Weeks 39 and 40 in Tarawa

Besides being an uneventful week, the internet was down for most of the weekend last week, so we never got our blog sent out.  Sorry about that.  This week, on the other hand was very busy and full of fun events.  On June 13th, we were invited to tour the USS Millenocket, a humanitarian hospital ship going around the south Pacific islands.  The ship is only two months old, and is a very new and strange design.  As you can see, it is a twin hull vessel.  What you can't see is that it's made almost entirely of aluminum.  As a result, is has a top speed of around 40 knots.

Here are some of our group on the helicopter flight deck.  From right to left you see Sister Sumner, Sister Alldredge, and Elder and Sister Bogh.

This is the lounge area of the ship.  It is a place for the ship's crew and the ship's mission personnel to relax.  The mission personnel consist of doctors, dentists, optometrists, psychologists, and even musicians.  Foreground left to right are Sister Bogh, Sister Alldredge, and Elder Bogh.  The ship's crew is fairly small, only about 26 people.  The mission includes about 240 people, however.

This is one of the fanciest life rafts I've ever seen

On Wednesday, June 17th, the ship's brass band came to Moroni High School for a 45 minute concert.  The kids were thrilled, and the band members told us ours was the best audience they had played for.  Sister Sumner and I even got to dance a little.

One of the reasons this past week has been so busy is that we've had many visitors.  Jon Shute and a group of 15 BYUH students from Kiribati arrived on the 15th, along with auditors and TVET people from New Zealand.  Ameet Khumar and Bruce Andreasen joined us for a post devotional breakfast Tuesday morning.

We've been having lots of problems with the generators that provide us electricity when the daily road construction turns off our power every morning around 7 a.m.  If we're lucky, we can collect buckets of rain water to use to flush our toilet.  If it's not raining, the bathroom smells kind of gross until the power comes back on around 5 or 6 in the afternoon.

Sunday after church the Relief Society and Primary prepared a wonderful surprise treat for Father's Day.  With our church getting out at 3 p.m., it was 4 p.m.by the time we finished.  The senior missionaries had planned a welcome back meal for President and Sister Weir at 5:30.  Needless to say, we weren't very hungry for the second meal.  The senior dinner was also
a farewell for Elder and Sister Waldron who are returning to the U.S. for medical treatment.  We hope they'll be able to return in a month or two.

Here's my Father's Day present from Sister Sumner.  She baked me a cherry and an apple pie for our senior dinner on Father's Day.  Boy, were they yummy.  These are the first pies she's made since coming to Kiribati.  We were really lucky to find a jar of sour pie cherries several months ago, and had been saving them for this occasion.

Here's all that was left after the senior's dinner.  Oh well, I didn't really need the extra calories.  Besides, it was fun to share with the other senior couples.

This has also been a busy week because we were asked to help with several church programs.  Friday, June 19th, the Eita 1st ward asked us to give our "Equally Yoked" husband and wife presentation to their ward.  This is the same program we gave to the Husband and Wife retreat for the Moroni High School faculty and spouses last month.  On Saturday, Janet was the main speaker at the Tarawa East Stake Relief Society Conference.  She did a marvelous job.  I organized a musical number and accompanied the opening and closing hymns.  In this picture, the sisters are learning how to make flowers out of Pandanus leaves. Sunday (today) She also presented the Relief Society lesson.  Whew.  No wonder time is flying by so fast.