We Feel the Lord's Hand in Many Ways

This morning we had a very rewarding, but humbling experience.  One of the Perpetual Education Fund participants came in to payoff his loan.  An interesting part of the current PEF program is the incentives that the participants receive as they do certain things.  The incentives are for graduating, having good grades, finding a good job in the profession that you studied in, having a mentor that helps you keep your commitments and paying off the loan early.  These incentives have not been available to those with older loans, but just a couple weeks ago they were extended to those who would have qualified on older loans.  The participant that came in today, qualified for three of these incentives and received a significant discount on his loan as he paid it off.  What made it even more special for us, is that he is the first participant in all of Asia to take advantage of these incentives.  After he had paid off his loan, he was so excited and wanted to give both of us a big hug.  That is called a payday in the Church.

We had another wonderful treat today, our first package from home.  Some of our children told us that they wanted to put together a small package for us for Easter.  The small package grew bigger as additional requests for things that we wish that we had were added.  The postage was a lot more than we ever imagined, we will have to be careful with our requests in the future.  Sister Oveson now has seasonings that she could not find Cambodia and Ranch Dressing mix.  Elder Oveson now has the type of pant hangers that he likes, which will help, so that his pants are not wrinkled and need ironing. We received M&M's (both almond and coconut) which were greatly appreciated, along with some peeps that we shared.

One of the ways that we will be helping with the Perpetual Education Fund is contacting the participants and making sure how they are doing, including keeping on track with their payments.  Sameth had given us a list of seventeen participants that should speak well enough for us to contact them.  As we looked for contact information on the PEF software, we noticed that all seventeen had email addresses.  After talking to Sameth about it, we decided to email them for our first contact, if they do not reply, we will call them.  There are a lot more participants that have email addresses that we will email also. We plan to gradually make regular contact with as many as can communicate in English via email or phone to keep them on course.