THE QUEZON QUIBBLER: One Hour Church

Hi,

We found out how to do one-hour church. We’ve been looking forward to
two-hour church in January, because it will be easier to get
investigators come to church, but this morning we left in plenty of
time to arrive early at Montalban stake conference and got a call at
9am from the stake president, asking where we were.
“About 25 minutes away, why?”
“Because the meeting starts at 9am.” (It was 9:02)
We did our best (we’d assumed it started at 10am) and got there 30
minutes late and hung out in the back until the congregational hymn
when we moved to the stand. It turned out the other speakers went
overtime, so we each just bore a brief testimony. Of course, Dad’s
was very powerful, even though it was short—he has such a gift. He
also shared it in a little meeting we had afterwards with all the
investigators who’d come to conference and the missionaries. So
technically, it turned out to be two hours of church. And
technically, we were early (over all) since we arrived 45 minutes
early to a devotional Dad spoke at night tonight in Malolos.

We vote for Cebu again for another MP Seminar. A one-hour flight
Monday (plus two hours in traffic and two at the airport and one to
the resort) still beats the bus ride to Baguio. The resort was
beautiful, the air was clean and you could see the ocean from our
hotel room. It gets dark here by 6pm, so we saw the beach at night
and were in meetings or banquets most of the time, but it was still
great to have all that fresh air!

The first morning we met about 5:30am to ride to the Cebu Temple for a
session. It is in a beautiful compound, and the weather was perfect.
The temple inside is also very beautiful, and I was happy to see the
mural captured at least one segment of metro-Manila: a rooster!
(There are lots of roosters crowing even at night here.) I loved
being in the temple. That afternoon the seminar started and we had
three days of meetings and dinners. I walked to the beach one evening
while Stewart read missionary letters—up close the water was pristine.
We enjoyed seeing the other MP and wives and learning from our new
area presidency.

We began our return Friday morning and arrived back at the mission in
time for office meeting at 4pm. It was good to be back with the
missionaries and begin to prepare for our mission tour with Elder and
Sister Wakolo that begins Tuesday morning. Remarkably, Stewart got no
texts from missionaries those days we were gone, except for one elder
who texted Wednesday that he had an urgent emergency. Stewart quietly
left the meeting to call him, and was informed that the missionary’s
bike just broke down. At which time the missionary was informed “That
is not my emergency!”

Please pray extra hard for us this week.

Love,
Mom