We Have New Neighbors....Again!

We didn't know it would happen so soon, but two more sister missionaries moved into the apartment next to us this morning. I guess now we have to be good neighbors and turn down our music once in a while. But when you're old and deaf, you're old and deaf!

Sister Diamond from Ogden and Sister Cabato from the Philippines

These are the great sisters who are giving the missionary lessons to Jonats.  Speaking of Jonats, he is still interested in the Church, but he says he is really busy at work, so isn't as involved in having the discussions or attending Church.  The sisters have given him the Plan of Salvation lesson since our last "Jonats Post". They reported to us that he accepts the Plan as true.  He also continues to read the Book of Mormon. 

I am coveting some of the sisters' furnishings, but NOT the fancy drapes! Sister Diamond used the word "fancy"...I didn't!

Here's a better picture. The "fancy" look is more visable.

So anyway, we had the four upstairs sister missionaries, the two downstairs sister missionaries, and the four mission office elders for breakfast.  The mission office elders were using the mission pickup to move Sister Cabato's and Sister Diamond's stuff to their new digs.

Clockwise: Elder Wood, Elder VanBrunt, Sister Diamond, Sister Cabato, Elder Paige, Elder Balbin,
Sister Incognito, Sister Obra, Sister Naeem, and Sister Villareal.

We served our traditional waffle, mango, banana, whipping cream, and syrup concoction.  They seemed to like it, anyway everything disappeared pretty quickly.

Since the sisters moved in next door earlier than planned, having everyone to breakfast was a last-minute event. Elder and I really wanted to serve mangos with our waffles, so I walked to our neighborhood fruit stand to buy some.  No mangos. Elder got in the car and returned half an hour later also without mangos.  "Sister Eddington, are you SURE there are no mangos in the refrigerator?" "No, Elder, we have no mangos."  A few minutes later, Elder appeared from the kitchen holding a bag full of mangos!  Oops!  Anyway, it was a fun morning. (By the way, Laurel, Sister Incognito laughed when I mentioned you asked if she were under the Witness Protection Program.) (And, Stephanie, what's the difference between a "nightie" and a "nightgown"?

Sister Naeem wanted to show that she was very full.

By the way, when Sister Naeem complained of the heat the other day, I tried in vain to convince her that wearing long-sleeved blouses just made her hotter. Sister Naeem: "No, long sleeves protect from the hot sun." Me: "No, long sleeves hold in your body heat, making you hotter."  She obviously doesn't believe my theory, since she's still wearing long sleeves. But what makes me think my theory is correct?

After the sisters so thoughtfully washed the dishes, the shoes disappeared as quickly as they appeared..

...including the "fancy" ones:

All is quiet and back to normal .... for the moment, anyway.

We Have New Neighbors

Do you ever cringe at the thought of having needy, loud, and snoopy neighbors?  Well, we HAVE such neighbors.....and love them to death!

Pettingils, the senior couple who lived upstairs from us, moved north.  Four missionary sisters moved in a few days after they left. Actually, there were seven of them at first.  Three of them were staying with the other sisters while they were waiting for their new companions to arrive.

SO adorable

When the A.P.'s and Sister Barrientos dropped the sisters off, Sister Barrientos advised me not to spoil them too much.  Advise that I thought I could follow until the Sorry Factors crept in.

Sorry Factor #1: They have to endure a hot apartment. Turned-off air conditioners sit silently in the windows.  They can't afford to run the air con.

Sorry Factor #2: They are living on tight budgets at best, but now it is even worse.  They moved from an apartment within their area clear across town to this apartment.  Their travel expenses have gone way up.

So last Sunday night I took them some left-over ice cream Elder had supplied for a young adult activity.  They met me at the door with screams and hugs of delight.  "You are an answer to our prayers!" "We are starving!" "We knew the Lord would provide!"  "We have no money for food!" Wow! What an over-the-top reaction to a bit of ice cream.  I immediately went back to our apartment and loaded up with food to give them.  I was almost back to the sisters' door with food, when Sister Naeem came out their door to see where I was.  We pretty much came face-to-face.  She shrieked a high-pitched shriek and ran back in their apartment. Sorry, I didn't know I was that scary! 

In our quest to keep the sisters from fainting from hunger, we invited them to breakfast the next morning. They ate like it was their last meal on earth.

Sister Villareal, Sister Naeem, and Sister Obra

All of the sisters are from here in the Philippines, except Sister Naeem who is from Pakistan. She is so very hyper and cute! She calls us "Mother" and "Father". "You don't care I call you 'Moder' and 'Fader'? You my 'Moder' and 'Fader', right? You always remember me, right?" 

She's always banging on our door at random times just to see us. "I not see you today. I must see your face before I go to bed. Now I dream about you. I have good dream. I love you very much!" A few hugs and she's gone into the night.

The other night when Sister Naeem came knocking, I answered the door in my blue nightie and cover-up-type robe. She couldn't figure out what on earth I was wearing. She kept looking at my get up as though it was some kind of a freak outfit.  "You have blue dress under? What you wearing?" I'm normal, right? Please tell me I'm normal! (Elder and I don't feel at all normal here. You can't believe the stares Elder gets as we walk in public. I'm not sure if it's his height or his skin color or both.)

Anyway, back to breakfast.

Sister Naeem and Sister Incognito

"What on earth is this: waffles, mangos, bananas, syrup, and whipping cream? I'll eat it, because I am starving!"

 

 

Sister Agustin and Sister Naeem

 

After our photo session, we gave the sisters a few more goodies. It doesn't take much to make them happy!

 

 

Since then, we have left anonymous care packages at their door. Of course they have NO idea who  their Santa Claus is. :)

 

As I have said, we are thoroughly loving our neighbors.  They are so fun to have around. The good news is that four more missionary sisters will be moving into the downstairs apartment in May.

 

The Mormon Missionary Mansion

That means only one apartment won't be inhabited by Mormons! The Mormons are moving in!



Tastes Great, But What Is It??

As you probably all know, I take cookies with me when we do a record review in a ward.  They have a name for "breaks" during the day, "merienda."  A few weeks ago, we were in one of the southern stakes and had an interesting experience and this prompted me to do a post on differences in food traditions.

We were finishing up the record review with the ward council and I got out the cookies and soda.  Everyone was excited to eat American cookies.  Snickerdoodles, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, ginger chewy and chocolate crinkle.  They started eating and I'm hearing 'masarap', 'delishioso' and other compliments and then the bishop disappeared and returned with the remainder of the loaf of bread for the sacrament.  As I watched, he put a chocolate chip cookie between two slices of bread and began to eat away..... okay.... and then everyone else joined in and the loaf was gone!  Cookie sandwich, haven't seen that before.  So the next week, we went south again to a different ward, and they did the same thing!  It must be a Candon thing.

Now I find out that they also eat ice cream on bread.  We provided cookies and homemade ice cream for a YSA activity.  Lesson learned....they don't eat the cookies with the ice cream.  Those are two different desserts to be eaten separately.

On to the scientific discoveries:

Question: Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?  Do you make jam out of vegetables? No. But look what we have here........

This is tomato jam.  It is sweet, but you can still tell that it is tomato.  Therefore, the scientific answer must be tomato is a fruit.  But wait, what about tomato catsup??? Isn't that a vegetable???  Silly person; haven't you heard of banana catsup??  So you see catsup is a fruit product.  Banana catsup looks just like tomato catsup, although they say it is sweeter.

Now we come to one of our favorites.  Barbeque on a stick.  In this case Ineng's Pork.  We love it.  They have Ineng's in California, Washington and Florida.  Looking on the internet, there are tons of recipes for Philippino barbeque sauce.  Two of the common ingredients are....you guessed it... banana catsup and 7Up.

This will be a project when I get home; how to make our own version.  Getting the right cut of pork will be the first test. 

Speaking of right ingredients; how about this...horseradish in rolls.  There is a very popular bakery here that only makes hot rolls.  Duron's Malunggay Pandesal.  You eat them hot, any time of the day. Especially popular for breakfast.  There is other pandesal, but it is not the same.  So I'm asking people what makes them different and they say that it is the horseradish.  Now I love prime rib with horseradish and I can tell the flavor of it and these rolls do not taste like that at all.  So on further investigation, guess what I find......

The special ingredient to these is this.....

The leaves on this plant get used in all kinds of cooking.  And is not the same thing we call horseradish in America.

Our all-time favorite discovery so far, except maybe for fresh mangos, is the yellow watermelon which Sister Eddington has already mentioned.

We will attempt to grow them when we get home.  I think you can order the seeds from Gurney's and they are delicious.

To end with a little controversy.  We have been told by Philippina sister missionaries that this is spinach.  Do you think they are teasing us?

It looks like a weed in a tomato patch to me.

Last Half of Friday

So we arrived back in Laoag from our speaking appointment at 4pm.  I immediately started making final preparations for a baby shower Bishop Catubay's wife and I were having for four young ladies. We were going to have the shower in our apartment, but decided we needed more room, so it was planned for the relief society room in the stake center. It's a good thing, too! We initially set up seventeen chairs, but kept adding more and more chairs as the evening progressed.  I have NO idea how many we ended up with, but the room was packed..... and a lot of pancit and two banana cakes were consumed.

This shower was the first shower the Laoag Second Ward has had.  While we were waiting for the shower to start, I passed a bag of diapers around. The sisters were to guess how many diapers were in the bag. A lot of the older sisters confessed they hadn't used diapers on their babies.

A priesthood holder started the "meeting". He announced the program and off we went: Opening song: "In Our Lovely Deseret", opening prayer, spiritual thought, and then games by Sister Eddington. Sister Catubay gave me the assignment of games, so they could see how an American shower was conducted. Too little, too late! But I LOVE games!  However, this created a few problems. Problem #1:  When I plan the games, I can't play them. Problem #2: Just TRY and explain the rules of a game when half of the audience doesn't understand English. (The younger ladies do well with English, but the older ones don't.) Problem #3: Filipinos are a fun-loving people.  They were having so much fun among themselves, it was hard for my voice to rise above the noise.  I had to use my whistle a few times...not very reverent.

The first game was an ice-breaker game.  They were to tell two things about themselves. One was a true statement and the other was a lie. It was hilarious to see these sisters try and lie! They would crack themselves up when they told the lie.  No one could lie with a straight face.  I was thinking I wouldn't have nearly enough prizes for all the winners of this game, since all the lies were so obvious.




Sister Catubay (Bishop's wife) in middle...writing what they think are the sisters' true statements.



Sister Domingo (Elders' Quorum President's wife) on left
Sister Daquioag (Relief Society President) on right

I passed out old issues of the Liahona so the sisters would have something to write on.  Apparently they thought they were gifts since I didn't receive any back! That's ok, Elder and I had read them. Obviously the sisters needed them worse than we did...even though most of them were the English version.

Sister Sylvia Arquillo in orange top and daughter Rachel (newly reactivated)

The next game was the guess-what-baby-item-is-inside-the-paper-bag game.  They did better with this game.



Three of the guests of honor: Ken, Hershelle, and Aubrey. (Romelyn couldn't make it.)
Hershelle is having the missionary lessons.... her fiance is a member.
 



"If I put the bag close to my forehead like Johnny Carson did as Carnak, I will know what's inside."

This time I gave the "booby prize" to the loser.  The sisters had NO idea what "booby prize" meant.  Explanations were in order.




The sister in the white top won with two of eleven correct answers.

The last game was to draw a picture of a baby... on top of their heads.  The best baby picture won. I wish I had taken pictures of the baby drawings.  They were hilarious!

Silly me! Of COURSE there was a closing to the meeting.  If there were opening exercises, why wouldn't there be closing remarks from the bishop, a closing hymn, and a prayer?  I was such a heathen.  I just started cutting and passing out the banana cake. Finally someone asked me: "Aren't we going to have a blessing on the food?"  Awkward! After the party, I apologized to Bishop Catubay for being so non-spiritual. After all, the party WAS held in the meetinghouse. Prayers should have been offered.  I took off my missionary badge and tried to turn it in to him, but being the nice bishop that he is, he wouldn't accept it. (In case you are wondering, we were just joking around.)

If you look closely, there is also pancit on the plates alongside the banana cake. I didn't want to embarrass Sister Catubay by asking her if she had made pancit like she said she would. I didn't see any signs of it in the kitchen, either, so I started dishing up the banana cake. Wrong! There was pancit, and plenty of it! No Filipino party is complete without pancit.  It's the ultimate party food. It's tastes like Top Ramen with cooked cabbage thrown in.

 

Young men came out of the woodwork like ants when the food was dished up. I don't know where they came from or how they knew food was being served, but they came in droves. They shoveled it in and then disappeared as quickly as they had appeared.

Everyone was so shocked when I admitted I had made the banana cake.  Elder has the reputation for being the great cookie baker.  All the members know by now that I don't like to spend any more time in the kitchen than I have to.




The clean-up crew.
 All the pregos had brooms and were sweeping the floor after the party.



Aubrey, Ken, Hershelle, and Sister Daquioag. I'm the fat one!

"Move it, Sister Eddington! My baby needs a lot of room...as well as the spotlight!"

 

Sister Catubay dropped her mop long enough to join the photo shoot.

 

After the shower was over, Bishop asked me how it went.  Me: "How do I know? I don't speak Tagalog." Bishop: "Well, what were the looks on the sisters' faces? Happy?"  Me: "I don't know. I was too busy and stressed to look at people's faces!  Ask your wife how it went." 

 

Actually, I think all the sisters had a good time.  And I think the bishop's goal of having the shower to help unite the sisters was accomplished. Sister Catubay's and my goal was to fellowship these young girls....helping them to come to baptism and reactivity.   We were both very impressed with the generous suppoort of the Relief Society sisters.

 

I'm sure some of the activities I had planned seemed a little strange to all the sisters. But since it was their first-ever shower, they had nothing to compare it with. :)   Hopefully the next shower will include gifts. Obviously we weren't successful in communicating to the sisters that a baby shower means you bring gifts! Baby steps! 

Busy Friday

It seemed like Saturday because of our tight schedule, but it was only Friday.  We left the apartment at 6:15am and traveled north for three hours. We had been asked to speak at a district youth conference in Sanchez-Mira.  To travel that many hours for a guest-speaking assignment means either we are really famous for our great talks, or the district president was scrounging for guest speakers. We'll go with the "we-have-a-reputation-for-giving-great-talks" theory! :)

The farther north we traveled, the harder it rained. Not good weather for a two-day youth conference held at a beach-front resort.

One of the many beautiful vistas on the way to Sanchez-Mira.... before it started to rain.

 But when we arrived the youth were indoors in the middle of a testimony meeting, so the rain wasn't affecting their schedule.  What a good-looking, wholesome group of youth.  The young women were all in their Sunday clothes and the young men were wearing white shirts and ties.  We slipped into the back and tried to listen to their testimonies.  But of course they were speaking in either Tagalog or Ilocano, don't ask me which.  Even though we couldn't understand their message, their deep conviction of the Church was strongly felt. As we listened to their testimonies, I kept thinking how my talk-to-be was going to be a "preaching to the choir" event.  I even used that term in the introductory comments of my talk.  No one had ever heard that phrase, so explanations were in order. I wasn't getting too nervous about my speaking assignment as I observed that the youth group wasn't overly large.  But then I started to sweat when after their testimony meeting, another group joined them.  It was a LARGE group of awesome youth!

Elder and I were asked to speak on preparing for missions.  I spoke on putting on the whole armor of God to protect from Satan's temptations while preparing for a mission.  Elder was my Vanna White.  He added each piece of the armor as I talked about it.

My little Filipino stripling warrior

Elder did a power point presentation on the iron rod.  A few months ago he had commissioned a less-active returned missionary to paint a series of pictures of Lehi's dream.  His motive was to inspire the young man to become active in the Church again.  Francis DeLa Cruz is a very talented young artist as you will see from the following "with-a-Filipino-flare"paintings.   He is the same artist who painted the Manila Temple picture for us. We give copies of his temple painting as gifts.

Missionaries inviting others to pass through the gate of baptism and grasp the iron rod.



Never mind the scoffing people, the filthy river, or the mist of darkness.  Just hang on!

The temple is a bright vista along the path, and offers help in holding tightly to the iron rod.

The path isn't always easy, but as long as we "hold to the rod", we will make it safely through.
We can also help others along the way, as long as we keep hold of the rod ourselves.
 

Serving others, scripture study, and attending Church are a few ways that help us endure to the end.

After working so hard to make it to the Tree of Life, some will value the fruit (the love of God), and some will reject it.

 

After the devotional, Elder talked with the District President about member records.

While waiting I took the ocean picture below. It is the view when looking out the window behind Elder. Sitting in the blue plastic chair during the devotional, I thoroughly enjoyed this ocean view. (What else is there to do when one can't understand Tagalog or Ulocano? And, no, Elder wasn't the one talking in a foreign language. He's not THAT dedicated to the cause!)

I can't believe how quickly the place emptied out as everyone scampered to lunch.

This gives a good idea of how many youth were in attendance.  Every chair was filled...including the round tables at the back of the room. I really wanted to take a picture during the devotional, but I stifled the urge. :)

In line for lunch.

Lunch went quickly as everyone was anxious to jump in the pool. (By now it had stopped raining. Wahoo!)

I think I would have high-tailed it to the beach instead of the pool. 
But maybe there were sharks lurking out in the ocean, who knows!

This little group of cuties helped us to the car with our stuff.

Goodbye, adorable people! What a fun youth conference. Where was youth conference back in the late '50's and early '60's? Elder and I feel gyped!

But the day wasn't over yet.  The remainder of Friday's adventures to be continued in our next post.