Fleeing the Scene

WEEK 64

Dear Family and Friends,

     Another week has flashed by in the office and everything seems to go twice as fast here when you see all of the things going on behind the scenes.  Elder Benosa and I have finally gotten the hang of things and we're just focusing on managing our time now.  President and the assistants are gone all week with zone interviews so we're flying solo here for a while.  We're also in charge of making slide shows for all of the zone conferences and departing batches of missionaries, we're slowly getting that done for this next group that is headed home.  Elder Benosa is really good with computers since that was his major in college.  He usually takes care of most of that kind of stuff while I work on all of the other things.  We've finished up the filter runs for last month, which means we need to start again for this month.  Most of the stuff that we do just goes in cycles like that, so it's pretty easy to get the hang of.

     Other than all of the office work, everything is going well, and we have little experiences here and there that keep things interesting.  For example, one day, Elder Benosa was backing out of a narrow road and and all of a sudden I saw someone run and jump into the back of the truck.  I rolled down the window and saw him lying on the ground screaming in pain (obviously exaggerating) and attracting as much attention as he could.  He also had a friend who was in on the plan and he started demanding that we pay him a huge amount of money.  I tried to explain to him that I had seen what had happened and that his friend needed to quiet down, but he was just shouting higher and higher numbers at me like an auctioneer.  Thankfully, someone who knew the man told us to just leave and he would take care of everything.  Apparently, this was not the first time they had tried something like this.  We thankfully "fled the scene" and laughed for quite a while.  One thing in the Philippines is that it is very hard to do anything without there being a lot of witnesses around.

     I've actually become thankful for experiences like this, because they give the work in the office a little more flavor.  I'm always thankful for the counsel and support that you show.  It really helps more than you know!

- Elder English

With Elders Benosa and Tumanguil 

and Calamba 3 Elders.