With Christmas behind us it is back to the temple.  It is Thursday night here and we have put in two days back.  They have been busy days as the children are still out of school and so many have come to the temple this week. Many teens at the temple for baptism for the dead.  Yesterday they had forgotten to heat the font and the first kids froze.  But in a couple of hours they had it warm for them.  We were so busy the first think in the morning with sessions every half hour.  We have many missionaries from the MTC each week.  They get them to the temple at least 3 times before the go out into the field.   With the age change they will only be in the MTC for 2 weeks as before it was 3 weeks.  We have many own endowments with them each month.  We also have what we call walk ins.  We had 2 own endowments scheduled and we had 9 walk ins just in the morning shift.  The same with the weddings  It is the same.  Always more than we plan for.  President Wong had had 20 weddings that he preformed just on the morning shift just before Christmas. He said just like home they all want to be married in December.  It is different here than at home for the weddings.  The temple has some weddings dresses that the girls can use.  Here they may have a lot of money or little to nothing.  The same with the Grooms.  They have special clothing for them also.  The temple makes it as nice as possible for them.
Bob and I will be going on a new schedule starting January 2nd.  Every month we will be changing back and forth from Afternoon shift to Morning shift.  We have been on the morning shift the whole time that we have been here.  We like that . We have been getting up at 3:30 am and leave for the temple at 5:00 am. we have been coming home at 1:30 or 2:00 pm.  We have had a 6:00 am session up till now.  But they are cutting out the first session at 6:00 am and the last one will be 7:00 pm and cutting out the 9:00 pm session.  Afternoon was getting home at 11:00 pm some days.  So we should be finished right after 9:00 pm.
On Tuesday thru Friday and Saturday the last session will be at 5:00 pm and  we will be done at 7:00 pm.
As they are cutting the last session off on Saturday also.  We are all hoping that our bodies can adjust to changing time that often.  Time will tell.   We are not young kids anymore.
We have pictures of the Christmas lights here and pictures of the time we had with the Missionaries at Christmas.  Boy!  What a spiritual high.  Those kids are great.   And made us think about Christian on his mission.  The young missionaries was so cute with us senior missionaries.  A lot of them know us from them coming to the temple.  And it was a joy to do something for them at Christmas.  As we talk to the Philippinos
Santa Claus is not in their Christmas.  Some of them didn't know what we were talking about.  So we didn't say to much.  Christs' birth is what they really focus on.  And that is great.  We are planning on getting together with the Senior missionaries for New Years Eve.  We will play games and have some good food again while we wait for the Fireworks that can be seen from behind the temple.  They say that they usually start about 8:00 pm.  It gets dark early here.  This is about the best time of the year for the weather.
Hardly any rain.  And the temperature is very pleasant.
As we serve we can see the Lord's hand in this work!  And Love these people.
Bob is not feeling to great tonight and went to lay down for a minute.  That is not like him.  He says that he will put some pictures on the blog later.  We are grateful for this mission and are learning and growing from it already.  We are making some lifetime friends and we learn from each other.  Remarkable people here with us.  We all look out for each other.   And we feel safe with them all around us.   Again we are so happy and grateful to be living here on the temple grounds.  They take good care of us and try to keep up safe.            
We were so happy to see all the kids and talk to you all.  We need to do that more often.  That really helped us both.  We so miss you all.  Thank you for making Christmas Eve so special!  I called my children and I am always happy to hear their voices.  That is the one thing that is nice about Senior Missionaries we get some very special privileges that the young missionaries don;t have.  We are not so cut off from you all.