In the evening President Palmaso had his son pick us up and take us to the venue (a word they frequently use). We rode in/on a tricycle. This was a motor bike with a side car with a cabin-like cart attached to that in the back. We sat facing one another. We ate with them there (cautiously) and attended their talent show. Each branch had been assigned to present a talent. It turned out that almost all of the acts were dancing groups. The first few were okay (loud but tolerable). The last 45 or 50 were not. Some were cultural, most were mimics of what’s shown on TV. And one by one each group did their thing. We were in that show from 7:30 to 10:30. They all seemed to enjoy the whole thing. At the end President Palmaso played his guitar and sang a song (mostly because someone told us he was a good singer and we unwittingly mentioned that to him, so he “accommodated” us).


This is not the same tricycle that we rode in, but it is one pretty much like it. Ours was not so ritzy lookin'.

Then we rode home in the dark in his son’s tricycle, Literally with no lights. No street lights, no moonlight, no headlights, no lights except President Palmaso’s flashlight, which he turned on once in a while, perhaps three times the whole way back. We made it, how we do not know, but we did. But when we got to our room, the lights did not work because they were having a “brown out.” Barely a single dim light in our hotel room. Life is full of experiences, and this was one of them. We never did learn how to run the shower properly. Just got the entire bathroom wet—no shower curtain.

The "venue" for the conference was a college (a technical school of some sort). There was a big assembly hall with a stage and lots of rooms for the kids to sleep in. This shows the grounds where they had a lot of their outdoor activities.

The next day we were picked up by the shuttle driver and we went back to the conference. We skipped the breakfast of rice and fish. They had a testimony meeting for the youth (which lasted an hour and a half). With the previous night’s show and the long testimony meeting, Elder Roundy said he didn’t know when he'd listened so long to so much that he did not understand. After we gave our talks, we were driven to the airport several kilometers out of town. We waited there at the tiny Calbayog Airport until the plane came from Manila. After three hours it showed up and back we flew, picked up at the curb by an assigned driver from the PAO and home again by about 7:00 p.m.

We watched the kids go through the dishwashing line (but we didn't take a picture of them). These sisters demonstrated for us the routine. Each kid had to do their own. First he'd scrap the dish off in the red bucket. Then he'd wash (more like dip) it in the blue bucket and again in the black pan. Then he'd take to to the brown tub to rinse it. Probably the first 20 got a sufficient wash, but who would want to be number 99?

This big banner was on the back wall of the stage. We spent quite a while in the morning before the meetings talking to the kids. They liked to speak in English, and most of them could. They understand English fairly well. One boy, small, dressed in his white shirt, walked up to Elder Roundy and without a word handed him his necktie and the just stood there. So Elder Roundy wrapped it around his neck and tied it up nicely for him. The boy patted it a couple of times and walked away.

This is the district president, President Palmaso (pal-MAW-so). He is a school teacher (music) and was pleased to learn Elder Roundy had a career in education.