Charity Ball

Elder Rasband is visiting the Philippines.  Daniel met with him to look at a lot where a temple is soon to be built and had lunch with him last Friday. Tomorrow Elder Rasband will give a devotional at the office and later he will meet with Daniel and his team to do an “Area review” so Daniel has been working insatiably for days getting ready for it.  

A new meeting room has been remodeled at the office that will accommodate 200 people. Tomorrow’s devotional will be the first time this room will be used. It is so amazing to look at that room today and see the transformation from what it used to be. Only Architects and Engineers can think up what to do with space available. I find that so fascinating because I could never see all the potential and possibilities that they see. Daniel is very good at that not only with buildings but with people too. Hands down, Daniel is the best D.T.A. all around the world!

On Saturday, after listening to a talk by Elder Oaks on having the right amount of balance in life I made Daniel take a little break from working all day to attend the annual George Washington Charity dinner sponsored by the American Association of the Philippines, the Penn Wharton Club of the Philippines and the Harvard Alumni Association of the Philippines. Every year we are given tickets to attend this event and is one of my favorite things to do but Daniel hates it. He can’t stand going to “dinners” but I convince him to go and I am glad we did.

 At this event, they hold a silent auction and give awards to various people in the community. The U.S. Ambassador presents these awards. I particularly enjoyed listening to Sheila Marcelo who received an award and was the keynote speaker. She was good! What is so impressive about her is all the things she has done. Her mother brought her to the United States as a little girl so her English was impeccable. She told a story from childhood when her mother would bring her to the Philippines so she would learn Tagalog as well.  She went to Harvard, became an entrepreneur and founded the publicly traded company Care.com serving 26 million people in 20 countries.

 What I love about her story is that she decided to solve the problem of childcare for working women when she found herself pregnant and that is how she got started. What seemed to be a problem was her motivating factor for her success. She is one of the top 10 women entrepreneurs at Fortunes most powerful women, sits on various boards in Massachusetts where she resides and has received multiple awards over the years.

I appreciate so much Daniel taking me out on this date. I love to listen to powerful women. The food was delicious and the company was wonderful. We got in late and couldn’t stay for the entertainment nor the dancing because Daniel needed to get home in a hurry to keep working on his presentation. It is Monday night and he just finished working on the power point. Yay!  I am grateful that we got out of this apartment for a change last Friday and on Valentines to an amazing Italian restaurant J

Happy Presidents Day

Vero