Happy Birthday Nicole!! You are such a wonderful companion to Tylor and we love you so much. We hope your birthday was wonderful.
Happy Birthday Mekenzie!! We hope you had a great birthday. We miss your smiling face and energy!
Hey girls how about this for a hair style. This young lady is engaged to be married. The family of the groom gives the bride enough berrettes to cover her hair. The longer the hair the more berrettes needed.
Our stove quit working so I took it apart to see what was wrong. The temperature sensor was broken and one of the heating elements was bad. I searched and searched for replacement parts and finally found some in Malaysia. To buy them and ship them to Tarawa was about 2/3 the cost of a new stove. So the FM group told me that they will just order a new stove. There is just one problem, they have to order it from New Zealand and it is going to take 1 month to get here. Eating out for 1 month......no way. So I checked with the baking teacher and they had an electric stove that they were not needing until next term. So I moved it to our house until the new one arrives.
The baking class stove. I also built the rack above the stove to store our frying pans and lids.
One night I went outside to get something and saw this beautiful moonrise. So I snapped a couple of pictures.
This a a group of Elders going home. There was a total of 10 that went home that week. I got to know each one of these Elders and will miss having them around. I wish them all the best.
For the Kiribati Independence Day celebrations the President of the country asked Moroni High Fashion department to make all of the tables and chairs coverings. These girls along with their teacher and Sister Belshe worked intil late in the night to complete them all.
We don't have access to really good drill bits here on the Island.
The school held an all day picnic to celebrate the success of the sports teams during Independence week. We went to an area which had a beach and camping spots. The kids played volleyball and tossed a rugby ball around. They danced and listened to music. We had BBQ chicken and hot dogs. And it rained most of the day. But that didn't stop them from having a good time.
The volleyball got stuck up in the tree so this girl went flying right up into the tree and got the ball. The boy below tried to beat her up the tree but she was faster.
These boys helped with the cooking. Elder Belshe made sure they cooked the chicken all the way to the bone.
Some impromptu island dancing. These kids know all kinds of dance moves.
Our official cooking staff enjoying the day and letting the boys cook.
We are all stretched out up and down the beach.
Sitting under the shade of the covers eating and visiting.
At the end of the day we did a service project and went up and down the beach and cleaned up most of the garbage.
We had a dinner meeting one night with the Mission President and all of the Senior Mission Couples serving on Tarawa.
Susan and I don't have a vehicle so most of the time we just bike down the rode to the small grocery store to pick up a few items.
I have started a garden that seems to have taken root and is growing well. I have beans, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and I transplanted a couple of banana trees.
The housing units are on schedule to have some upgrades done to them. One upgrade was adding TVs to each house. What is funny is that there is no cable or sattelite TV available on the Island. It was in my way since I had no place to put it so I built a shelf to put it on. On Saturdays we hook up our laptop computer to it and watch a movie. You can get DVD movies here for $1 each. And I mean the latest movies out. We just watched Hidden Figures last Saturday.
There is no yogurt available on the island so we asked our TVET Manager, Ameet Kumar, in New Zealand if he could get us a yogurt maker. Well this week Jonathan Warwick from the Area Office came to Moroni and brought us this yogurt maker and 5 different flavors of yogurt. He and Ameet told us to try them all and then let them know which flavors we like and they will bring them to us when they come to visit or will send them to us when they are sending supplies to the school. By the way in the picture I actually have some yogurt brewing in the yogurt maker. It is the middle package "Peaches & Cream".
Time to tell the fishing story. Bro Tune, the Manager of the Church Service Center invited me to go with him to the island of Abaiang to take care of some Church business. Of course Susan, Bro Tune's wife, A teacher named Surian and 2 girls from the BYU group came along.
On the way out to the island we took time to troll a little for some Tuna. We caught a couple but they were small.
It was about a 2.5 hr trip out to Abaiang.
Once we got there it was beautiful and picturesque. We pulled up to the beach and asked where the LDS Missionaries lived and was directed to go about 1 kilometer down the island just past the old Catholic Church.
We quickly found the Elders and Bro Tune went on shore and took care of his business.
In the meantime the 2 girls from BYUH waded ashore to talk to some local kids who had gathered on the beach. While talking to the kids the Elders showed up and visited with them. This is Elders Tingey and Otto. Susan and I were really impressed with how neat and clean they were since they live on such an isolated island. Sound carries real well across water. When the girls started wading back to the boat the Elders said in Kiribati "that was really strange talking to 2 girls from BYUH way out here on this island". Surian started laughing so we asked her what they said and she told us. We all got a chuckle out of it.
So on the way back Bro Tune stopped on one of the reefs so that we could do some bottom fishing for different fish. He put us on a good spot about 75 ft deep. Susan caught the first fish. It was a small grouper.
Then I caught this strange fish which we called a lippy fish.
Then I caught beautiful orange colored grouper.
Surian caught this reef fish that had teeth like a human
Molly playing around with Surian's fish.
One of the BYU girls caught this fish which the locals called a king fish.
It was a bright, hot, sunny day so Susan tried to stay covered up. She still got burned.
On the way home one of the motors died on us so we limped home with just 1 motor. Instead of takind 2 hours to get back it took almost 5 hours. You can see the dead motor is raised up.
Bro Tune was really tired since he had got very little sleep the night before so he asked Elder Belshe to drive the boat while he took a 4 hour nap.
We got back to Tarawa right at sunset.
We went home and helped clean out the boat. Then Elder Belshe cleaned all the fish. We ate the fish the next evening for dinner. They were delicious. 😎
