Week 2 Feb 12, 2017

The week started off well. Monday we attended the all Church Service Center monthly devotional. The local Stake President spoke on the importance of being strong in Christ so that when we serve we have the strength to help others. The humility of the Ikiribati people amazes me. The scripture Mark 10:15 "Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." comes to my mind. It is not that they are childish, the opposite is true. They are strong and have a desire to be and do better. But their faith is as a child. They have complete trust in the Lord.

Monday afternoon after school I went to talk to the Mission Nurse, Sister Shumway, about something. This is what I found at her doorway.

And then inside I found most of the missionaries serving here on Tarawa wishing Sister Shumway a warm farewell. They had made her a cake and sang her a song. Sister Shumway is being transferred to Majuro, Marshall Islands this Friday. She will be missed by all of these missionaries. Not only is she the nurse but in the 8 months she has been here she has sewn over 35 new dresses, repaired another 50+ dresses, repaired numerous pants, and sewn several children dresses and clothes.

Later in the evening all the senior couples took Sister Shumway to dinner in town. An interesting note; Sister Shumway is from Eagar Arizona and was my mother's visiting teacher. She is a sweet lady and spoke highly of my mother.

I have started working out in the mornings. I start out by running a couple of laps to warm up and then I go to the school's weight room and lift on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have started doing my Insanity workouts again. Nothing like a good workout in 80% humity. Gets a good sweat going.
Here is the weight room. Nothing special but it gets the job done.

This week our computer crashed. All we get is a flashing question mark. I had my sons help me research the problem and it looks like the hard drive crashed. Luckily I have an IPad Pro which is now serving as my only computer for personal use. I do have a school assigned laptop for use in my work at the school.

On Friday Sister Shumway flew out to the Marshal Islands. The other Senior couples took her to the airport. After her plane took off an American military C? Transport Plane landed. It turned out that it was a Marine Honor Guard sent to bring home the remains of 17 marines who had died in the battle of Tarawa during WWII. The couples later told me that when it was over and the plane had left they realized that they should have contacted Susan and I to come and see the ceremony also. I told them that it was OK and that I was happy that these Marines were finally able to go home.

Saturday Susan and I went to town by ourselves to pick up a couple of items we needed. It was my first time driving here on Tarawa. I was driving a Toyota pickup with a manual transmission. No problem except everthing is on the wrong side. It takes some getting use to driving on the wrong side of the rode and on the wrong side of the truck. Shifting with my left hand was a little strange too. I only bumped into the curb along the road while driving about 3 or 4 times. Luckily the speed limit is 40 kph which is about 30 mph. Susan was still pretty nervous though.

Today, Sunday, we had quite an adventure going out to one of the outer Islands to hold church service with the small branches of the church there. I will share that adventure in my next post, maybe in a couple of days.