JUNE 13, 2014: MANILA, PHILIPPINES part 6

A FULL DAY AT THE TEMPLE

JUNE 13, 2014

Today I completed an item on my personal “bucket list!”  I have always wanted to go to the temple and spend ALL DAY in the temple working.  Today we did that and Amy and I spent 8 hours in the temple and participated in all ordinances there.  Baptism, Confirmation, Initiatory, Endowment and Sealings.

It was an awesome day!!!  Here is the “play by play.”

We started off with our yogurt for breakfast and tried to print temple names at the hotel, but it wouldn’t work so we headed off and took a taxi to the temple.  We arrived there about 10am and we purchased garments for Sister Esperanza in our ward and then we went into the Family History Center by the temple and we were able to print our temple cards!  Yahoo!!!  We have 72 ordinances that can be done!  We found the annex building where we pay for clothing rental and then went into the temple.  They printed our name cards for our ancestors that we will do temple work for today. 

 

We requested to do baptisms so they led us up to the chapel and we waited there is a youth group from a local ward/branch.  It was really cool to sit and listen to one of the temple coordinators give instruction to the youth.  The youth here in the Philippines are being taught the gospel just like our youth back in Suzhou and our youth back in Arkansas.  Super cool!  It was wonderful to see the beautiful young women dressed in white and watch them to baptisms as proxies for their ancestors. It was fun to see the excited in their eyes to be in the temple!!!  I could feel the faith of the members there in the temple!!!

After today, I have decided I am too old to do baptisms.  I think I will yet those young kiddos do that and I will do the other work – but I am excited that I got to spend the day and participate in all ordinances at the temple!!! 

 

As we left the temple, we had a little challenge catching a taxi.  They were all full and just kept zipping past us on the road.  We finally found one that was dropping a person off at the church annex buildings across from the temple.  I ran down and caught the driver’s attention and we were set.  We had the most hilarious ride from the temple to the Mega Mall.  Our driver asked us immediately if we were members of that church.  We of course said “yes” and then he pulled out a booklet that the missionaries had given him!  The missionaries had tracked into him just the Monday before and had invited him to church.  This man works driving taxi on Sundays so he said he didn’t know if he could go so the missionaries said they would go back next Monday.  We told him he should listen to the missionaries and ask them more questions.  We started talking about families and I told him I had 12 children.  He didn’t believe me.  He then asked me how old I was and I didn’t tell him right off so he kept saying he didn’t believe I could have 12 children.  I then told him my age and he then asked how old I was when I got married.  I told him 21 and he quickly did the math and said I had to have had a child every year!  So I told him we had 5 children adopted from Russia.  Amy asked him if he had a family and he told us he had 4 children.  Amy was bold and asked if he would like to be with his children and family forever!  That made him think.  Amy told him he should ask the missionaries about a forever family and the temple.  The taxi driver spoke limited English but we told him the missionaries could explain it all to him in Tagalog.  By the end of our ride, he seemed that he was planning on seeing the missionaries again the coming Monday!  We hope he does!

I am so, so grateful to have been able to be in the temple today!!!

It was such a great day that we are going to skip our manicure and pedicure day and go back again tomorrow!!  We’ll get “manis and pedis” in China!!!

 We had the taxi driver drop us off at the Mega Mall for our dinner. 

We tried a new place and were actually disappointed in our hamburger.
Oh well.

This was in our snack pack on the way to the Philippines and Amy finally opened it.  It is called "Aviation Radish."  It smelled and we did not try to eat it.