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!