Sunday, December 12, 2004
I asked Elder Cox this morning if we were going to have to do anything big at church today. He told me, and I also was sure, that we weren’t responsible for anything huge. Well, when we got to church Pres Isla told us that we were, one of us, supposed to be the concluding speaker. He said that he had just forgotten to tell last week. Well, because Elder Cox spoke last month, I got the opportunity to speak about fasting. I prepared during priesthood and Sunday school – shame shame. I think it went ok. My Tagalog was alright but I found myself repeating a lot. I think the basic message got across and I did feel the spirit. We had some crazy answers to prayers today. We both prayed individually before Sunday school that the power would come on because it had browned out so that we could use the piano. Well, right before the opening prayer the power came on just long enough to play the song and then it promptly turned off again. Well we got just exactly what we asked for. We again prayed that it’d come back for sacrament. This time, however, I asked that it’d stay on so that the children would be quiet and so that the keyboard would work and the spirit would be strong. Well, that was better because the power came back on and stayed on the rest of the meeting.
After sacrament meeting, we had a meeting where they organized the Christmas party. Also we got the home and visiting teaching assignments made and setup. We didn’t get back for lunch until 2:00! We ate way too much for lunch. Between the two of us we had one loaf of bread, two cans of tuna, three things of “Eden[1]” Cheese, two cans of creamed corn and seven ice pop desserts. Wow! I felt really fat and bloated after that meal. Just to top it off, when we went to Gregorio’s right after lunch to plan the baptism they fed us rice cakes, 1.5 liters of coke, and spaghetti. We were feeling like hogs after that. We had a good visit with the Vilorias tonight. They’re still a little bit down but they’ll be ok I think. We just have a lot of things that have to happen for them this week. Hopefully we’ll be blessed and all of it will work out.
[1] “Eden Cheese” wasn’t really cheese at all. It was more like yellowish white rubber that kind or sort of tasted like cheese. It was awful but it was as close as we could get.