Young Single Adult Hawaiian Party

We had the young single adults over for a party at our building. On the sixth floor of our building we have a party room and a pool area so we decided to have a party for them. It was a Hawaiian theme. Everyone seemed to have a good time eating pizza, swimming, doing the hula, and playing games. We even had a performance by one of the girls who is quite a good gymnast. For the last two weeks Grant has been involved with Project Hope. They are doctors from America, Britain, Australia and the Philippines who were here doing cleft lips and palates. They did over 300 surgeries and Grant learned some good techniques. We are leaving on Wednesday to travel about 4 hours away from Manila to hold a clinic screening for finding qualified patients for the foundation here in Manila. That should be interesting. Then next week I am going to the Asian Women's Conference in Hong Kong. There are about 8 of us going from our LDS ex-pat group here. We are also looking forward to coming home for a short visit the first part of April so hope we will get to see some of you then.

Nicole at Mabuhay House

When I was over at Mabuhay House today I took some film and pictures of Nicole. She has come in from one of the Provinces. Before we left Salt Lake we were at church and met some friends of the Adamson's. They were visiting from Bermuda where the Adamson's had served a mission recently. Don and Diane told them what Grant was going to be doing and they were very excited to meet us because they had a relative with a daughter that needed some surgery in the Philippines. They felt like the Lord had a hand in meeting us and getting to find out about Deseret International Foundation. I think so too since it was just before we were leaving and they just happened to be friends of our friends. Now little Nicole is here in Manila and will soon be having her surgery. She is a very sweet little girl and very friendly. She likes the Mabuhay House. Thanks to the High Priests in our ward at home that have donated money to pay for the hospital costs of the surgery. We will keep you posted on how she does.

ISLAND OF BOHOL

Wow, we have been on the go. We have had two of Grant's assistants from home with us to help train the gals over here. Leslie Bain, who most of you know arrived the last week of January and then Pyper came the next week. They were here for one week together to make it do able for the office back home. Now we still have Pyper for the rest of this week. We have tried to do some fun things while they were here. We took a little trip to Bohol where we stayed at the Panglao Island Nature Resort and Spa. It was a very beautiful and restful resort. While there we saw the famous Chocolate Hills, the tarsier monkeys (smallest monkeys in the world), lots of dolphins and beautiful coral and tropical fish. The situation at the clinic has it's ups and downs. Grant is running into restrictions on being able to do IV sedation and that has really slowed things down and put a whole new light on what he will be able to do. I am not sure how things will turn out yet but things have been hard to get going. Grant is having to be patient and that is really hard for him. The other problem right now is that none of the x-ray equipment is working. So things move slowly here but we have really met some wonderful Filipino people as well as Americans. We have also enjoyed seeing the country. It has so many beautiful places once you get out of the crazy Manila traffic. We send you our love and wish you a wonderful Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is a big holiday over here. I tell you what the Filipino's really like to celebrate everything! Each little Baranguy (neighborhood) has all kinds of celebrations. We went to one friends area to see their Santa Nino (baby Jesus) celebration. It is something they look forward to all year. It might be bigger than Christmas and Christmas is very big. We are enjoying getting to know their culture better. They are a very friendly sweet people and yet they have their problems with killing off political opponents during elections and anyone who is an elected official has to have body guards. The judges and political system is all corrupt. The poorest people in America would probably be middle class here. We love this big mess though!