Week 20 in Tarawa

Our first faculty meeting of a new school year.  Lita, our principal is welcoming everyone.  The TVET couple, Elder and Sister Bogh and we are always asked to sit in the front and allowed to take care of our business first.  We'd just as soon sit with the rest of the teachers. The faculty meetings lasted half a day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  On Tuesday we did a presentation on comprehensible input in the SIOP model of teaching.

The men always sit on one side and the women on the other.  Bare feet are common.

 

 

 

This was picked from plants on the campus just that morning.  Often the female teachers stop and pick a flower to put in their hair first thing in the morning.

Lunch was provided all three days of the faculty meetings.  It was ordered from a local Chinese restaurant (of course, all restaurants here are Chinese) and was very good. 

We are spending more time in the office these days.  I have to share my desk with Elder Sumner if we want to work together on the same project.  We have found that we work best if we each do a part separately then edit them together.  Otherwise we drive each other crazy.

We reorganized the books so that they are in the same order as the book list compiled by the Rasmussen's. 

On Thursday we met in the Service Center Conference room for a WebEx online seminar with Bruce Yerman, Elder and Sister Aland, and the area ITEP couples.  They introduced the new Mentoring program.  This is under the direction of the principal, but basically run by the ITEP couples.  Our job is to train the mentors and follow up with their mentoring work. We have two new teachers, and two student teachers, one from BYUH and one from USP.

On Saturday (Friday, Utah time) we took our picture to support the #discoverthebook Facebook event.  We joined thousands of people all over the world in testifying of the Book of Mormon. Reading it together everyday has been one of the spiritual highlights of our mission.  We recommend it to everyone who wants to obtain the blessings promised by our prophet.