Family Matters: For Time and All Eternity

Millions of people’s lives have been put on hold because of this COVID-19 pandemic the world is currently battling. It is challenging to stay positive and level-headed especially when we have children to protect. The   effects it’s having on our mental well-being is undeniable. However, my husband, Anatolin and I do our best to stay calm and keep going. In this time of uncertainty and fear, we teach our children that we are stronger together.  Though this virus outbreak is an unprecedented phenomenon for us all, our family had a strong impression that   what’s in front of us may be serving us in valuable ways we don’t even understand right now.  While it is true that the situation is constantly evolving and we are presented with a new set of challenges every day, it also is impacting our communities in so many positive ways. While stargazing the other night, Anatolin shared how grateful he was of our choice to be together 24/7 since the beginning ...

Due to the developing concerns over the spread of the coronavirus, gatherings of church members were temporarily suspended worldwide and leaders asked members to hold Sunday meetings in their homes. We know that the Sabbath is a special day and we want it to be a spiritual day amidst these trying times. We know we will reap blessings of stronger family relationships, kinder communication, spiritual depth, and more family fun. Our family has carefully gathered the following activity ideas after the Sunday service at home: 1. Make a family storybook: Everyone picks a memory, draws their version of it, and writes a short summary about it. Share your memories with each other. 2. Create a family mailbox to keep inside your home that you fill with sweet letters to each other. 3. Make a wall of favorite quotes from the general conference and leave it up for 6 months until the next conference. 4. Book of Mormon Puzzle: Draw your favorite scene or character from th...

Part of our Family Home Evening last 25 February 2020 was watching the Face to Face event for children, youth, parents, and leaders, where President and Sister Oaks answered questions from around the world focusing on the Children and Youth program which is to strengthen the rising generation’s faith in Jesus Christ, and help children, youth, and their families progress along the covenant path as they meet life’s challenges. Our children then made a resolution to follow the process more intentionally: discover, plan, act, and reflect. They have also set personal goals that challenge and stretch them and continue to discover new talents, interests, and skills. This morning, when my husband and I woke up, we were surprised to see the house already sparkling clean. They worked together to do the house chores after their personal prayer and scripture study. The opportunity to counsel with our children to discover the areas of growth and learning they are interested in is a blessing to us. ...

When the First Presidency announced a new resource to help Church members and their families study the scriptures at home:  Come, Follow Me—For Individuals and Families,   our family counseled together to include it in our daily family morning devotional as part of our homeschool program. Since we have been studying together as a family in January 2019, we have deepened our testimony that our  home is the best place to live, learn, and teach the gospel. In other words, ministering begins at home. So when gatherings of church members were temporarily suspended worlwide because of conditions related to COVID-19, leaders asked members to hold Sunday meetings in their homes. Our family morning devotional that we do everyday as part of our homeschool program prepared our whole family for this trying and difficult times. We had an added measure of the Spirit in our home when my husband and 12 year-old son administered the sacrament. In our closing hymn, we couldn...

So this is a photo of my husband, Anatolin teaching his 38-year old Chinese student online early this morning. In China, the English language has become increasingly significant. It wasn't long before businesses were hiring more and more people with English skills, and over the next few years it's set to become a mandatory qualification. The English language has become so important in China because the country wants to successfully promote internationalism and keep the lines of communication open for trade and business matters. We have been in the ESL industry for 15 years and we have seen how Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese and other nationalities invest a lot of their resources to feel confident and relaxed when they speak English. As a result, they advance in their career, grow their business, gain international friends and become globally successful. This also makes us wonder why Filipino parents don't give much importance teaching the language to their childre...

The digital world that we live in has opened the door for many to stop commuting to work, and avail an opportunity that allows them to work from the comfort of their own homes while enjoying all the benefits of obtaining a better work-life balance. One of the major benefits of a home-based job is the proximity to family.  This thing is not new to us at all. It was in 2008 when my husband, Anatolin and I decided to embrace this work-at-home opportunity, leaving our typical 8-5 job. If you’re a parent, working from home can add increased peace of mind knowing you are close to your children should an emergency arise. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, may everyone stay alert, stay updated, and to stay healthy while our governments and health professionals help us resolve the situation. Meanwhile, we at ESL Hive continue in our advocacy and passion in helping our students achieve their dreams, advance in their career, grow their business and be globally successful with our Internat...

Have you also felt confused and lack direction in your life? I think it's too early for me to go through this midlife crisis but recently, I often have this feeling of either being stuck or having too much of something that it spreads me thin. I tend to absorb in my system so much information and knowledge that it gets hard to assess when enough is enough. Financial literacy, healthy eating and exercise, good parenting, entrepreneurship and all. Having too much information in our mind can lead us into thinking we need to figure it all out before we get started. Too much of anything can become toxic, even oxygen. Today, I was reminded of life's great lessons from my personal study of Come, Follow Me- For Individuals and Families:  Book of Mormon 2020 and reading The Secret Book by Rhonda Byrne.  Jack Canfield, co-athor of The Secret, author of The Success Principles and co-creator of the phenomenal number one New York Times bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series taug...

           Anger is an emotion we all experience. My spiritual and secular study, as well as my own life experience, has taught me of the reality of the fact that anger is not considered a primary emotion or instinctive response. It is a choice.  Many people, myself included, have at one time or another felt that anger is a primary emotion as it is the first response we have to negative things that happen to us. Everybody feels anger at different times, to varying degrees. Indeed, this opinion is so common in modern society that new programs are created in anger management, and articles written on the upsides of anger.     In his blog entitled “Anger Problems: A Smokescreen for Fear-Shame Phobia” posted in January 2009, Dr. Stosny broadly depicts anger problems as "a smokescreen for fear-shame phobia." The problem of anger is of vital importance not only in our daily emotional life, but in the genesis of m...

I just can't believe that my husband Anatolin and I just finished the Fall 2019 Semester at PathwayConnect Worldwide with an "A". Personally, I enrolled in the BYU PathwayConnect  Program because I want to become a more delightful wife to my husband and an exemplary mother to my four home-schooled children who grow up way too fast. A delightful woman should be developing the sacred qualities that God has given His daughters to excel as a wife and mother: patience, kindliness, a love of children, and a desire to care for them.  She should be acquiring a good education to keep with the demands of motherhood. President Russel M. Nelson taught, “We need women who are organized and women who can organize. We need women with executive ability who can plan and direct and administer; women who can teach, women who can speak out. ... We need women with the gift of discernment who can view the trends in the world and detect those that, however popular, are shallow or dange...

I've had a wonderful English Teaching career online that has spanned for more than 10 years. In my Ebook , "Homebased Work for Mommies, All you need to know about Teaching English Online" , I tell you about how I became a freelance Online English Teacher while doing my daily mommy tasks to my four children. I give some tips I've learned along the way to help you do the same.  We might define success differently but in life, almost everybody wants to be more successful by earning more money, have a nicer home, a nicer car and enjoy the good things in life. However, in the process of achieving and acquiring these things, our family relationships are compromised. Some work for hours outside the home or even outside the country, leaving their families behind. Before getting into our online business, I had a regular full-time 8-5 job outside the home for 5 years. I knew how it felt to miss attending a child's PTA meetings, school activities, and e...

On February 9, 2015, at around 3.30 pm, I was carrying Czerinah Ellah and walking along Session Road with my husband, Anatolin and my third child, Amulek when I badly judged the last step that was in different step and stride lengths. There was no grillage for walkways or any safety warning. I lost my balance and dropped my baby. I couldn't stand up due to my badly hurt ankle. A police officer stationed in the area then called for an emergency and a few minutes later, an ambulance picked me up and our baby and hurried us to Baguio General and Medical Center-ER. Fortunately,our baby Ellah was just fine and after monitoring, they didn't find any unnatural behavior from her. However, after checking my x-ray result, I was told by the resident Ortho Doctor Dacanay that I got a Trimalleolar Fracture and needed surgery. I decided to go home for a while and think over the surgery. I got a temporary cast. We traveled to Manila Orthopedic Center to get a second opinion but felt that doct...

Let me share how our paths crossed, how our relationship blossomed over the years, and how our commitment to each other and our shared faith in   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints   have been foundational in our journey together. Anatolin and I were both raised by our goodly parents. I was born in San Jose Del Monte Bulacan on February 21, 1982. When I was two years old, our family moved to Bauang, La Union, where we met Sister Lumacad and Sister Mcnutt, missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our family accepted the gospel on June 10, 1984 and was sealed at the Manila Philippines Temple on February 1, 1986, two years after it's dedication.  Anatolin was born in San Jose Agoo, La Union on June 25, 1982. Their whole family was baptized in the church in May 1988.  Anatolin said he first saw me when we were twelve years old at a Regional Conference where an apostle of the Lord, Elder Quentin L. Cook, presided over the San...

Why do some people "make it" and some people do not? Why some people succeed and others fail? The key difference between success and failure is not merely hard work or superior intelligence, but the ability to delay gratification. The Stanford University Study Children were left in a room, each with a marshmallow, and given the choice of eating it then or 15 minutes later, when they were promised an extra marshmallow as a reward for waiting. Some ate theirs right away. Others waited. But the study's real significance came a decade later when the researchers discovered that the children who held out for the reward had become more successful adults than the children who had gobbled their marshmallow immediately. I learned a lot of principles from this simple marshmallow theory. Delayed gratification or d eferred gratification  is the ability to wait in order to obtain something that one wants. This ability is usually considered to be a personality trait that is ...