I’m in the World Club at the Minneapolis Airport waiting for my next flight. Of course, waiting means getting on the computer and connecting to the internet. The flight from Idaho Falls was on a small regional jet seating 48 people and every seat was taken. There is one flight from Idaho Falls to Minneapolis in the morning leaving from Idaho Falls at 8:15 a.m. There is one flight each day from Minneapolis to Idaho Falls which leaves about 9:30 p.m. The two flights line up reasonably well with a trip to Europe, so here I am. The airport terminal in Minneapolis is huge but also a very nice place. There are lots of places to eat and a number of nice shops. The Northwest World Club is also a good convenience. There is (pay for) wireless in the club making being on the net a reasonable experience.

Before I left Idaho Falls, I sent a post to the blog by way of e-mail. I would have expected that entry would already be on the weblog, but no such luck! If it doesn’t appear before I leave here, there’s not much I can do until Monday. The hotel I’m where I’m staying in Kortrijk, Belgium, has dial-up access, but no high-speed wireless. There doesn’t seem to be very much high-speed available in hotels in Belgium yet, which I don’t understand. It seems like every hotel and motel in the US has high-speed and most of them offer it as a free service for their guests. This capability is common even in Asia. What’s up with Europe??

I’m staying in Kortrijk this time rather than in Gent. There is some kind of huge festival in Gent and the city center is shut down for the week. Since the hotels are in the city center, this becomes quite inconvenient for the business traveller. Kortrijk is about as far southwest of Oudenaarde as Gent is northeast. It’s not a huge city, but much larger than Oudenaarde. Even at that, finding a hotel was not easy. Late July and the whole month of August is vacation time in Belgium. It turns out that many hotels close down during this period for a couple of weeks so that the hotel owners and staff can take a vacation. Since everyone else is supposed to be on vacation, this isn’t considered to be an inconvenience. I’ve often wondered where people who go on vacation stay if all the hotels close during the same period?? It’s a mystery to me.

I’m now in the Tokyo Narita Airport. I’ve left the Philippines and am on my way home. It’s good to be on my way! The last couple of days in Manila were very busy with little time for myself which is also very good. Last night as I was packing, one of the fellows from work called from the lobby. He was very curious to see what the hotel rooms in The Belleview looked like so I invited him up. He visited for a few minutes and then left for home. We talked a little bit about vacations and whether or not he and his family ever took a family vacation. They have not done so, yet, because it is so expensive. There are too many other things that he needs to spend his money on for his young family. If he could go on a vacation, he would want to go to the beach. That apparently is the most expensive vacation for Filipinos although the prices to me seemed to be very reasonable.

I got up at 4:25 a.m. and after showering and dressing, finished packing. My driver was there as I came down from my room at 5:20 a.m. I was at the airport by 6. Lots of different security check points. The car was checked as we entered the airport. I and everything with me went through X-Ray and metal detectors to go into the airport terminal. Then there was a security screening before I got to the ticketing agent to check my luggage. Then there was x-ray and metal detector after going through Immigration as well as a pat-down. Finally, when I got to the gate we went through another check — a hand check of all carry-ons, a shoe inspection, and another arms-spread wanding before I could enter the gate area. I’m pretty sure that little got through all those checkpoints.

The airplane was one of the upgraded 747-400 models from NW. I really like the new business class seats. They fully recline — flat! There is no first class on these upgraded airplanes, only business class and economy. We were almost an hour early getting to Tokyo and I spent the time reading backed up e-mail. I’m down to about 8,000 unread e-mails….!!

The airplane that we’re taking to Los Angeles hasn’t arrived, yet so we’ll be at least an hour and a half late leaving here. No problem (yet) on the other end as I’ve more than a four-hour layover in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, I’m in Northwest’s Business Class Lounge plugged into their high-speed wireless connection. I’ve got a couple of work things to do and then I’ll just surf the web or something until they call my flight. The lounge is very busy. It looks like lots of other flights are full or nearly full today, which seems a bit strange for a Thursday.

One of the historical things I learned on Saturday about the Philippines was about Dr. Jose Rizal, the Philippine National Hero. According to the people at the office, there is only one National Hero and he’s got that distinction. He was the rallying point of the revolution in 1898 that helped defeat the Spanish and end their occupation of the Philippines, even though he had been dead for almost two years by that time. It was his writings and his defiant execution by the Spanish that focused the Filipinos and allied them with the United States, who were also at war with Spain. Admiral Dewey as part of that war defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay which further enabled the Filipinos to carry out their own revolution. Then, the United States completely ignored the agreements made with the Filipino rebels, installed our own puppet government and began our own occupation of the Philippines which was only ended by the Japanese in WWII. After the war, the U.S. stayed in the Philippines, but by this time a fledgling democracy had been established and we no longer controlled the government. The U.S. military stayed in the Philippines until 1991 when the Philippine government refused to renew the bases agreement and we were essentially forced to leave.

So, Dr. Jose Rizal is a National Hero (with proper capitalization). I’d be hard pressed to say who the U.S. National Hero would be. We have a number of heroes, some have more clay in their feet than others, but there probably isn’t any single person whom we would annoint with that title. The concept is interesting to me that there would be one and only one National Hero.

Another person in the news in the Philippines is a fellow named Luis Taruc. The Wikipedia article in the link doesn’t mention anything about Luis Taruc during WWII. He organized and lead the guerrillas fighting against the Japanese occupation and was superbly successful. This was the most successful resistance movement in all of Asia during the war and was so because of his leadership. Submarines full of supplies, guns, ammunition, and radio gear were dispatched by the Allies to deliver to Taruc and his fighters badly needed supplies and to obtain the intelligence they had gathered. The loss of life in the successful reoccupation of the Philippines in 1945 was significantly reduced by his work against the Japanese. The local newspapers talked about him in this light, largely ignoring what happened after the war. He’s another complex person, driven by idealogy and altruism, and is considered by most of the farming peasants in the Philippines to be a hero. On the other hand, after the defeat of the Japanese and Taruc’s subsequent disallusionment with democracy in the Philippines, he turned his military skills once again to the overthrow of a government. For almost two decades he lead the Huk communists in a war against the Philippine government. He’ll probably never be a National Hero and may well soon be forgotten by the world. I certainly don’t wish to idolize him in any way, either. He just points out that heroes are often defined by the winning team. Had the Spanish not been defeated, Dr. Jose Rizal would perhaps not even be a footnote to history. Had the Huks prevailed, Luis Taruc would probably be today’s National Hero. Interesting thought.

With that, I’ve left Manila and am headed back to my normal life. I had a good trip. On the one hand it seemed like I had hardly arrived when it was time to leave. On the other hand, it seems like I’ve been there for an eternity. Regardless, I’m on my way — that is, if the airplane ever arrives!

Tom, my host here in Manila, and I went to his normal ward on Mother’s Day. Here are some notes I took during the meeting:

I’m in church — and no, it isn’t air conditioned. Lots of fans and there is a breeze which helps.

The building is very small and very open to the outside so there’s plenty of air movement. The ceilings in the chapel are low — about twelve feet. The Primary children are singing and they are way cute! One little guy has discovered the microphone and he’s the person we hear the best!

There are about 30 Primary kids. There are another 75 people here as well along with a couple of missionaries. One is from the US and the other is Filipino. There’s one other American family here today. After the children finished, they handed out hand-made Mother’s day cards.

Another ward is meeting at the same time. There are four wards meeting in this building, two from this stake and two from a neighboring stake. A class is meeting outside — in the sunshine! There is a cinderblock wall surrounding the building.

A youth speaker started the non-children part of the meeting. She’s talking mostly in Tagalog breaking into English on occasion. I’ve no idea what she’s talking about. I think she is older, but estimating ages is very difficult over here! Tom says “She’s older than 15. That’s as far as I’ll go!” She was the chorister as well.

The speaker now is the Bishop. There is a planter around the podium and real flowers are growing in the planter. He also has spoken mostly in Tagalog and is talking about his mother and his wife. There was also some about Temple Marriage. The meeting ended 15 minutes early. After Sacrament Meeting, everyone stacked chairs. The chairs were the small plastic stackable chairs that cost about $6 apiece at Costco.

Sunday School was in the Relief Society room. We had lesson 16 on Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. 28 in attendance plus the teacher. Seemed to be a good discussion. The heat is starting to affect me. I’ll be sweating like a pig before the meetings are over.

In Priesthood Meeting there were 3 Deacons, 4 Teachers, 3 Priests, 13 Elders, and 10 High Priests. The Elders and High Priests met together starting with a discussion about a Priesthood Leadership meeting on Saturday in two weeks from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Oops, we’re moving to a different room!

Turns out the High Priest lesson was on performing Priesthood ordinances. It was a great meeting but I was drenched by the time we left. I took several pictures.

The picture with this entry was taken after the meeting in front of the building. I’m on the left, Tom is on the right, and the fellow in the center is on the High Council and took pretty good care of us during the afternoon. The people in the ward were very friendly and literally everyone came up and spoke to us. The lack of air conditioning is a problem, but a new building is under construction that will be fully air conditioned. The new building is scheduled for completion in October. When the new building is finished, all four wards will move into that building and the current building will be refurbished to include air conditioning and two wards will move back into the current building.

When Elder Oaks was here on his long-term assignment, he disbanded the American ward in Makati and put the Americans back into the wards and branches for where they lived. This is a mixed blessing, I think. On the one hand, most of the meeting was in a language I didn’t understand so you have to get your gospel scholarship somewhere else. On the other hand, both Tom and I were able to assist in the teaching process of how to do priesthood ordinances in our Priesthood Meeting. That was certainly a big help to the local brothers. Air conditioning, however, would be a very nice improvement!

This Saturday I was on my own. I took a driver and a car from the company and did a little local touring around the city of Manila. Our first stop was the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. This was a most impressive and inspiring visit. The cemetery is on a small hill overlooking the city and the bay. The guidebook says it is 152 acres in size and is the largest of the overseas cemeteries. Most of those buried here were killed in the battles for New Guinea, the Philippines, and other islands of the southwest Pacific area. The cemetery and memorial was started in 1948 and was completed and dedicated near the end of 1960.

There are 17,100 headstones representing 16,636 U.S. Military and 570 Philippine Nationals. It is most impressive and humbling to see thousands upon thousands of markers marching into the distance. Further, in the center is a large memorial which consists of a small devotional chapel and two massive hemicycles which surround the central Memorial Court. Engraved on 24 granite slabs in these hemicycles are the names of an additional 36,282 missing. These also gave their lives but their remains have not been identified or were lost or buried at sea. At the ends of each of the hemicycles are large map rooms with mosaic maps detailing the battles and strategies of the Pacific war.

The entire area had the sense of being hallowed ground. I couldn’t help but be somewhat overwhelmed at seeing the symbols of so many men and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. In the memorial I looked for names from Idaho. One of the names that struck me was a Captain Kyle Ballantyne from Twin Falls. I looked up his genealogy. He was born in Ogden, Utah, in 1915. His family moved to Twin Falls shortly after he was born. He had an older brother who died in 1953. There was no information available about whether or not Kyle was married. He is listed as having died in September, 1944. His remains were never recovered. He was about 29 years old when he died. Somehow I felt a small kinship on this hot, humid Saturday morning with Brother Ballantyne. He was baptized when he was eight years old. His mother’s name was Christmas (what a lovely name!) and she died a couple of years after Kyle was born. I know nothing more about him. Godspeed, Captain Ballantyne! Your name does indeed live on.

I did other sightseeing besides this cemetery. It made such an impression on me however, that I’ll devote a segment of pictures to the cemetery as well as this blog entry. I stood amongst heroes this morning.

Sunday was Labor Day in the Philippines — a fairly important holiday in many parts of the world. As a result, Monday was also a holiday (a decision made late last week by the government). Consequently everyone was off from work on Monday. I went into the office for a while, but could work just as easily from my hotel room so I went back to the hotel about lunch time. Later in the day I had a couple of phone conferences, including one at 4 p.m. Manila time. I decided to go over to the larger mall in the area and make that phone call from there and then look through the mall for something to take home as a souvenir.

I found a quiet spot outside in a kind of a courtyard at the mall. While I was on the phone, I saw a lady come by and set a bottle of water on the ground and walked away. A few minutes later, another lady put a bottle of water a few feet away from the first bottle and then left. In the next twenty minutes or so, about fifteen bottles of water, plastic sacks, or soft drink containers appeared. Sometimes a woman would come by, pick up a water bottle, and put it somewhere else and then go on her way. This behavior went on for an hour! When my phone call ended, and one of the ladies came back and moved a bottle of water, I went over and asked her what they were doing. She told me they were having a class — it sounded a bit like a “bible” class so I asked if that was what they were doing. “No,” she said, “We’re having a taibo class. Do you want to join?” I declined and she laughed when I said I would just watch. By this time the water bottles and stuff looked like the picture at the left. I still didn’t know what “taibo” (pronounced ty-boh) was, but I was willing to wait to find out. It was very curious!

A little after 5 p.m. a couple of guys came in bringing electronic equipment and soon a sound system with a couple of big speakers was set up and being tested. So much for a quiet courtyard at the mall! Shortly thereafter a whole bunch of women lined up to the command of another woman wearing a microphone, and they began a fairly strenuous jazzercise routine. Most of these people had done this before! The knew the routine and understood what the leader wanted as she called out the next maneuver to be performed. The bottles of water turned out to be place savers.

I was also glad I was only watching. Even though the sun was quite low in the sky and the entire courtyard was in the shade, I got tired just watching. The mall is a two-story building, so I went up to the upper floor to take this picture of the activity. The first set went for about eight minutes followed by a two-minute rest period. Then the next set started. It looked like heart-attack city but no one fell down or passed out.

The mall itself is quite large — larger than any of the malls in Salt Lake City. That’s still pretty amazing as there are two other malls within a five-mile radius of my hotel and each of them are very big malls. This mall was the Alabang Town Center Mall and in one area is four floors above ground and two floors below ground. But it has all the western restaurants, such as Tony Roma’s and Outback Steak House. I had fun wandering through the mall and did pick up some unique stuff to make up a couple of table settings for the table. I also found some reasonable-looking post cards in a book store. I was surprised at how few postcards are on display anywhere and, if there are some, how old and dilapidated they are. After that it was back to the hotel for another late-night phone conference. These things can wear me out! There are more of these the next two nights.

Sunday was a very pleasant day which started with attending Fast and Testimony Meeting and the rest of the church meeting block.

We attended the Makati Third Ward. The Stake President was in attendance along with the 2nd counselor in the Area Presidency, Elder E. Rex Gerratt. There were a lot of people there and for a reason — the Stake President changed the bishopric. Elder Gerratt was a mission president in Manila from 1996 to 1999. He may have come just about when my mom and dad left Manila at the end of their mission.

There was no organ in the building, only a piano. The lady playing the piano was very accomplished at the piano and her prelude and postlude music was delightful variations on hymns that she just sat and played.

The benches were all wooden. The building was older. The Chapel was air conditioned in about 1990. The rest of the building was air conditioned (class rooms only, hallways, restrooms, and other non-essential areas are not air conditioned) in 1998. The benches were quite uncomfortable.

There were about 180 people in attendance, about 70% Filipino. Most of the meeting was in English but a couple of folks bore their testimony in Tagalog. The children’s testimonies were different than in the US — they all started with “I am a child of God….”. Perhaps something they are taught in Primary?

The last person to bear her testimony was a woman who’s husband died in the near past. She talked about how the Lord has helped her through this experience, such as the first time she had to go shopping for food after his death. It sounded like he had cancer or something that caused a lingering death. She said that before he died she would work very hard at her church callings and around the house hoping to gain favor with the Lord — maybe he would see her hard work and prolong the life of her husband. She talked about how she has come to grips with the situation and finaly decided that the Lord knows best. When she was able to make that adjustment, a feeling of peace came into her life. She said that the loss of her husband is still very hard, but she will be with him again and for eternity. It was a very touching testimony (it made me cry!) and a good end to the meeting.

One other interesting thing was that there was a Single Adult Conference on Friday and Saturday. One young lady (it’s very hard to tell how old these Filipinos are!) bore her testimony and in the middle of it apologized to her Laurel Advisor for “something I did to you.” Tom chuckled and said that I would be surprised at what is said during some of the Testimony Meetings, particularly wives chastising their wayward husbands.

Sunday School started late and ended even later. An American taught the lesson — he’s the Sunday School President and said the normal teacher, along with two others, had texted him on his phone that morning that they weren’t going to be there so he was filling in. The lesson was on D&C 95 and the building of the Kirtland Temple. He did a great job for having to do this literally on the spur of the moment.

Priesthood meeting also went over by about 10 minutes. They are trying to implement priesthood committees here kind of like we did in the Colorado Springs North Stake. So today was committee meetings. Each of the committees (missionary work, temporal and family welfare, and temple and family history) were to set one goal of work to be done in the next year. Tom and I were assigned on an ad hoc basis to attend the temporal and family welfare committee. The Filipino assigned as the committee chairman was somewhat at a loss as to what to do. It was good to be there and to suggest a few things. They settled on a goal of helping each family put together a 48 hour emergency kit and the first milestone was for a couple of people to work with the Relief Society to come up with a list of what should be in such a kit.

There were about 10 BYU students in attendance for their first Sunday in Manila. They’re on an internship working with charitable organizations in Manila and particularly with the street children. Of course, they’re all idealistic and pumped up — they arrived Friday night and start working with the couple of agencies they’re assigned to on Monday.

Traffic going to church was almost non-existant. Coming back was a little more hectic, but still very light. It took us 15 minutes to get to the church building that took us almost an hour to get in the area of the building last Friday when we went to the temlple.

After the meeting I visited with a couple of people who did indeed remember mom and dad and talked about the time that they were here in Manila. That was a lot of fun as well as gratifying to know that they were still remembered. The rest of the day was spent around the hotel (as well as a couple of hours debugging an Excel spreadsheet doing time calculations for Tom). The second week here has begun.