Odds and Ends

I will start with a photo of the new counselor in the Philippines Area Presidency, Michael B. Strong. He and Brett Nattress (my nephew) were assigned adjoining offices in the Salt Lake City church headquarters building last summer when Elder Strong was first called as a General Authority. Like Brett, who was assigned to the South Pacific when he was called as a General Authority, Elder Strong's first assignment was to a remote part of the world.

This photo is a selfie of Elder and Sister Beard, along with Sister Cutler and I, standing on the beach in Sipalay at sunset. (It's blurry because the exposure was about three seconds long.) Sipalay is a remote area in the southwest corner of the island of Negros and the Beards have been there for about three months now. Their calling is as Member and Leader Support missionaries and they work with newly-baptized members and new church leaders to provide support, counsel, and leadership experience. Elder Beard was also called as the first counselor in the mission presidency, which allows him to support President Reyes in this remote part of our mission. The Beards are from the Kansas City area and had never been outside the United States prior to their mission.

The Christmas House in Dumaguete is a holiday hot spot, although I took this photo a couple of months ago. It is a historic and often-visited spot during the holidays, so I will go back in early December and photograph it at night once all the lights are up. Every year during the Christmas season the house and gardens are decorated with lights and ornaments and people from all over the province visit the house to admire the display. Each year has a slightly different theme, so look for an update in a future blog post.

The Dumaguete Belfry is one of the city’s best known landmarks and is also one of its oldest surviving structures. It was built in the early 1800s as a watchtower to warn residents of incoming pirate attacks. It stands next to the Saint Catherine of Alexandria Cathedral and was used to call residents to mass. A grotto named for Our Lady of Perpetual Help was added near the base of the tower and Catholics come to the Belfry and the grotto to light candles and pray.

A local church member is a package delivery guy and I love his art-deco delivery trike.

One of my jobs is to replace the missionaries' broken cellphones. The heat and humidity cause the phones to separate and the batteries to swell up.

The Philippines is probably one of the few places left where you can buy treddle-powered sewing machines. When I was on my first mission here in 1975 I developed a cavity in one of my teeth and went to the dentist. He used a treddle-powered drill to fix it.

Finally, here are a few book covers created by a local member. They are not really covers, however. He starts with a hard-cover Book of Mormon or a hard-cover Bible and coats the outside with epoxy resin. When the resin hardens, he carves the image into the epoxy. He can create any image you want and they look just fabulous.