anatess2

Ahh.. .the young'uns. Hah hah.

My son is in the Manila mission right now! Bunkered in an apartment in Paco.

Florida has beaches and alligators.

They're not the same thing. I'll give you an example... growing up in the Philippines in the 70's, a lot of our TV shows are Cowboys (always white) vs. Indians. So, what we know as ignorant Filipinos is that Cowboys are good, Indians are bad. So, this Filipino going to America for the first time will have a subconscious fear of Native Americans. It takes quite a while to get over that "conditioning". Since the 80's TVs and Movies have stopped portraying American black people as the bad guys. So my generation of Filipinos are growing up having Apollo Creed as a hero. And then there's the Thrilla in Manila making Muhammad Ali as a hero. And there's Beverly Hills Cop, very popular in the Philippines. So, my mother's generation have that subconscious fear of blacks that has since gone by the wayside in my generation. Of course, in the USA, you are exposed to a lot more diverse TVs and movies so your experience growing up is different. And that's really the problem with raising an entire racial minority on the concept that they are victims since babyhood. The fear becomes subconscious. One good thing that came out of the Information Superhighway is that Filipinos these days get the same TV and Movie shows as Americans. So we're not limited anymore to just the most popular shows. On the flip side - now we have full access to American news - and if you just drop on the planet from another galaxy, you would think it's the 60's again, the cops are going after black people, and Trump is Hitler.

Oh... I saw that video. Made me LAUGH OUT LOUD. "Have you ever been told you can't afford something?"... my very white husband got security called on him because the grocery store thought he could't afford to pay for the conditioner and was trying to steal it. "Have you ever been denied because of your race?"... my very white husband got let go because the new black manager wanted only black and brown people under her. "Have you ever had somebody walk on the other side of the street from you?"... I asked my son about that and he said - if you're walking on the street all skeevy (not sure what word that is he used, it sounded like skeevy), like you're going to shank me, I'm moving to the other side of the street, no matter what color you are. Where the race comes in is - when a white person is acting all skeevy he's probably on meth, if it's a black person, he's on coke. Hah hah. So, if a white Bosnian walk on the other side of the street from the white Slovak, who gets to drop a finger? How about a white Italian getting off the elevator when the white Sicilian boss enters the elevetor? Hah hah.

I have come to realize that white people who flagellate themselves for their evil "white privilege" are pretty racist for thinking they have it better than everybody else.

Eng eng eng....

Our missionaries got the thumbs up from their mission president to attend our backyard sacrament meeting in person starting next week! For the past 2 months, they've been attending our meetings online bringing investigators with them. This time, we can have investigators actually meet members if they don't mind coming over!

Our Stake Presidency just sent out a survey on what we want with several survey questions and a comment area. My answers pretty much lend to - I'd rather have sacrament meeting at home rather than go to Church with all these weird rules like - only x number of families, have to have a mask, sacrament meeting without talks, have to have families volunteer to sanitize the entire place, etc. etc. Let us know when we can go back to normal, until then, everyone is welcome to my backyard for home sacrament meeting.

Bush was crucified too. He just never fought back. Trump is the first Republican I know who gives as much if not more than he gets. I find it hilarious that Bush, Colin Powell, and Romney are competing on who gets to denounce Trump the most. Colin Powell - the guy who was one of the people who gave us the Iraq War and broke off the Republican Party to praise Obama's war... now telling us Trump is dangerous to our country. Hah hah.

I saw an interview with Elon (was it 60 minutes?) where Neil Armstrong's reaction to SpaceX was mentioned and Elon got teary eyed. I kinda felt bad for the guy having his space hero telling him spaceflight should not be a private enterprise.

#BelieveBobLazar

You need to expand your horizons.

Yes. But your car is not impounded before you were found to be a danger on the road. All rules are geared towards - "this will hurt people, you're still going to drive anywhere, anytime, if you keep yourself and others safe, we'll leave you alone". Covid rules - "you're probably healthy but we don't care, you're going to kill somebody so stay at home."

A pallet of bricks showed up in the middle of our historic downtown yesterday. My husband's route home from work go through that street. Cops showed up and tried to stop anybody from going near the pallet until they can figure out what to do with it causing my husband to not get home until past 9PM.

I'll take your Candice Owens and raise you Larry Elder. "I asked you to name the most important example of systemic racism and you gave me white cops going after black people. I gave you the facts on that so that's nonsense, what's another example you have? Blacks are not getting into schools? That's B.S...."

Waaaay too simplistic. In Florida, for example, politicians try their very best to preserve the "red lines" to keep their House Representative voting bloc. Republicans don't want black people to cross into their line because they always vote Democrat. Democrats don't want black people to move out of their line because they always vote Democrat. So in this scenario, the problem can be solved by black people voting ideas and not parties - unfortunately, they don't. Joe Biden's statement "You ain't black" keeps communities segregated. Another reason - 75% of black children grow up without fathers. Statistics show that fatherless boys tend to run afoul of the law. Also, fatherless households tend to be in poverty and rely on government aid. People living under government aid tend to vote Democrat. Why are black children growing up without fathers? Ask the Democrats.

In Florida, we've had years where we average 5 boys in Cub Scouts, 2 of which don't attend because of Sports. We've had years where we average 5 boys in Young Men, some years we have no deacons. And our geographic area is such that we have to drive 20 minutes to get to the Stake Center. In the Philippines, we've had wards where you have to ride a bus for 4 hours to get to the Stake Center. We've had wards where the next ward over is a day's ride by boat. And my ward in the Philippines doesn't have a primary because they don't have enough old hat converts to run one - they're more needed to learn things in Sunday School rather than preside over a primary. The little kids go to Sunday School and Relief Society with their moms. Filipinos approach each ward challenge with one solution - "We need more baptisms". So... Each ward have their own challenges. It is what it is. We lift where we stand.

We don't know. It totally depends on when they're going to be able to go back to full proselyting and the Tacloban Mission asks for their missionaries back. There's still that incredibly long bus route. But there's restrictions on inter-province travel right now. Anybody coming from Manila or Cebu going to any other province will have to go through a 14-day quarantine before they can go on the bus/plane in Manila and each province requires 14-day quarantine at the border. Draconian? Yes. Yes it is.

8 year olds are capable of complex thought. The thing is though, these kids are still in their formative years and complex thoughts are still less tested and less disciplined. Line upon line, precept upon precept is the way to get these complex thoughts organized into meaningful testimonies.

Per my experience in my Philippine ward, a ward is not formed regardless of how many families are attending the branch if there are not enough Priesthood holders. As far as geographic area - I don't think this is going to change. A Stake is a geographic area. A ward is the same. You attend your ward so that you can lift up that geographic area. The effect of this is so much more pronounced in the Philippines where you have small towns of very little means that get a tiny branch to form. From within this branch, the lives of the people in the town are directly affected, making a stark difference between an area with a branch/ward to an area without one simply by the work of the Saints in serving in their callings and serving in their community as a group under the authority of their Bishop/President.

Where do you get the basis for these statements? Here's food for thought... if you precondition a segment of your population to believe that the cops are out to get them, then they do something illegal and the cop comes to get them... what do you think they're gonna do? Come meekly?

Lookie lookie lookie! THEY'RE BACK!!!

After 74 days in the Manila MTC, my son finally "left the building"!!! But, as there are no flights to Tacloban due to travel restrictions, he got temporarily reassigned to the Manila Mission. He is very happy although, like missionaries here in Florida, they can only proselyte through phone/text/social media and not yet in-person... he finally gets to have his own electronic device! Well - shared with his companion... but that's still a ginormous improvement from 50 to 1 to 2 to 1 person to device ratio for proselyting! He gets to call me TWICE A WEEK! WOOT WOOT WOOT! And they can have short visits with members in public areas to say hi and bye (limited personal contact) and they meet with all the other missionaries in the area too. His major challenge right now is to crash course on Pilipino (Tagalog). His Cebuano training is not gonna help here. Anyway, his mission life is starting to ramp back up and it's awesome. Side note - after months living indoors, my son stopped looking Brown Filipino and started looking White American. He sent a group photo of his district in the MTC and he shockingly stood out as a white dude with the senior missionaries in the midst of Filipinos! But he's still Filipino short. Hah hah.

You may have been doing other things rather than watching the covid ticker. I don't blame you. I think I'm gonna do better things than paying attention to the ticker. Anyway, we haven't reached half a million deaths yet.