Family Home Evening

Attached are some pictures we took last night at what we thought would be a simple family home evening with Noel Parafina and his soon to be wife Maricel Manalo. As you can see a fair share of the ward showed up. I had hoped for a simple meeting with them and their son Ashley. I have sent these pictures (one) so you see how cute Ashley is, and (two) so you can see how most people here live in very humble circumstances. This isn't the home of Noel and Maricel, but it is very close by. We met here because there isn't enough room in their home for all of us. If it isn't obvious then please understand Noel and Maricel are not married and Ashley is their son who is two years old. We took him two small cars last night hoping to get to be better friends with him - it worked. As you can see on the table they had prepared dinner for us. We had spaghetti and hot dogs. They put catsup and mayonnaise on their hot dogs. There are few thing I like less than mayonnaise unless it is cold spaghetti. The hot dogs are a very cheep variety President Mortimer gave us strict instructions not to eat (they are red). We shared one, and eat some of the cold spaghetti. They served Tang in water that hasn't been purified (also instructed not to drink), so we expect to get a good case of LBM (meaning going to bathroom frequently/urgently). Anyway, we are making progress with this family - they have obtained a marriage license and all they need is to have a guardian sign it and someone to marry them. We have been trying to get the local bishop to get his marriage license with little or no success. I called the Stake Pres. last night to make arrangements to speak with him about this, and he didn't return my text message. I am not certain where we go from here, but more likely than not we will have to have the mayor perform the marriage. Unfortunately one of the missionaries who has been working with them (Elder Narag) is going to be transferred tomorrow. I suspect this happens frequently because it happened to me on my first mission. At the end of the lesson we played a game they seemed to like and as you might expect Diane and I were the first to loose. They seemed to take great delight in this. We love this family a great deal, but are frustrated with the local leaders that don't share our concern for the amount of time and effort that is being spent just getting them ready for baptism. One of Satan's most powerful tools is to drag things like this out - it gives him more time to work on them and chip away at the feelings they had while being taught by the missionaries. We wouldn't have gotten involved except it has been over a year since the missionaries started working them. There are a few peculiarities with Filipinos that are difficult to deal with. First, nothing seems to be urgent, second, the is no irony or sarcasm in them, so if you say somehting you intend to be funny you have to tell them it is a joke. Ashley is in the first picture and the second with Diane, his mother, Maricel is in the third. Notice if you can how humble their circumstances are. On a more positive note we met with the Siniloan District over the weekend and in our discussions with the District Presidency about how to call a new branch pres. President Mortimer mentioned the man I interviewed and encouraged to accept a call to be the new District Pres. in Marindque by saying the man is now doing a terrific job. He is the one who complained to the District President I had twisted his arm. All I did is suggest each of us is on a stair case leading to our Heavenly Father and there are times when we are asked to stop in place for a while and give a helping hand to someone struggling to take the next step up.
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