Philippines

This last summer we had the opportunity to host 2 wonderful women from the Philippines. The local University here was hosting an international choir festival and in an effort to help the singers from around the world asked members of the local community to volunteer to take them in as family for a week. Choirs were coming from all over including, Ghana, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Georgia, Costa Rica and Poland, A clip board was sent around in my local ward with a sign up sheet and I felt a very strong impression that I needed to sign up. This is not something I would typically do. I had so many excuses as to why I should not, but I felt guided by the spirit that I NEEDED to do this. We fell in love with not only the wonderful girls we got to host but also their whole choir. We became groupies and were at all their performances. 

Meet Ana Marie and Isabel. They have been blessed with beautiful voices. They speak perfect English. Ana Marie is a minister, and Isabel owns a coffee shop. They both attended the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines. And studied music. 

I had to laugh because they called me their foster Mom.

 Their choir ranges from age 18-55. They are the sweetest people. They all loved Harvey, and he loved the attention. Carlo is the guy holding him in the picture below He was frequently stealing Harvey and every one would ooh and ahh at him.

One custom in the Philipines is that no one besides parents should hold babies. The belief behind this is that a bad spirit will stay behind with the baby. So if the baby is help by a friend and has a bad night crying it could be blamed completely on being held by the friend. Probably the reason why they loved Harvey is because they know Americans don't believe in things like that and so they could get baby cuddles.

These girls were very funny. When we got them and we were driving to our house and got into our neighborhood one of them said, "This is like the houses we see on the movies!" 

When we got to the house I was showing them around our house and told them they would be sleeping upstairs because our basement is unfinished. They told me "Good, we are afraid of the basements. In the movies bad things happen in basements."

They were shocked with how peaceful Idaho is. They live in very populated areas. One of them even lives on the 22 floor of a high rise building. 

Ana Marie and Isabel were busy, we took them in the morning to the University and then didn't pick them up until after their night performance. We did have a couple partial free days with them. 

We learned a lot about customs in the Philippines. One of the popular custom is if you go on vacation you must bring a little something back for everyone you know. It didn't matter if it was nice, but it was very rude if you didn't. The dollar store and Walmart were a hit with these girls. 

Customs in the Philippines are interesting. They told me a woman is not to bathe or shower after giving birth for 1 month. Luckily a lot of women do not uphold this tradition.

I liked cooking for these girls when I had the opportunity. We always got to eat breakfast and dinner together. In the Philippines they eat rice at every meal. We took them out to dinner one night and they could not believe the portion sizes. They commented that their meal alone could feed her whole family back home. It was fun to also cook for them our favorite meals and hear about their favorite meals back home.

It was fun to watch these ladies experience things for the first time like jumping on the trampoline.

Here is one of handsome Harvey at 8 months old

We had such a wonderful week with them. I am so happy I listened to the spirit and went out of my comfort zone to participate.