Week 60 in Tarawa

 

 

Our mission nurse, Sister Alldredge, surprised us this past week with an early Christmas present.  Her hand made Christmas manger is darling.  Since we're already on the second week of November, Sister Sumner had to, of course, put it up right away.  "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...".

One of our student's aunts made these beautiful gifts for us.  The 2 shell turtles can be seen inside the shell basket.  We had been looking at things like these in the roadside souvenir gift shops, but they were way expensive.  Thanks, Retibita's aunt!  You might also notice the native handmade place mats on our island style table cloth; all things we will treasure for years to come.

This is our school librarian, Marinoa.  She is standing in front of all the book racks in our library, which hold only about 4500 books.  Sister Sumner was asked by Elder Pearson of the Seventy when he was here 2 weeks ago to assess our school's library situation and recommend books our library should have to encourage more reading by our students.  She was to focus on fiction that would interest our students and teach them about life and the world around them.

Many of the books currently in the library are not age appropriate and are in a sad state of repair.  Berenstain Bears and Madeleine books are just not very interesting to junior high or high school students.

This picture shows just how empty our fiction shelves are.  The other 3 fiction shelves in the library not shown in this view are just as empty.

 

Tioromaea, Iutita, and Gloria Richard are admiring the doll the Young Women made as part of their service project.  Sister Sumner bought this one and then we modified it to make it safe for an infant.  It's hard to believe that Gloria Richard is already 9 months old.  She has begun to see that we are strangers and acts very shy around us now.  Just a month ago she was all smiles and would let us hold her, but no more.

Our last picture today shows the first four boxes we have packed up to send home.  We still have 16 weeks left, but while we're away in Brisbane during the first week of December, the facilities people want to come in and paint our apartment, so we figured we'd better start getting rid of the stuff we don't need here but want to keep.  The boxes mostly hold souvenirs and gifts for our family members upon our return next February 29th.  Where has the time gone?  We have just under 4 months left on our mission.



We want to end today with another quote from President Holland's book, "To My Friends".
"Happiness comes first by what comes into your head a longtime before material blessings come into your hands....Henry David Thoreau said, 'Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.' " At this Thanksgiving season, we wish all of you the happiness that comes from forgetting yourselves in the service of others.