May - I Change?

I decided to add a little flavor to this month's title. This past month of May seemed to be about change. The changes came in many "shapes and sizes" in our lives, and maybe most especially in my life. Some changes seemed to be imposed, some from "dawning", some came from necessity, and others from creation. Let me share some of these with you as I share some of our experiences and thoughts for the month of May

Temple Shift Schedule Changes

Prior to May, from Tuesday through Friday, the Manila Temple had two shifts of ordinance workers serving. A morning and an afternoon shift. Starting towards the first part of May, that changed to become 4 shifts. As in many cases in life, changes that affect so many can create a bit of a "stir". Also, communication is so "key" in how the changes are conveyed and implemented. Additionally, how things are interpreted can be "many-fold". I am being a bit cryptic here as you can see.  Yes, this was an imposed change. Despite the stir, the change has been pretty successful. More temple ordinance workers have been welcomed to the temple, which is always a good thing. I say this because I believe my life changed to be much better when I started serving regularly as an ordinance worker in the Portland, Oregon Temple.

Laurie and my schedule didn't change (at least for now), but who we work with, and how we work did change a bit. It has been a time of learning new things that we really have been doing since we have arrived....

Here is a picture of the temple I took the other day looking at it from the front. I liked the time of day with the lighting. We are so fortunate to have Temples on the earth today.

Manila Temple - May 2024

Traffic Issues
Early on in May, Laurie and I were involved in a traffic accident. As we were turning left into a store parking lot, a young man, driving "quickly" down the wrong side of the street was passing on the left of us. We didn't see him and he hit the driver's door area and went sliding across the street. It wasn't pretty.

He was able to get up, but we was not happy about the accident (he blamed us.) The police arrived. We initially tried to work it out - without the police, but later that day his wife called and she wanted more.... The motorcycle driver didn't want us to take him to the hospital, or go himself. Later, his wife made him go, which I would agree was the right thing to do from a road rash point of view. We never said it was our fault, or his. We were just trying to show a little compassion. We felt terrible for him.

Ultimately, Laurie and I spent a couple of 5 hour stints at the traffic office (Traffic Sector 3 - picture below) with our new-found friend, Richard, who was the lucky temple employee assigned to help get us through the traffic office gauntlet, using Tagalog. Richard is our hero. He took so many verbal arrows from the motorcycle driver's wife. Someday, if you ever want to know the real story, talk to me later. It has so many twists and turns. The driver's wife found CCTV footage of the accident showing it from above and to the rear. It shows him totally in the wrong. I could never understand why she let us have the video.

Here are a few pictures associated with that story.

Elder and Sister Randall's van/motorcycle altercation evidence

Less Fortunate Driver's Motorcycle - still usable

Traffic Sector 3 - located under a main highway.

Other Randall Issue

At the end of that same week, Laurie was not feeling well on Saturday so she stayed home from temple service that day. We are grateful she did. It ended up that while she was out in the living room area she heard a "pop" sound come from the bedroom. When investigating what the sound was, she saw the power converter located on floor was on fire. It was right next to the bedroom curtains. She quickly got a bath towel and beat the converter to death and put the fire out. That could have been a disaster for our apartment and for other's in the building. She is our hero. In fact, one of the Sister Missionaries brought over a figurine with a little ribbon banner on it that said "Wonder Laurie". Take a look at the picture I took of her when she received her just reward :).

"Wonder Laurie"

Big Things

I just have to include a couple of pictures for "interest" sake. Laurie and I were looking for some lemon juice to cook with and we could not find any in their regular food store. We go to Robinson's for most of the regular day to day grocery shopping that can not be found at S&R's (Costco-like). We decided to look at S&R for one, knowing that it if we even found one, it would be pretty large. Boy, were we right. Take a look at this 48 oz. jar of Real Lemon. Just for reference purposes, a fairly large bottle at home is 15 oz.

48 oz bottle of ReaLemon (doesn't the background look a little like Costco?)

The Gazebo

I will talk about the gazebo occasionally in my blog. I thought you might want to see it. The gazebo is six-sided building where the temple missionaries go to eat together, exercise, play the piano, put puzzles together, etc. it is connected via a covered breezeway to our temple apartment building.

I go down there about 4-5 times a week to exercise. It is quiet. There is an air-conditioning unit in there that does work and it does bring the temperature down for the most part, but you have to turn it on when you get there. It just isn't quite big enough to do the job and it just starts getting a bit cooler when I get ready to leave :). I like the gazebo though. 

I occasionally find a small dead frog in there right inside the sliding door (I have found 4 so far). I did find a live one in there one day trying to get out. I was able to get it moving out the sliding door into freedom.

Inside the Gazebo

Outside picture of Gazebo taken from our apartment balcony. We are truly blessed!

Celebrating our 44th Wedding Anniversary
At the end of this past month (Last Thursday, May 30) Laurie and I celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary. We decided to go to the temple a couple of hours before our scheduled time there and go do some work for our ancestors, while remembering our experience in the Salt Lake Temple in 1980. It was really quite a wonderful experience.

On Friday, after we worked our early shift, we decided to celebrate by going to Mercury Drug and seeing if we could use our prescriptions we had received in the States. We found it very ironic that we would be doing what is often perceived as an "old person's activity - going to get your prescriptions for old age..." activity to celebrate our anniversary.

We had a nice dinner at Chili's in the Robinson's Galleria, and then finished it all off with a Halo Halo at Chow King's. We had heard that Chow King's halo halo is a well-known version of halo halo and thought we should try one. It has the makings of a great refreshment. It is a bit odd that in this version, there are a couple of different types of beans in it. Most of the halo halo's are crushed-ice based. The picture I am attaching below was a bit of an afterthought. I didn't get the initial picture at the beginning, but I did get a picture of the beans and the "Jelloy" things in them.  We liked it.

Halo Halo spoonful of "healthy legumes and Jelloy things?"

Bruce and Laure at the temple on May 30, 2024 - Happy 44th Wedding Anniversary!

It has been quite a month for Laurie and I. We both got a cold at different times here at the end of the month. I missed last Sunday's Church and Laurie missed this past Sunday's Church meetings. A lot of old people going to Church in a van reminds me of a mobile petri dish.

We were able to spend some time reviewing our wedding day 44 years ago, which led us to consider our lives together. We are pretty darn happy individually because of our marriage together. We love (and even like) each other. It is great! Yes, even though sometimes I get on Laurie's nerves, she takes it in stride like the angel she is.

We feel so blessed to have such a great family. They are so good and kind to us. We also feel so blessed to have so many good friends who are also good and kind to us. 

Our outlook is one of hope for the future. Serving here in Manila is knocking off a few more of my rough spots. Probably not near enough as I (or others....) would hope, but it will be helpful as we continue to go through this mortal journey together.

This scripture does a good job summarizing my thoughts at the end of this post:

Romans 15:13 "Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost."