed a new building. The Rotary Club wants to start an initiative to build these classroom buildings for last miles schools throughout the Philippines. This one will be their model try and they are asking LDS-Charities to help with the materials. We have been trying to work this out with them for many, many months now. Well, as we were headed to the school, a wrong turn was made and we ended up on a narrow, sandy road in the middle of some rice fields and the van got stuck! And this was right after we had all sung “to dream the impossible dream!” We all got out of the van, but that didn’t help get the tire unstuck. They called the division superintendent, who was waiting at the school and he soon came along in a car to pick some of them up. I decided I needed a walk, so I walked for a kilometer or two in the extreme heat. It would have been wonderful had it not been about 90 degrees and extremely humid!

I loved walking past the rice field, caribou and just enjoying the peace of farmlands. We were a bit worried because we were supposed to meet up with President Magsino and his wife at the Rise and Rebuild Farm so they could take us to the next site. After we saw the site at the little elementary school, it was determined that they would drive us in their car up to Tarlac and the van would come up when it got unstuck. Luckily, though, the van got rescued by a tractor and we managed to turn around and go up in the van. Rise and Rebuild was there waiting for us with a scrumptious farm to table lunch. They are always so, so hospitable and feed us great food every time we are there. And of course, I came home with some fresh veggies, which was another bonus. President Magsino is the Stake President of the Quezon City South Stake and also the owner of BAM builders, who does a lot of construction projects for the church. His wife is a service missionary. They are both so excited about helping the tribal people in Pampanga, which isn’t that far from Tarlac but is up in the mountains. They are working alongside another organization which is made up of civil engineers who are currently working in United Arab Emirates. So this really will be a joint effort.

We loved our little journey up to meet with the Aeta tribe in Camias. First of all, it’s such a beautiful area. So lush, and up on a hill where you can look out over the valley on one side and layers of mountains on the other side. And the people! They seem so happy! And kids!!! Kids, Kids, Kids! They seemed to come out of the jungle in throngs to greet us. And that was just while we were driving up the dirt road. At one point, there was a mob of kids by the truck and Lennie tried to open his window to greet them. When the window didn’t unroll, he opened his door. That might have been a big mistake. There was a sudden uproar and mayhem ensued! I wish I could put the video of it in here. It was crazy! We were never quite sure if they thought we were going to hand out food or something, or if they were just excited. We slowly rolled away from them and he managed to shut the door with no fingers getting smashed. When we got to their little village, we were shown the site, looked at the old dilapidated shipping containers that used to be the learning center and heard the story of why they need a building.

The man who showed us around is from this tribe, but he never did know his biological family. He was adopted by another family and taken down to “civilization” where he received a good education. He wanted to give back to his community, so he came back and is trying to help them. He is working through a church. He has great plans, including having a learning center for the little ones up there who would otherwise have to walk 2-3 hours to get to the nearest school. They don’t have much food, so that 2 hour walk would be very challenging to say the least. They would also use it for a training center and also a spiritual center. All good things. We hope we can make it work! There was violence in this area 4 years ago, intertribal stuff, so hopefully we can all move forward and not fear the past. Our experience up here reminded us of our time in Vanuatu when we stayed in a little village by a volcano and walked to church and to school with the villagers. They live such simple lives up here. It feels like camping to me. But to them, it’s their life!