On Sunday we returned to the Memorial where they had tents set up and enjoyed a dignified and impressive memorial service. There were a lot of people there. We saw the U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines (Kristie A. Kenny) and a number of other Filipino dignitaries. The American Marine Corps and Philippine Army made a beautiful presentation of the colors with the Philippine Army Band playing the national anthems for both countries. The reverend gave a decent opening (and closing) prayer — completely within the mores of an LDS service (although the event, as you would suspect, was entirely nondenominational). Ambassador Kenny spoke, the Philippines Secretary of Defense spoke. Wreaths of flowers were presented by various organizations. It lasted almost an hour.

This shows how the whole 36,000 graves were decorated with the two flags looked when we went back Sunday morning. Row upon row. Completely around the Memorial semicircle. (The skyscrapers in the back are downtown Makati.)

This was the prettiest girl at the whole show. One of the stake president's wife gave the pearls to Sister Roundy as a gift. She gave her a necklace and bracelet to match.

We were under a tent, so we couldn't get good pictures of the ceremony. These are the American Marines and the Philippines Army Soldiers presenting the colors.

This is the Ambassador from the United States of America, Kristie A. Kenny. The speech she gave was short and elegant. She wasn't.

Then, almost on cue, when the ceremony was over and we had walked to our car, the rain came down — heavy, hard, a deluge. Literally, we climbed in dry; shut the car door, and sha-zam, it started to rain.

We drove to an LDS chapel not too far away to attend Church services. We enjoyed the services because all was in English. The chapel was right in the middle of downtown Makati. Tall skyscrapers all around, almost like downtown Manhattan. We were told the chapel was the first Mormon chapel built in the Philippines after World War II. It was a nice one-story chapel with a typical, but not too tall steeple. And when they built it back in the 50s, they had to get a variance because of the tall steeple. We laughed about that, because on all four sides are these enormous buildings scraping the clouds.