Day 28 - Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Today was our last day of interviews!  Twelve different zones and 200+ missionaries were seen in the past 3 weeks.  Guimba zone was last and the power company threw us a curve ball.  Each month there is one day that the power is turned off for up to 9 hours throughout the community.  These are to facilitate annual maintenance and testing of the power stations.  Our Guimba interviews were unforgettable as the sweat dripped freely.  We didn't let that affect our pleasure of seeing all of the Guimba missionaries. The missionaries are very used to this.  It is just the Mission President and wife that needed hand fans or sweat rags throughout the process.  Rain or shine, fans or no power - we love experiencing the joys of meeting with our missionaries.  

Education is important to Filipinos.  Each barangay builds a school building.  The students wear uniforms.  There is a fairly large court just beyond the fence area where the youth have their opening exercises.  Singing the national anthem, saying the pledge and other activities take place before they go into their classes.  Often when we drive in the morning at 6:30 a.m., children are walking to school.  Traffic is also quite interesting as youth arrive and depart from school.  Our missionaries do many service projects at schools during the summer months while the students are on break.