More duties & mission home project

President Larkin was on island all week meeting with missionaries, preparing for the next round of transfers and reallocating office duties since Elder & Sister Jenks will be going home in 2 weeks. Pres. Larkin has asked Susan and I to take over vehicles, bicycle purchases & repairs, petty cash, packing of all items to be shipped out to the outer islands, correspondance with families of missionaries, continue to oversee the building of the new mission home/office, and be the point person for the missionaries to contact when they have needs and issues. All this and all of our school duties. Sounds like a lot but actually it will just make each of our days very busy but not unbearable.

There was a baptism held right behind our house this week. It was wonderful to watch, listen and feel the Spirit.

This week we have been working with the TVET teachers to get their budgets done for next year. One day they seem determined to get it done and then the next day they are off on another tangent. We don't want to do it for them so we just keep reminding them and putting a little pressure on them. We are making progress but the end of the month is coming. Part of this process are putting in requests for major changes. The Carpentry teacher needs a classroom besides the shop so we wrote up a request to convert a storage area in to a classroom.

Susan and I assisted the Computer teacher this week evaluating the students who performed their powerpoint presentations.

This week we also held a Teacher training and had the Teachers Coaches train on the SIOP principals.

Monday we had the other Senior couples and the Mission President and his wife over for family home evening. The Sister missionaries also came by during the day to use our computers to email their families. Tuesday evening we had 2 young adults come to take the SLEP test. One passed. Wednesday and Thursday evenings we just relaxed at home. Thursday evening President Larkin met with us to finalize our new temporary duties.

Susan's shoulder is still bothering her. The pain is starting to move down into her arm. During the day she feels pretty good but as evening approaches she starts hurting. Went grocery shopping on Satuday. It has been a while since we don't have a vehicle assigned to us. The Reese couple chauffered us around.

This past week we had 2 birthdays, Stephanie and Blaine. Again Happy Birthday!

This week we completed all the Budget requests and are preparing for the end of term testing that will start next week. We had another round of SLEP tests with only 1 person who passed. We have been busy with some of the Mission office assignments. I finished my first MSF (Mission Support Funds) disbursement. We also sent out packages to some of the outer islands. I have a vehicle in the shop for repairs which should be back in a couple of days. The new mission office is about 75% done and the mission home is nearly done. The kitchen cabinets have been ordered. The Mission President will be here on Sunday and will be here for a week.

Today I visited the Kiribati culture class and watched the kids weave baskets and purses. It was good to see them learning and continuing some of their cultural talents.

There is a store in Betio that the Senior missionaries call the American store. From time to time they get a shipment in that has several American products like Doritos chips, American candy bars, soda, breakfast cereals, etc. This past week we bought some Doritos, candy bars, breakfast cereal. What a treat. It may be 6 - 10 months before we see these items again. But it will be good for the next couple of weeks.

Well another week has gone by and I still have not posted this blog. The Jenks couple went home on Thursday. They were excited to get back to their kids and grandkids. They were from the Idaho Falls area. We will miss having them around. The Jenks are the couple in the middle.

President and Sister Larkin on the left. They flew back to Majuro the next day.

This past week was end of term testing for the students so Susan and I were not too busy on campus. We were busy with mission office duties. Mission President was back on Island for the Zone Conference on Wednesday. He and his wife spent part of the week moving into the new Mission Home. The kitchen isn't finished yet but they wanted to get moved in. The Mission Office is close to being completed but is still a few weeks away from completion.

Susan and I will be moving next door to house 7 in a couple of weeks. The contractor has started on building the office which will be attached to our house. Right now the space is a storage room. We should be in the house in 2 weeks. The new ITEP couple will be arriving the 1st of June and will be moving into house 6 where we are now. House 6 has been designated as the ITEP couple house and house 7 the TVET couple house and office.

The last ITEP couple who was here donated a telescope to the school. No one has touched it since so Bill has taken it out and has been looking at the stars and planets at night and in the mornings when he first gets up at 5:30. Here is a picture of the moon he took with his cell phone the other evening.

This last Thursday morning Bill was playing tennis as usual but when he went for a low ball he slipped and fell head first onto the concrete. He is OK, looks worse than it is. He keeps telling people who ask what happened that Susan got mad at him and punched him. Some believe him but he tells them the truth. Susan can't believe they listen to him.

Our days have become a little busier with the added duties. We first take care of our school, TVET duties. When we have time Susan deals with the petty cash for the mission, and she boxes up supplies that have to be sent to the outer islands. Bill deals with missionary questions and issues, vehicle problems, bicycle problems, and anything else that may come up. If needed we go to the airport to ship packages. The Reese couple usually go to the airport.

On Friday we went to this little local resturant for dinner and we had a beautiful sunset that Bill took several pictures of.

After dinner Susan and I went to a wedding of a niece of one of the school teachers. It was quite the entertainment. Lots of dancing and singing. It was the grooms 21st birthday which is a big celebration here by itself. They sang Happy Birthday to him. And then they sang the Happy Birthday song but changed the words to Happy Wedding day and sang it to the Bride and Groom. These celebrations are a big deal to to them just like they are to us. They are people of little means. It takes them a long time to save up enough money to put on a celebration like this.

These are the wedding cake dancers. At the end of their dance they bring in the wedding cake.

The groom is on the one side cutting the cake with the handle of a plastic spoon while the Bride waits on the other side.

Well this time I am going to get this posted. Have a great week. Leave a comment or 2 and let us know how you are doing.

Zone Conference and School Competitions

Well the last few weeks have gone by fast. So much has happened, so much day to day stuff too.
We attended our first Zone Conference and listened to the Mission President and his assistants teach the young Elders and Sisters how they can better touch the lives of those they come in contact with. Most of the teaching was done in the chapel but some of the role playing was done in the cultural hall after lunch.

Later in the week we went with the students who were competing in the Commonwealth Days competitions in Bariki. There were 2 categories, 1- The reading of the Queen's Message, 2- The reading of a personal poem pertaining to Commonwealth Days. In each category there were 2 levels of competitors, Juniors and Seniors. Moroni High won 3 of the 4 competitions against a total of 10 schools. We were very proud of them.

Susan rode with the kids in the bus.  

This was our Senior competitor  in the reading of the Queens Message. She won.

This was our Junior competitor in the reading of the Queen's Message. He won.

This was our Junior competitor in the reading of a personal poem. She was wearing a tradional outfit and performed a small dance before doing her reading. The Judges gave her 101%.

One evening our neighbor came by and gave us these 2 fish as a gift. He said they were a member of the snapper family. I cleaned them and cooked them. They were delicious.

On our day off while we were in Betio Shopping we stopped by one of the old Japanese artillary bunkers and took a couple of pictures. I was looking for the American memorial but could not find it that day.

Interhouse School competitions started the next week with shot put, discus, long jump and high jump all being held at the school. The track events were held later in the week at the Bariki Sports Field.
On this day I had finally had enough heat and left Susan watching the events while I went back to the apartment to cool off.

All the students are divied up into 6 teams named after prophets. Susan was assigned to the Joseph Smith team and I was assigned to the David O. Mckay team. This is part of my DOM team. They are practicing team cheers and yells. Each team is lead by one of the Student Body leaders. Our leader is the young man in green whose name is Lars. He is very energetic and also competes in 4 events.

The day of the High Jump finals we had this storm roll in in the morning. It dumped quite a bit of rain but after about an hour it cleared up and we proceded on with the competitions.

This young man won the senior division.

This young man did not win in his division but I love the facial expression I caught on camera.

It rained again later that night and we could hear a bunch of laughing and yelling. When we looked outside we could see some of the students running around in the pouring rain having fun. They were using the basketball court as a slippy slide.

Finally Friday came and we all headed to the Bariki Sports Field for the track events. This was an all day affair.  This is one of the trucks used to haul the students to the event.

Susan and I sitting under the shade of a tent and we still got sun burned even in the shade.

At the end of the day and all of the students are assembled in each of their teams.

All of the students that won in their respective events will now represent the school in the National Track Meet competitions in July.

The next week the Church had a Stake Music Festival. There were 3 divisions of competitors. Primary kids, Young Men & Women, and Adults. Each ward (congregation) competed against each other. These were the primary kids from our ward, Moroni.

These are the young women from Moroni ward.

These are the Primary kids from Eita 2nd ward.

These were the young men from Eita 1st ward.

A view of everyone attending the Festival.

At the end of the festival Susan was asked to hand out the awards and prizes to the winners.

During the week while shopping for some material with the fashion design teacher I was able to finally find the American War Memorial. It sits right by the Betio Sports Stadium.

Because of the very limited bandwidth for live video streaming the General Conference of the Church has to be downloaded and saved on the servers in the Service Center for later playback. This weekend was our conference weekend. While the men were in the chapel watching the priesthood session the women were outside in the maniebo watching the Womens conference.

I was in one of the classrooms listening to the priesthood session that was setup as an english speaking broadcast room. In this room was where Susan and I also listened to the other Conference sessions.

Be sides all of the events and activities that went on here at the school I was also able to go and repair the circuit breaker that feeds one of the missionary apartments, help with performing missionary apartment checks, meet with the contractor that is rebuilding the new mission home/office. This is a plan I drew up for the contractor to build a multiple computer work station for the office.

I worked with the carpentry shop in building 3 of these tables for some of the missionary apartments. The missionaries have just been sitting on the floor eating and doing their studies. I asked them if they needed a table and they gave me a very enthusiastic yes.  Also one of the sisters apartments have a new gas cook top but have no stand or table to put it on. So we will be building them one this coming week for them to put their cook top on.

With all of the electrical work I have been doing lately I really miss having my own electrical tool bag shown below. I don't know how many times I have thought to myself, " if I had my own toolbag I could do this or that". 

But I have been able to put together an assortment of tools that I can get by with.

I had been thinking about the changing seasons during the week and had wondered what it was like back in Colorado. Then my son sent me this picture to remind me of the seasons that I love and miss.

Yet driving down the one road on Tarawa I see the simple life that many of these people live and hope they understand how blessed they truely are. Their lives are not cluttered with stuff and they find happiness in the simple things of life. They are always happy and give you a smile when you greet them.

As a parting note Susan has had a pain in her back by her left shoulder blade that doesn't seem to want to go away. One of the other senior sisters gave her a good massage that helped some but it is still nagging at her. It may just be due to stress. Her father has had some medical issues recently and she has been worried about him. I am sure she will recover. 

I was also able to keep Uncle Sam happy by getting my taxes finished. Thank you Douglas for sending me all the info I needed to finish them.

We love all of you and hope this finds you all in good health and good spirits.   

This past week went by fast. We had the Area Manager for TVET, Ameet Kumar, and the Area Curriculum & Instruction Specialist, Jonothan Warwick, come visit Moroni and review activities at the school. They gave some good suggestions and counsel to the teachers and staff. We visited classes and held training meetings. Jonothan is a Maori from New Zealand. He loves the outdoors, fishing, hunting, and just spending time with his son who is 15 and his daughter who is 17. When he saw pictures of some of the knives that I make he got excited.  You can tell he is a great father and husband. Always talking about his son and daughter and his wife. He also told some great stories about his childhood and growing up in New Zealand.

On Tuesday night one of the boys at the dorm looked across the basketball court to the cultural hall and saw some sparking and then a fire. He quickly ran over and grabbed a fire extinguisher but could not open the locked door so he broke a window next to the fire and put it out. There was just superficial damage because of this boy's quick actions. It turned out to be a fan controller that had failed and caught on fire.

On Wednesday night the school staff put on a feast and performance. They wanted to welcome the Dentists, The Area visitors, and give Susan and I a "proper" welcome. It was amazing. The singing and dances were great and the food was even better. Susan even tried the octopus. It was fabulous.

     

Thursday we were back to normal attending classes and working with the teachers. I rode with the Principal to take Ameet and Jonothan to the airport.

On Friday afternoon each of the inter-house teams worked on their marching and chants they will be doing at the Inter-House competitions on March 29th and 30th when they march on to the field. After the sun went down the rain clouds opened up and we had a good hard rainstorm for about an hour. The dorm students were out in the rain playing volleyball and belly sliding on the basketball court. They were also taking photos and doing a lot of yelling and laughing. Everything and everyone settled down around 10pm. We had rain off and on all night long.

Saturday Susan had a Stake Relief Society birthday celebration. There was a lot of singing and dancing going on. I was making bread at the apartment and running back and forth taking pictures and videos. The celebration started at 10am and ended at 3:30pm, 5.5 hrs. Relief Society events don't last that long in the States. But the Islanders know how to put on a celebration and enjoy every minute of it. After the celebration we borrowed a mission truck and went for a ride towards Betio to find some items I needed to repair a washing machine for some missionaries. Found everything I needed. We also picked up a couple of food items we needed and then went back home. We stopped at a store that has a popcorn machine to buy a bag to munch on but they were out of popcorn kernels. No popcorn on the island right now. Susan was sad. I did notice that there is gasoline available now. Two weeks ago they did not get a shipment so gas was being rationed out. They always seem to have diesel. The school vehicles and most of the mission vehicles are all diesel. Most of them are the small Toyota Hilux trucks. They look like a Tacoma. They are all 4x4 trucks. Go figure.

Today is Sunday and we are truely resting after the busy week we had. The Mission President and his wife flew in this morning from the Marshal Islands. They will be here for 10 days. The mission home and office are about 3 weeks away from being completed here on Tarawa. This will be the only Mission in the church with 2 mission homes and 2 mission offices. But it is necessary with the great distances between islands. The Marshal islands are a US protectorate so they have a lot of US services. Thus the mission headquaters was setup there years ago when the Mission was formed. But Kiribati and Tarawa specifically has been the fastest growing area in the mission. There are 2 Stakes and 1 District on Tarawa alone. By the end of next year their goal is to have 5 Stakes and 3 Districts in Kiribati which includes the outer islands, 3 Stakes and 2 districts on Tarawa. So the Mission President spends a lot of time here on Tarawa. Because of that it was decided to have a mission home and office here also. Plus he has 2 assistants in the Marshals and 2 assistants on Tarawa. Also one of the Mission Presidency Counselors lives on Kiritimati Island (pronounced Christmas) which is 2000 miles out on the eastern end of the mission. Kiritimati is another fast growing area for the Church.