This is a photo of what happens in the clerk's office during and after a blitz.  Bishop Desalas of Santa Monica ward is on the left and Sister Desalas is on the right.  The photo shows the zone leaders,an assistant and two missionaries from the zone who are mapping and recording the information found in the Santa Monica blitz on Feb. 24th.

Leslie went to a different blitz with Sisters Morris and Cole.  We had trouble with the GPS at first and felt like we were probably going towards the church and then a man came up on a motorcycle and knocked on the driver's window and said he was a member and could lead us to the church.  He must have recognized that three elderly Caucasian women in a car who looked like they didn't know where they were must be missionaries and in need of rescuing.

Every Monday morning we buy our favorite breakfast, which happens to come from MacDonalds.  It's called Eggdesal and is like Egg Mcmuffin except it is on pandesal instead of an English muffin.  Pandesal is a roll which tastes very much like King's bread which is made in Hawaii. It's sweeter than the regular rolls we have at home.  I like the sausage ones and Ken likes them and  the ham ones.  They also have egg in them which has been folded up with cheese inside and then heated so the cheese is runny. Yay, Monday!  Our mission president says it's the best food in the Philippines. By the way, 39 pesos is 95 cents.

.

On the 24th of February Ken went with Brother Cresencio, the EQ president of our Novaliches Ward into the community to talk with families of deceased people and get their death dates so they can be taken off the ward list.  Bro. Cresencio is taking the photo with himself and Ken and Sister Elguera.  She gave them the date for her husband's death in 2011.

We have gotten several things made at a local shoe establishment.  Ken had a black leather belt made (under $10) Leslie had sandals made (under $15) and Ken had some loafers made ($60).  They don't measure your foot, they TRACE it and measure the instep with a measuring tape.  Then they custom- make the shoes and you try them on when they're finished and then they ease them and stretch them where needed. 

At Nena's request we took a picture after church on Feb 18th.  Nena Cresencio of the Novaliches Ward is leaving on Friday to travel to the St. George Mission where she'll work in the Visitors' Center of the St. George, Utah Temple  There are 10 missionaries from Novaliches Ward serving missions and 45 from Novaliches Stake. It is more common for a sister to go on a mission here than it is at home.

Traffic is interesting here.  Something that is called "counterflow" here, at home is called "driving down the wrong side of the road".  If the lane on the other side of the road is more convenient or empty for a moment, someone will drive in that lane and the oncoming traffic adjusts.  Everybody is affected by the LRT construction happening in the middle of the road but some drivers are impatient and don't want to drive only in the right-hand lane.

We participated in another blitz on February 17  Novaliches Ward.  Ken was assigned to work with Elder Balucas and two YM.  They met and taught a family who was living with their grandmother, Eluminada Obrence, The children are Aleja, Rhaine, Whyne and Izeiyah.

The YM were Roger Yaon and Raymond Navarro.  The boy in the blue shirt was unknown but he also enjoyed having his picture taken.

The Senior Missionaries provide many services in our mission, for example: medical, secretarial, financial, missionary apartments - locating them, paying rent for them, and inspecting them - fleet operations, piano lessons, providing food for Zone activities, workshops for zone interviews, clothing collection and distribution, and a variety of member and leader support functions.  This is a picture of many of us at the American Cemetery on Feb 1.

This is us at the mission office on February 8.

We had Zone Conference on Tuesday, February 6.  It was inspirational and highly motivating.  As usual workshops were given by the Assistants, Zone Leaders, Sister Training Leaders, President Hughes and Sister Hughes.  This is a picture of our Novaliches Zone.

When we are driving on the roads and come to an intersection where we must stop, there are vendors and beggars (mostly mothers with babies or very young children) who immediately rush out into the traffic and sell or beg.  They try to get you to buy some of these flowers which are woven into a necklace and they go brown and wilt within a few hours and smell quite bad.  We carry packages of good crackers in our car which we give to them and then skip the flowers.  We were advised by our mission not to give money to these people.

On Saturday, February 3 there was a blitz in the Novaliches Ward.  

Ken was assigned to go with Elder Slade (from St. George) and Bishop Movilla.  They contacted Sister Leticia Alphahora.  She hadn't been to church in a while but committed to come the next day.

On Feb 1 we had a Senior's activity.  We went to the American Cemetery.  It had displays of all the battles in the South Pacific and South China Sea area.  There were also thousands of graves with the name of a soldier on each cross.  The cemetery was erected after the Second World War in honor of the war dead from the Phillipines and other allied nations.  It is reminiscent of the graveyards in Normandy and northern France.

After we had looked around the cemetery for a couple of hours, President and Sister Hughes took us all to the Manila Hotel where they had booked a room in the Mabuhay Palace Restaurant (a Chinese restaurant).  The photo shows one table, but there were two tables of us.  President Hughes is sitting next to Leslie and Sister Hughes is taking the picture.  The guy with the beard is Mark, the Hughes son-in law, who was visiting from Utah with his wife, Abby, who is the Hughes daughter.

  We had dim sum and a variety of ala carte dishes...

...and for dessert we had a specialty of the restaurant.  It's called Salted Duck Egg Ice Cream. A website that we looked it up on said " "Saltish morsels of firm yolk colliding with toasty bits of black sesame seeds in a lush base..." It was really good!