Elder and Sister Cooley

Friday, November 13, 2009

November 11, 2009

Beautiful Phillipines:

An electrical nightmare:

Terraced rice fields:

We did a Career Workshop (CWS) for the outgoing missionaries at the Mission home on Monday and Tuesday, November 2nd and 3rd. It was great to be with these young adults who have worked so hard impacting the lives of many people whom they have brought into the church. Our group consisted of 9 Filipinos, two of which were sisters, 1 Fijian, and one American.

Tuesday after the Workshop we packed up and headed to the SM Mall for overdue haircuts then headed back to Legazpi. We got there just in time for a surprise birthday party I planned for Annette since her birthday fell on a Sunday. I invited our landlords, Amy and Danny, our neighbors Andrew and Lena , the Zone Leaders and our friends the Pangan's (he is the 1^st counselor in the Stake Presidency and who we work with in the Stake Employment Committee here in Legazpi). The office Elders were also in town so it was a pretty good group.

It was a nice dinner and good friend-shipping activity for our neighbors who are not of our faith. They asked a lot of questions and we invited them to come to our Prosperity Fireside Sunday. When we finally arrived home we were really tired but it was a good kind of tired because of all that we had accomplished in that week end.

Our next endeavor was on Saturday November 7; a Self-employment Workshop (SEWS) in Ligao District. Ligao is about an hour away, west of Legazpi. Every time we travel out of the city it is an athletic event. This time it was quite pleasant until we came to Camilig where the heavy rains had caused a mud slide from the volcano into this tiny town. The roads were covered with mud and rocks. Some of the dirt had been shoveled away, by hand of course but the bulk of it remained. This little town sits at the bottom of the volcano so most of its problems come from the volcano. Other than the mud, rocks and water the trip was nice. We like teaching in Ligao because this is one district that is really performing as a team and doing the right things as the Stake Employment committee. They take time to plan things and have really learned from the training we have provided. The SEWS was great. The group of 21 was interested and we had great participation. We expect about half will try to start a new business in the next six months; we hope they will be successful! It is important that they follow the steps: pick a business they want to start and make a plan to identify all the components of a business plan. They are not formal plans, but contain the product or service idea, market research, market strategy and financial plans.
We love teaching our classes; the graduates have fun with the process we take them through. We have a work book and some fun videos that we work into the various subjects. By the time we are done is seems like we are all friends, laughing, learning and working hard together. We had 21 graduates in this class!

We especially had fun because we took our Grandson Truman with us(a "Flat Stanley" likeness of Truman Galmeister), Truman has an assignment in his class to take some pictures of him in different places so we have him visiting us here in the Philippines . The class all wanted him in the picture so we did. He is the youngest graduate of our class.

Sunday was special we were able to attend our home ward after three weeks away. There we did a Prosperity Fireside immediately following church and had a about 75 attendees. After the one in Legazpi, we did the same fireside in Daraga for two wards. It was well attended, maybe 60-70 people and we know many of them including the Stake President Ramos and his wife, some of the Bishops and President Pangan, a dear friend. Elder Cooley almost started world war 3 when he mentioned that Sister Cooley handled the check book. Several couples came up after, saying my wife now wants to handle our finances. We won't go there next week in the firesides we have.

Today was a P-day; we love this day because we have the chance to talk with our children via webcam. What a delight to see and hear about their adventures that week. We even have the opportunity to be entertained some weeks like today when Tanner started us off with his straw tricks and then Edmond did his Elephant impersonation for us. It is so funny, what a guy!

Love,

Elder and Sister Cooley

Thursday, October 29, 2009

What We've Seen Recently

How do you get the piggy's to market? If you look close you can see there are four pigs going to market. Two are in the front seat!

Is there a sale on?

Do you think they have enough flags up? They love their fiestas.

Tricee parking lot:

Where's Waldo?

Our gecko that loves to play on our car:

Beautiful Legaspi:

Christmas is celebrated with all months that end in "ber" so every store is decorated and so are the houses:

A group of children getting a ride home from school:

October 20, 2009

Our last week was one of adventure and meeting lots of new and wonderful saints. We had our first visit to an area called Goa . It is a small town about 2 hours from here. We were there to do training of the leaders and the employment committee stake and ward employment committee. We were surprised to find that they had invited the people who were only supposed to come to the workshop to the training also, so they were all there the full nine hours. They seemed to enjoy the training and especially the career workshop. You have to be there for the full 8 hours in order to receive the certificate. The certificate means a lot to them, some said they will take with them when they interview for a job and show them they completed the course.

We had our best class ever, usually after lunch we have several people not come back, but this time we had almost everyone stay the whole time. They had a hard time understanding some instructions because some of them don't know the English language very well or at all. The Stake President would reiterate the instructions in Bicolano and immediately they would go to work. That is the native language they speak there.

When we go to the Naga area we stay with the mission president if they are in town, we enjoy getting together with them. President and Sister Smith invited us on Sunday to attend Sacrament meeting in a small branch up in the hills not to far from where we had to present a Prosperity Fireside so we went. Be grateful for you meeting houses what ever they are because you don't meet in a small and I mean small house, or hut. It has about 30 to 35 members crammed in to this living room and the kitchen is where the pulpit is. The Primary was in a bedroom next to the living room. They only have one person pass the sacrament. It was a special day because they had two returned missionaries come home at the same time and they were brother and sister also served in the same mission.

President and Sister Smith are next to Annette, the Lambson's are at the end of the table, and the West's are next to Lee:

The service was very good even if we couldn't understand what they were saying. It was perfect until they had a brown out and soon as those fans stopped it got toasty in there. We had to leave after Sunday school, don't know when the electricity came back on.

It was so funny a young adult was sitting next to a fan in the front and when the light would blink he would lunge for the switch but he never got there before the light was out again. This happened about four times before we left, never got the fan on but he got his exercise.

By the way that is my first time being with a dog in church. He slept under Lee's chair. He would get up and move around a few times during the meeting until some lady smacked him on the head, then he left.

We then drove to Pulongi for a Prosperity Fireside and guess what after my part we had a brown out again. They never got the electricity on again either at least while we were there. We had about 75+ attend and about 60 come to the Ligao fireside. Hurray no brown out in Ligao.

Elder & Sister Cooley