End of year testing, projects, new duties

The students are very busy with school this term. Not only are they doing their day to day studies but they also have national tests and school tests to prepare for and take. No rest this term for the kids.

The school held their elections for the student body president for next year. It was quite fun listening to their campaign promises.
At the student assembly we had three people get up at a time; each ticket was a president and two Vice Presidents. 

The first group of 3 students had all of the students at the assembly laughing crazily for nothing and it  was very annoying. Then they kind of settled down but really had nothing to give.

Next candidate got up and was quite clever; his  promises were more dances - Valentines, Halloween, 
etc., and a Beauty contest, and a handsome contest. He said "I am big, but if you vote for me I will be a little boy for you. I will serve you". I know we need to speak english so I will help you to learn better english. "We will understand if you don't vote for us, but if you do vote for us we will be more understanding." "I love you all, your family, your loved ones, and your animals".  This was the group that won the elections.

The next two characters got up and mugged for the audience and had a theme "to unlock everyones potential to become better". "We love you million times more." They would high five each other. Pretty much no substance and annoying.

Other candidates promised transportation to both sides of the island, cold refreshments, a picnic after every term exam, air conditioners for the dorms (the teachers around me were laughing, very amused), more clubs, culture day ("to preserve our culture"), a talent show ("to show your talents"), and so we can out-do the other guy we will have a dance in the morning and one in the night", a prom dance, a prom king and queen, and more tutors."

One candidate said "to be honest, we have no plan for you next year; we will depend on you to come to us to let us know what you want for your plans." "I'm a squad member so I can help you...one of us is white so we have everyone covered". "If you feel down or bored you can contact us and we will sing a song for you. Everything will be possible.”

Here is the winner. The young man in the center. A very nice young man. In one of his campaign talks he said he was going to help the others students by being a better example of a Moroni student by living the code of conduct and speaking English all the time.

Here is the finished Kiribati Mission Home table. We delivered it just before the Larkins arrived back on the Island.

Tereke, the carpentry Teacher did the painting in the center of the table.

The Mission Nurse and her husband Elder and Sister Belen, went home this month. They were a fun couple. She was from Australia and he was from the Phillipines. They live in the Houston area.

Sister Belen walking with some of the Sister missionaries.

At the airport.

When the Belens were flying out we also had a local Sister returning home from her mission in Idaho.

These are the new Elders coming in fresh from the MTC 3 days later after the Belens left. We are excited to have them here.

In a few weeks we will be having TVET Days where all the TVET programs get a chance to show off their skills. There are also items for sale that the public can buy. This is a storage chest made by a Form 6 carpentry student.

Form 7 students practicing their cake skills. They will be making cakes for TVET Days 

While the students were working on the various projects one day, when I was not in the shop and the Teacher was distracted, one of the students tried to cut a board on the miter saw without it being up against the fence. The result was that the board was slammed against the fence bending it and cracking the main frame of the compound mitre saw. It is all cast aluminum and so cannot be straightened out. For here it is about an $800 AUD replacement cost. 

The Mission Home kitchen was scheduled to get new cabinets. I worked with the FM crew to assemble and install the cabinets. The project took 3 days to complete.

Here is almost the final look.

This was Elder Baker’s last P-day at Moroni. He left to go home 3 days later. As you can guess he is the Elder in orange being help up by the other Elders. Elder Baker is from Colorado and will be attending CSU in the spring.

We had Elder Baker and Elder Hilliard over for dinner the night before they left. We will miss them both.

The Reese couple had a humanitarian project to make 36,000 coloring books for all of the Primary schools on all the Islands. They solicited all of the Senior missionaries help to come fold and staple the last 12,000 books together. We worked on them over the course of a month and finally completed them all.

With the new Stake Center project underway there was some top soil that the contractor needed to get rid of. I immediately asked him if he could deliver it to the school and dump it in our banana pit. He agreed to do that. So for 3 days they came and dumped dirt in the pit and filled it in. Now we can level it out and get started on our new chicken coop. The pit was 30 ft wide and 50 ft long and about 6 ft deep. It took a lot of dirt to fill it in.

One Sunday evening I asked Susan if she wanted to go for a walk. As we walked along it was nice to see the people doing what they do in the evening time. I told her that we would walk to the Reese’s home. “It’s not far” I told her. Turns out that they are about 3 miles from our place. We made it to their place and then they offered us a ride home. Here is a couple of pictures from our walk.

This was a guy up in a coconut tree collecting the tree sap. They call it Toddy. It is a sweet juice which they then cook down to a syrup called Kamiamia. They can also ferment it into an alcoholic drink.

This is the first Kiribati Senior Couple called to serve a mission. They will be going to all of the outer islands to train the Branch leaders and lay the ground work for a new Stake to be formed in the next couple of years. They are very excited to be a part of the Mission

One evening I thought I would try and download a movie. I started the download and 2 days later I took this picture. I decided to stop the download. 3000 hours is a little too long to wait.

You can't see it very well in the picture but one night I noticed a lot of lights lined up along the reef. I went outside to see what it was. It was fishermen walking in waist deep water. I had seen this before but that night there were nearly a hundred lights stretched out for over a mile.

We recently celebrated a Public holiday, Teachers Day. The Ministry of Education held the celebration in Betio. Each school was dressed in their own colors. Here is Susan and I in our Moroni colors.

Of course they had their cake dance to present the cake to the Minister. We weren't sure what the cake represented.

Once the cake was presented then the audience could get up and dance. One young man from Australia was the center of attention on the dance floor with one of the other schools. Not wanting to be out done a teacher from a different school came and invited Elder Belshe to dance. Well she was wanting to swing dance we think and as Elder Belshe tried to show her swing dance moves she just started doing her own kind of dance which got a little embarassing. Then all of the ladies started surrounding Elder Belshe wanting their turn to dance. Then one ladies tried to jump up on his back, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times she tried to catch a ride on Elder Belshe. The whole audience was laughing. It was all good fun.

The garden is doing well. I have some more cantaloupes growing.

Elder Belshe wanted short sleeves and his name on his shop coat. So the girls in the Fashion class obliged him.

Conference was wonderful this year. Every message seemed to touch our life in one way or another.

Last but not least here are our birthday kids.

Forgot to mention that we have new duties along with what we are already doing. We are now responsible for housing for the mission. That requires doing house checks to insure the missionaries are keeping their places clean, getting new rentals when needed, and getting repairs done when needed.

Trip to the Marshall Islands

I had been talking with the FM group about some issues they were having in the Marshall Islands with a generator project that was taking a long time to finish. Then on a Thursday morning they asked me if I could fly to the Marshalls and stay for a week to help with some of these issues. The next day found Susan and I at the airport flying to Majuro. Sister Larkin the Mission President's wife was flying there also.

 

The Marshall islands are long and narrow. They have had a lot of influence from many different countries but most recently after WWII they were a US trust. They recieved their independence 38 years ago. They still have strong ties with the USA.

Once we arrived we went to the Mission Office and met the Senior couples that work there. They let me use the Presidents office while I was there since he was in Tarawa.

They showed us to our apartment that we were going to be staying in. The complex is right next to the office.

Here is a view from out of our back door.

They had asked me to do 2 things. First they wanted me to assess the backup generator project for the Mission Home. Second they wanted me to work with the local NTA phone company to get the office phones and the Mission Home phones working again. This is the Mission Home.

As with most of these Islands the power systems are not reliable. The power comes and goes. With all of the work going on at the Mission Home and Office the church wanted a backup generator so that the work could go on uninterupted and that food in refrigerators and freezers would not go bad. So the Area office had bought a generator with auto start capabilities but it had not been installed. They wanted me to go see what the issues were with the project. The FM workers in the Marshalls have no electrical experience and were relying on a local contractor for info. Once I met with the local contractor and reviewed the generator specs I realized that they had ordered the wrong generator. It had 110 VAC output instead of 220 VAC output. I then spent the rest of the week communicating with the generator manufacturer to see if we could do a field change of the output voltage and change the AVR settings. In the end the manufacturer decided that the best thing to do would be to return the generator and have a 220 V model sent. In the USA that would be maybe a 2 week turn around but here in the Islands that will take months. So I spent the rest of my time creating drawings of the electrical system and the site layout. Then I wrote up the project work scope and bill of materials.

On the Island of Alingalaplap the Elders have a solar panel to provide power for a couple of lights and to charge their electronis. The system has not worked for the last few months so I was asked if I could fly out with Elder Seager to see what was needed to repair it. I was not able to get on the plane because it was full. So Elder Seager took pictures of the system so that I could see what they are dealing with.

On our first Saturday there Susan and I went to the far end of the Island to an area called Lara. This side of the island is less populated with many coconut groves. Copra is one of the industries here on the island.

We stopped by a Japanese WWII war memorial

We walked along the beach some and then drove on to the far end of the Island.

Most of the drive the ocean was on one side and the lagoon was on the other. The Island was maybe 50 yards wide.

This is at the area called Lara. We were looking for a 1910 Typhoon monument. We couldn't find it so we just walked along the beach.

There was an old cemetery nestled among the trees.

As we were leaving there were 2 guys sitting at a table so we stopped and asked them where the monument was. Thye gave us directions and then asked us while pointing to a sign  if we could read the sign. The sign said that it cost $1 per adult to use the park. We laughed at ourselves and gave them $2. The Typhoon monument was written in Japanese and was a tribute to the Emporer for helping the Island people after the typhoon hit.

This is a Pandan tree fruit. It is edible but I have not tried it yet.

Sunday we went to church. Everything was spoken in Marshlese but we had translators to help us.

Most of my time was spent right here at the desk working on the project.

Susan was hard at it too.

One day while working at the generator I saw this spider. It was about 3 inches wide and colorful.

We were at one of the Member's home having dinner one night and these kids came by and knocked on the door. They then asked for a spinner, which is a small spinning toy that Sister Winchester had bought several of them when she was in the US recently. They were a lively group.

The apartment complex had this workout facility that I used every morning.

One evening we went to this little burger joint called Yummy Burgers. They were pretty good especially since we don't have anything like this in Tarawa.

The sunset was amazing.

As you drive down the road in the populated areas of Majuro you can definitely see the American influence. The housing and buildings are much different than on Tarawa.

Most of the houses are very colorful in their painting and some even are interesting in their wall textures.

On the last Saturday we went to the other end of the island. That side of the island is much more populated. We saw this young man fishing and we watched him a while. He waved to us to come over so we walked out to him. He spoke broken English but was happy to show us how he was fishing and the fish he was trying to catch.

I stopped to take a picture of this Catholic school. When I rolled down ther window I could hear the kids singing and having a good time. It reminded me of the kids at Moroni.

Every Saturday there is a farmers market next to the Marshall College.

Elder Preston was doing a cooking demonstration at the Market.

The last Friday night there we went to dinner to the Tide Table restaurant with the Senior Couples. It was an enjoyable dinner and the food was great.

Well the week ended and we headed back to Tarawa. It was nice to be able to see this side of the mission and meet the Senior Missionaries and other missionaries that serve there.

A look at the airstrip in Tarawa as we were coming in for a landing. It is in the center of the photo.

It was surprising to me how I felt like I was coming home as we returned to Tarawa. The people here have been so good to us and have become like family to us.