This past week started a little slower than our normal, on Monday we stayed at the apartment somewhat later than our normal 7am (or earlier) arrival time at the Area Offices, so that made Monday a much easier overall work day. The young lady we had been working with in Public Affairs for nearly the past nine months, was leaving to pursuit other activities in her life on Monday (was her last day on the job), so for lunch we (all of the old Public affairs Team) gathered and celebrated her wonderful service and give here best wishes for the future. She plans on attending University in Turkey, starting early next year and furthering her education. 
Later on Monday (late afternoon near closing time around 5pm), a Philippines TV personality (who is a member as well) stopped by Public Affairs, for some picture taking with the Area Office Measles Campaign Team which has been promoting and supporting this National Mass Immunization Campaign. His merely willingness to help, is a good sign to the general public – that we embrace, support, and desire that each child to be vaccinated. Now that UNICEP (the major media funder) has completed their paid TV promotion campaign, we are thinking that with a little additional effort - we can get some nice positive TV time and other media exposure, for the Church as one of the other major sponsors and partners of the effort.
On Wednesday morning, bright and early (just before 6am) we left our apartment for the more than one hour trip (across town) to DOH – to greet the long awaited Vaccine Carriers on two 40 foot trucks (full of boxes), having been a very long time in delivery, by being suck in two other foreign ports, on the ship in the harbor, or on the Manila port awaiting unloading, or in Federal Customs – attempting to get our final release for delivery. Trying to give a charitable donation from one National Agency to another National Government Agency just wouldn’t seem to be so much of a challenge but it is! The vaccine carriers having finally arrived at DOH (on the trucks) and so we could label them with LDS Charities stickers, before turning them over to DOH, for their distribution. A team of near to fifty (or more at the end) of “Mormon Helping Hands” volunteers were present to perform this task. As the project oversight team, with one of our Senior Service Missionary Couples’, the Soleta’s, of course, we were there again at DOH Headquarters, in near to Downtown Manila, and had to traverse the more than an hour’s drive each way, again. Our task was to deliver the supplies (the LDS Charities stickers, knives & scissors to open boxes, & tape/dispensers to reseal the boxes) and assure the task was successfully completed before any officially handing over this donation to DOH. After about 3 hours of work, we broke for water and some food (for lunch) and then continued until about 2pm, having labelled 1,100 boxes of 4,400 carriers on more than 60 skits - quite a sight - seeing a parking lot full of skits (20 boxes/4 carriers per box on each skit) of our donated materials (of the measles vaccine carriers) to further the National Measles/Polio Campaign. These boxes came on two 40 foot long trucks, with one (a third) truck still having not arrived with clearance from Manila Port. On Thursday, morning without us the last 150 boxes (4 carriers/per box) were to be labelled by another crew, we were NOT able to join this group, since we had conflicting scheduling with other LDS Charities meetings. Overall the Measles/Polio Campaign is doing very well, about 22% the first week, and 20% the second week of the near to 13 million children targeted to be vaccinated. 
On Thursday we had visitors from another small village, come into the office to assess their consideration for a Clean Water Project. This village is made of very, very poor people who live on lands they do not own, but which landowners in exchange for farming work allow them to be there. This project is very small in terms of funding, but stretches them to meet the smallest of contributions. Later in the day, as a part of the Area Emergency Plan Project, we attended a meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce, on emergency event planning for corporate partners. Informative but not entirely on target for what we need and/or looking for.
We were preparing to co-host the weeks’ events, of a U.S. Humanitarian Department Photo (TV) Crew that have come here - in the Philippines, but because of very, very heavy rains and flooding throughout much of Manila (& elsewhere throughout the Philippines) this event was cancelled. In fact, the Area Offices were closed most of Friday, because of the challenges of getting into the offices with traffic shutdowns. As a result our workday was shortened and we had a long weekend to recovery from everything. 
After reading about our week, it started slow but certainly the week picked up speed and momentum as the week progressed. All I can say is another great week of learning and doing, and hopefully performing better at all of many new tasks in LDS Charities. 
Our other senior couple overseeing wheelchairs was out of the office most of the week with field assignments, and our former roommates of the staff for Perpetual Education Fund have moved to a new location elsewhere in the building, so it was eerie quiet around the office, if we were not hosting or having other guest visiting, there would NOT be any noise at all. Any noise if there is any comes from just the typing of reports, projects, and/or the copying and shredding of documents. Our telephone rings far less here in LDS Charities than it did in Public Affairs, until we build a staff of senior missionary volunteers, most of the efforts here in Luzon are started and completed by us. And we are still very much learning what it is that composed a “good project” for leadership support and approval. 
Love you all, we appreciate your continued support, may the Lord each of us.