Elder and Sister Whiting in the Philippines: A Welcome P-Day

It's been a busy and fun week. The first three days of the week were filled with office duties, zone conference planning meetings, and other mission duties.

On Thursday, we left our apartment at 5 am and drove through the mountains on steep, winding roads that would never meet U.S. engineering standards to Baler, (pronounced Bel Air). We met up with Elder and Sister Pugh and spent the day with them and the zone leaders visiting the five missionary houses in the zone, inspecting them, and installing smoke/CO2 detectors in all of them. We also did simple things like replace fans, toilet seats, water filters, light bulbs and toaster ovens as needed. We then took the zone leaders to lunch at the only not scary place in town, the Costa Pacifica hotel. We then drove back through the mountains in a heavy rain for three hours to Cabanatuan and stayed the night there.

Next day, Friday, we took a P-Day and drove back to Baler to be tourists and see the beautiful sites in this area. On our way through the mountains, we passed a really bad wreck. A motorcyclist was going down a hill around a curve and hit a bus coming up the hill. When we got there, the body of the motorcyclist was still lying in the road where he landed, all of the bus passengers were standing alongside the road, and emergency responders were just arriving. That is now the second fatal accident we have seen; and we are grateful we haven't seen more.

When we got to Baler, we hiked to a couple of beautiful waterfalls, marveled at the miles and miles of coconut groves, saw the world's oldest Balete Tree (600 years old), and then went to the beach and walked in the very warm water of the Pacific Ocean. We again had dinner at the Costa Pacifica and drove back to Cabanatuan. We didn't stay in Baler because the only not scary place to stay is the Costa Pacifica and they want $500 a night.

Saturday morning Elder Whiting had meetings across the mission in San Jose with President Clark, and Sister Whiting went with the Pugh's to do inspections and smoke alarm installations in the Bongabon Zone; another beautiful coastal area of the mission. In total, Elder and Sister Pugh have inspected and installed smoke alarms in all 90 missionary homes. What a wonderful service this has been to our young missionaries. Thank you Elder and Sister Pugh!

Today we attended fast meeting in the Tarlac 1st ward. We have observed an interesting custom here in the Philippines; after sacrament meeting, during the postlude, no one gets up from their seat until the bishop does. It's an interesting show of respect for the bishop.

We leave you this week with Elder Neal A. Maxwell's words about our Savior, which will be part of our zone conference workshop next week:

"Jesus' character necessarily underwrote His remarkable atonement. Without Jesus' sublime character, there could have been no sublime atonement."

Mahal Kita,
Elder and Sister Whiting