Week 56 in Tarawa

 

Just another sunset in paradise (actually Kiribati).

In preparation for the visit of several heads of state including the Prince of Monaco, the Moroni High School students cleaned up the beach across the road from the school.

 

 

This is the Christmas program from this past week.  We have the program this early because some of the students go home at the end of October.  This suits Sister Sumner just fine since for her the Christmas season begins after October General Conference!

 

Tuesday, October 6th, was Sister Alldredge's birthday.  It was hard to keep it a secret, but we did it.  We knocked on her door with the elders and sang Happy Birthday, after which she blew out her candles.

 

After blowing out her candles, we went inside for a wonderful birthday meal of pizza, which everyone enjoyed as a special and rare treat.  There was none left over.  The dessert was a wonderful carrot cake made by Sister Sumner.

 

Friday morning I got out the telescope to see the conjunction of the Moon with Venus.  Many missionaries and some students and guards were able to see it also.

 

 

I took this picture with my cell phone showing crescent shaped Venus towards the lower right and the crescent Moon on the far left.

 

Now that we have been here a year, we start to see repeats of things we experienced last year, like the early Christmas program and, on Thursday afternoon, a teacher's day celebration.  This year it was a little hectic because there were many leaders of other small countries visiting Kiribati and the ministry asked students to line the road and wave as the motorcade drove by.  This was at the same time that the students had planned a teachers' day celebration.  They ended up letting school out right after lunch so there would be time to do both.  This is one of the signs that decorated the cultural hall.

The teachers were presented with garlands, both leis and head garlands.  These were all made of leaves, I suspect that it would take all the flowers on campus to do flowered ones.

Here are Elder Sumner and I wearing our garlands.

Some of the boys in the dorms have organized a group that they call by the creative name of "Dorm Boys".  They love to perform and everyone loves to watch them perform.  They are really good at the traditional dances.

The girls don't have a group, so they chose one of the best dancers to represent them.  The tub at her feet is part of a funny thing they do here.  When a dancer is good people will come up and spray her or him with perfume and put a tub down for gifts.  I've never really seen any gifts in the tub, just the tub.  Notice the students standing outside the window? There was plenty of  room inside for everyone, but many students refuse(even after repeated invitations) to come inside and just stand outside and look in the windows.

Along with everything else, this week was also parent conferences.  It was originally scheduled two weeks ago but the poor internet connections made it impossible for teachers to get the grades done.  Now there isn't much time for students to make improvements.  School ends in November for most and this month for the form 3's (9th grade).  Unlike in America; when they finish their exams, they are finished for the year.

 

Saturday morning Tioromaia and Iutita stopped by before conference and we invited them to breakfast.  Gloria is growing fast, she enjoyed eating a banana and some toast, and drank milk from a glass. It was rainy and cool as we went to conference, I could imagine that the weather was not that different than in Utah.  When we got home and saw the pounding surf out of our back window, it didn't look like Utah at all.

This past week has also been a beehive of activity for work on house 7.  We are having two special guests coming next week, John Bell, Academic V.P. of BYUH, and President Pearson of the Seventy, who is our Area President.  The work crew has painted the house inside and out, replaced the overhead fans, replaced the lights, and installed new windows.  It's looking very nice.

As we have listened to conference, we have been impressed with the wonderful and timely messages.  We felt the spirit testify to us of the truthfulness of the words spoken.  We hope you all took the opportunity to listen and be filled spiritually.  One talk that we particularly like was the one by Bradley D. Foster who told the story of Pablo being interviewed to serve a mission.  Pablo was well prepared because of the things that his father had taught him.  Each year he took the opportunity to warn Pablo of the kinds of experiences he might expect that year.  The father also let Pablo know that he could and should come talk with him as he experienced these trials.  We wished that we had heard this talk years ago or better yet, thought of it ourselves.  We would encourage all of you parents to take this message to heart and have those conversations with our grandchildren.  The title of the talk is "Never too Early, Never too late." so we are trusting that we are not too late.