This picture was taken from the Temple steps looking out at the Patron Housing for the temple in the white building to the right. Starbucks is next,a bank , a cleaners, a specialized food store,a cafe, a grocery store and a few other speciality stores. As you can see the High Rises in the distance. The drive up for the temple in front and you can't see the road in front of the stores because of the temple fence.

There is a small building in front of Starbucks that is actually the guard station for the temple, itis a gated area like many here.

There is a purpose for showing you the other side of the street because we will be leaving the temple now because we have been called by the Area President ,Pres. Edwards to a new mission on special asignment to figuring out boundries in the Philippines Stakes which is in bad need here to continue on the building of the church. The church is growing so fast here they are struggling to keep up, so we have been released as Temple Missionaries and put into Membership Statistical Records working directly under President Edwards. President Edwards is one of the Seventy and is over all of Asia. We will be expected to travel to all the 86 Stakes in the Philippines. I am sure we will see some interesting places, we will try to take more pictures and put them on the blog. With changing Missions we also have to make some changes even though we are just going across the street to the
Church Office Building we are in a different mission so we will have to move to a High Rise Apartment 28 floors up. There are other missionaries living there also in other apartments. We have loved the temple mission but apparently the Lord had a surprise for us. President Edwards says just consider this as your second mission, not many people get two in one. I think my husband has been preparing for this mission for a long time just from all the experiences he has had in many things . I just hope we get much help from our Father in Heaven. This work has only been done in one other place and that is in Africa. Ithas been so hard to leave our temple friends but we are already making many new ones. Life is not easy, it seems we just get comfortable and we are asked to move on but we do LOVE our Father in Heaven and our Savior Jesus Christ. We owe all we have and become to them.

This is the Church Office Building that we work in across the street from the temple, we work with many wonderful people. The people in our office had a belated birthday party for my husband the first day we were there with birthday cake , fruit drink with many fresh fruits and noodle. The people in our office are Philippin es and they would party every day if they could because they love parties. We have fun with them anyway.

I am tired and need to go to bed so I will sign off this adventure couple and retire . We love you all and to all a GOOD NIGHT

Love Ma & Pa Kemp

This is a picture of one of the tables talked about earlier.
Not the sharpest of pictures, but you can see how detail of the mosaic.











Below is a picture of linda in front of the Manila hotel

Welcome to our Blog

We decided to open a blog to everyone so we can let you know what we are doing over here in the Philippines . We are coming to the end of a long stretch of being very busy in the Temple . The schools are just starting up again and so people are going back to the provinces. Woops, I spoke to soon , the Philippines had a holiday on friday {Independance Day} and people flooded the temple . We did over 630 endownments believe me that is keeping us very busy non stop and our feet let us know it. Saturday was busy but not like friday. We have 2 more new couple missionaries coming tomorrow one is from Canada and the other is from Arizona. We get another couple in July and I think they are from Springfield , Utah.

The picture above is the Buendia chapel, the first chapel built in the Philippines. It also serves as the Makati stake house. When this chapel was built it was in the wide open spaces , now as you can see it is surrounded by very tall buildings which we have many of around here that is why we can have 20 million people live in just a small place, some buildings have as much as 60 floors.

Today we attended Stake Conference and the Mission President that has just been assigned here is Pres. Howard. He told us he was in the first missionary group assigned to the Makati stake area. He told the people a dream has come true from back in 1965 when they were told that this area would have strong men come into the gospel and move the church along in the future and now the church is growing leaps and bounds in the Philippines and look at all the people coming into the church . This building has been full twice this day and in 6 months it will probably be full 3 times. Every week the church we have been assigned to has 2 or 3 baptisms. It is really neat to see this work moving along here.

Where we are working in the temple we are able to meet many of the missionaries, I guess we pretty well meet many people from all the different wards that come to the temple along with many that visit from all over the world. Thursday we will have another batch of missionaries from the M.T.C. about 69 coming from all over Asia , some of them bring their enterpreters . We have some from Malaysa and some from China which is out of our area this time. These missionaries usually can't afford to go to the temple to receive there endownments so they receive them here when they come to the mission home and they receive their endownments here in the Manila Temple. We act like parents to them and comfort them as much as possible. We really do LOVE this work and it is so special to see these people so happy when they leave the temple. We are grateful to be here and learn many new things. It makes you appreciate what you have been blessed with in this life. I am especially grateful for a body that has carried me so many miles and still works good. I know it is a special gift from my Father in Heaven and I appreciate the gift.

Last monday we visited the oldest hotel in the Manila where McCarther lived in the top floor for 20 years. It is a very fancy hotel with beautiful wood work. Many celebrities visit this Hotel from the United States. We also visited the mansion of Fernande Marcous when he was President here. He built this mansion for the Pope to stay in, but the Pope felt that it was to extavigant so Marcus spent the money of the people for nothing so Marcous family used it , one of many of is mansions. It is built like the coconut like a octagon everything is shaped like a octagon. The house is built 70% of the wood from coconut trees, bark, and coconuts decorations that is why it is called the Coconut House. It is located by the ocean and very beautiful landscaping, swimming pool, and large octagon chapel. The government owns it and has been using it as a tourist attraction but it is now going to cloose it. is closing it. It will probably be sold . If you have a few million running around you might be able to buy it., It does need repair and fixed up. One interesting thing was the chips of coconut in the tables ,they said little children 5 to 7 yrs old set them . It sure looked like professional work to me, they were very pretty designs {flower designs].