Philippines story, more to come

June 11

Last Saturday night we sat at the same table with the Procter’s, publishers of the Meridian Magazine, at the 10^th year Gala Event for the Academy for Creating Enterprise (ACE) held at the Waterfront.  I had proposed to them doing a feature on Kelvin Parrino, a young Return Missionary who had very recently completed the ACE 8 week program and won the Business Plan competition (I served as a mentor to him and had setup his business model in my appraiser Excel model, also helped him with his PowerPoint presentation, his presentation at ACE that I attended, he handled with real class) and an internship sponsored by ACE.  They already had four feature stories that they were working on that you will shortly be able to read about.  They want to focus on outcomes and Kelvin’s story about taking his ACE training and putting it to work is all future.  You can expect a series of Meridian stories about ACE, but also about the Cultural Celebration, Open House and Dedication that we will attend on Sunday morning at 9 am.  Also, we met Gerry with the Church News, who is here primarily to do a story on the Temple Open House, but they also had her over at the ACE Academy last Saturday afternoon, visiting the ACE National Convention.

Today and tomorrow are the big climaxes for the Cebu City Temple.  Pres. Monson and party flew into to Cebu yesterday and are currently resident at the Mission Home, displacing the Mission President (Parke Hansen and wife) and his wife to the Patron House.  Pres. Balledos, manager of the ERC (I have an office right next to his) and Cebu City Stake is one of the drivers for the Monson party, so we will hear his stories this next Tuesday about how it went.  The Balledos family has its own very interesting story to tell, with a mother who made great sacrifices for her children who all went on missions and completed college. 

This afternoon we will be going to the Coliseum for the Cultural Celebration, needing to be there by 2 pm for the 5 pm start.  The Coliseum is a really run down venue owned by some Chinese investors, but the largest in town for this event.  The Procter’s will be covering this event.  Scott has a very nice camera, a professional photograph.  We were able to visit with them at the Gala and had met them earlier.