Croppers in Cebu: Jack's birthday, baptism, and Filipino Legos

Dear Jack, Happy Birthday Grandson!!

We miss you and think about you often while we are here serving our mission. I am so glad we get to see you on Skype sometimes and to hear how well you are doing. We are sad to be missing your baptism, but we can hopefully talk to you and hear about it. We are so proud of you for making the decision to be baptized, for preparing by learning about the gospel in your family and at Primary, and especially proud of you for interviewing with the Bishop so that you could say to the Lord’s servant that you are ready to make the promises of baptism. In the mission we remember what those promises are by using the word T-A-K-E. We promise to:

Take his name upon us, to

Always remember him, to

Keep his commandments, and to

Endure to the end

We are grateful that, though you are young, you are ready to make covenants with Heavenly Father. Good job Jack.

There is one thing we thought of here in the Philippines that reminds us especially of you and that we think you would like to learn about and maybe other folks would think it is interesting too.

We know you like Legos. You have built so many things with Legos and you see how they should go together like you should be a Lego engineer or something!! Well in the Philippines we have seen no Legos in anybody’s house so far, although I’m sure some kids have them ‘cause we saw them in a store here. But what we do see everywhere is the building blocks of the Philippines. I guess you’d say they are more like Linkin Logs than Legos, but for sure the people here make everything imaginable from them--and that is Bamboo plants.

Bamboo grows so fast, it can grow 39 inches in 1 day!! But it normally grows about 1-4 inches in a day, which is still really fast. There are lots of kinds, from not too big to giant, It is very strong, even the not so big variety, and very versatile. Here we see it growing all over the place, and we see things made from it in almost every home and building. Many of the homes and buildings themselves are made from bamboo as the main structure. We thought you would like to see some of the things that can be made from bamboo. Look for the example in the pictures below.

One cool thing about bamboo is the sound it makes. We can’t show you but I’ll try to describe it. Because the bamboo is hollow, when the wind blows, and the stalks knock against each other, it sounds sort of like those wind chimes made from bamboo that you see hanging on a porch sometimes. Only in a bamboo grove the sound is louder and deeper and many, many more knockings. It can get very loud and even a little scary until you picture that it is just the bamboo stalks greeting each other when the wind allows them to lean over and say hi to a neighbor. Then it becomes a friendly sound, like, “knock, knock, who’s there?”

We know that if you lived here, your tree house would be made of bamboo, and that you would think of all sorts of other cool things to make from bamboo. Who needs Lego if you have bamboo? And, if you have Legos in a house with a bamboo floor, the tiny Legos would fall through the floor. Maybe that’s why most kids here don’t have them. We made 2 birthday signs from Bamboo. It wasn’t easy finding pieces we could use. It is everywhere, but it isn’t ours to use, so we had to find some that no one was using, Some was behind a school we were helping to paint. Of course the first one is easy, but see if you can see your name in another picture too.

For a family activity, for Family Home Evening, maybe each family who reads this could count all the things we have shown in the blog that you can make from bamboo. See how many you can count.

Love you Jack. Happy birthday!!

These are the bamboo trees that talk to each other.

This is a family where we had a family home evening. We built a temple in their yard out of bamboo so they could imagine going to the temple together. Can you see the spire behind them at the top?

This caribau is a bamboo delivery service. He was hauling long, long bamboo on the highway--just draggin them along. The man is un-doing them from the harness.