Week 72 in Tarawa

This week has been busy getting ready for the start of school on Monday, February 1st.  This is a picture of Michael Carthew teaching an all day workshop for the Moroni HS faculty.  He is the Director of Pacific Area schools.  Also teaching was Bruce Andreason, Area Director of Facilities.  I remember as a teacher always wishing there were less meetings and more time for preparation, but this presentation moved quickly and was, I thought, very interesting and useful to our teachers, especially the part about coming to work on time!

Sister Sumner helped Aneta, our school nurse, prepare a PowerPoint presentation to familiarize our new students with the services she offers.  They had fun with a student pretending to be sick with various aches and pains such as a tooth ache, a headache, and a stomach ache.

Open sores often get infected and become boils if not treated early, as we learned firsthand about a year ago.  Here, Aneta demonstrates how to keep a sore protected with a wrapping.

Sister Sumner's regular walking companion, Sr. Jenks, left for Christmas Island, so I agreed to walk with her one morning.  We stopped in front of the CoralAce store for this picture, which doesn't begin to capture the delicate shades of pink in the sunrise.

Here's the store mentioned in the picture above.  We shop here frequently because it's close and has a nice selection of food and goods.

On the way back from our morning walk, I happened to see this beautiful garden.  We went back later in the day and asked if we could buy some of the leaf lettuce (some call it leaf cabbage). They sold us three heads for $2.50 AUD each.

After pulling up the lettuce by the roots, they washed off the dirt, trimmed off the roots, and put them in plastic bags.  It doesn't get any fresher than this!  Notice the bouilla where they live: a palm frond roof, a floor, and no walls.  Many on this island live like this, cooking over an open wood fire and bathing in the ocean.  Their fresh water comes from rain saved in large plastic tanks or from shallow wells where the fresh water floats on top of the salt water below.  It really is like camping out all the time!

These are shells we are shipping home as reminders of our stay in Kiribati.  The large brown pointed shell in the top row was a gift to us from Tioromaia.  Others we collected during our adventures to various places on the island.

Sister Sumner captured this dramatic view of an approaching rain storm (on the right) during low tide.  The weather changes rapidly just like it does in Utah, although we never get snow! We've had some really torrential rain lately, but fortunately, no flooding.

Here I am presenting the first box of books our daughter sent for our school's library.  Marinoa is our school librarian.

Marinoa was delighted with the kinds and variety of books.  We counted 55 books in this first shipment.

We asked Marinoa, and she thought it would be nice to make a note in each book to acknowledge our daughter as the donor.  We realize there were many donors, but hers is the only name we know, and she was the one that came up with this idea and put the effort all together.  THANKS, JANET!

The circuit breaker for the lights in our apartment failed, so I replaced it.  No one was electrocuted in the making of this repair!  Locally, most people would never do this themselves, but in the states, homeowners commonly do this kind of minor maintenance.

Friday night we went with the other senior couples and our guests from New Zealand to Mary's Restaurant.  Much to our amusement, we watched the cat, which had been prowling around our feet, sneak up onto this table to eat the left over food.  Sorry it's so hard to see.  The cat is on the table right in the middle of the picture.

This afternoon (Sunday, Jan. 31st), Tioromaia (right), Eutita (left), Abiete, and Gloria (nursing in Eutita's lap) came by to watch the Pacific Area Plan video.  He had received it on a flash drive, but had no way to watch it since they don't have a computer.

Gloria, on the left, turns 1 on February 8th.  We remember when she was born and given the name Gloria Richard, after Elder and Sister Rasmussen who served here just before us.  Abiete and Gloria are both holding some toys that Sister Sumner gave them from a box sent to the Weir's by their families.  Children here rarely have what we would call toys.  They mostly make their own toys out of stuff left laying around like old tires, empty cans, and tree branches.




We have had time this week to reflect on the past 17 months.  We are often praised for the "sacrifices" we made in order to come and serve the people here.  We realize, however, that what many call sacrifices are insignificant in light of the great blessings that have been poured out on us.  As King Benjamin said, the more we try to serve Him, the more he blesses us, and we will forever be in His debt.  In the Lord's service, we cannot make any sacrifices too great, because the reward of Eternal Life is the greatest gift our Father in Heaven can give us.

Week 71 in Tarawa

 

 

This past week was filled with preparations for teaching and preparations for being taught.  The Pacific Area director of TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training), Ameet, along with the Fiji National University Director of TVET, Satendra, visited our school to train our TVET teachers and to do a presentation for the whole faculty.  We were invited to a very nice dinner Wednesday evening with the administrators and TVET teachers at the George Restaurant in Betio.

 

On Thursday, we were delighted to receive a 40 pound box of books from our daughter, Janet, who solicited books from her publisher and author friends for the Moroni High School library.  She also started a GoFundMe to raise funds for shipping the books.  This one box cost $166 to ship here.

We think the students here will be delighted to read these great books.  It's hard to see, but the set of books on the front left of the couch is the complete Harry Potter series.  We hope the other boxes come soon since school starts on February 1st.

Thursday evening a Kiribati Cultural Night was held for our visiting Seventy, Elder Tukuafu.  He will preside over the Stake Conference Saturday and Sunday, when the Tarawa East Stake will be split to create the North Tarawa District.

These men are seated around a large wooden platform used as a drum. It makes a deep, resonating boom that can be heard all over campus.  As I listened to the practices from our apartment, the boom of the drum was a very compelling call to come.  I can imagine the natives calling villagers all over the island with a drum like this.

Sister Baldwin is standing next to the ceremonial roasted pig. President Banemoni told me that it is not a celebration without a pig.  Actually, the meat tends to be a bit undercooked and tough.  When they call it the fatted pig, there is a reason.  There is a large layer of fat all around the meat.

These young girls are putting on their costumes and practicing their poses outside the administration building before the event.

You can see that the flower garlands have already been presented as these girls dance in two different styles of grass skirts.  I spoke with a sister about the grass skirts once.  She told me of the work and care that goes into each skirt.  It takes about a month to complete all of the steps involved in the making of it, and then hours of care to carefully store and take it out of storage. We always think they put these programs on so effortlessly, but in reality many hours of work go into each one.  They gather the flowers from all over the Island and carefully weave them into the garlands.  The practicing for the dance and singing started about 7:00 on Tuesday and lasted until 11:00.  Then some had a 40 minute ride home.  All the time the children were there playing and running throughout the campus.

This was taken at our two day faculty training. There were six sessions held on different areas of the school goals. We taught the next to the last class so everyone was getting pretty tired.  We tried to keep it fast paced and interactive as we taught our exciting topic of writing quality lesson plans.

Friday night after we returned home from eating out with the other seniors, this group of zone leaders stopped by.  We shared our hoarded ice cream bars with them.  We enjoy getting to know the young missionaries better.

Saturday was taken up with conference meetings.  The priesthood session was from 10:00 to 12:00 and the adult session started at 1:00.  We invited the missionaries over for  PB&J sandwiches in between sessions or they would have had nothing to eat.

As you can see, working and sitting space was limited.

We have a great group of missionaries.  Elder Kitchen told us that he was showing his love for us by drinking out of a red cup.  I said, "Don't do that for us, we're BYU fans." He kept the cup anyway.









As we mentioned earlier, our stake conference was presided over by Elder Tukuafu of the Seventy.  His purpose was to divide the East Stake and organize a new District.  We were thrilled when the District President was called and was Peter who was the school maintenance person who recently left to start his own business.  He still does all of the building maintenance and repair for our campus, but now, as a contractor, he can manage his own hours and take on other jobs as he chooses.  He will be a great District President.  He has the challenging job of growing the District into a Stake.  This area is growing and so are hopes to one day be the site of a new temple.













 

Week 70 in Tarawa

For my birthday this past week, Sister Sumner baked me a cherry pie! (She can bake a cherry pie, quick as you can wink an eye; she's a young thing and cannot leave  her mother.)  The 2 cans of pie cherries were purchased in Australia during our trip there last month since they're not available on Tarawa.  In this picture she's rolling out the crust.

Now that the filling is in, she's rolling out the top crust.  Notice how cleverly she uses a baking sheet to keep the crust from sticking to the rolling pin.  In the picture above, I had her remove the baking sheet to show the dough she was working on.

With the heart cut out on top (true love), the pie is ready for the oven.

Here I am, cutting the pie into 9 slices for our senior couple family home evening treat.

Lighting the candles.

Getting ready to blow out the candles after everyone sang Happy Birthday accompanied by me on the piano, just like at home!

These are 5 of my pie eating assistants.  From left to right: Sister Waldron, Elder Waldron, Elder Jenks, Sister Jenks, and Sister Alldredge.

The other 2 pie eating assistants are Elder and Sister Olson.  Note the piano I've borrowed from the choir room during the school break.  The pie maker and birthday boy are in the background.

We taught EDU 430 Classroom Management in the TALL lab each day this past week from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.  We had 6 students, but 2 of them were taking the class for professional development rather than BYUH Teaching Certificate credit.  What you can't hear in this picture is the jack hammer breaking up the concrete porch in front of houses 8 and 9 just outside the room.

Aneta, our school nurse, Miiran, our music/choir teacher, and Tereke, our carpentry teacher, are hard at work during class.

So are Tipo (left) and Kevin (right).  Tipo is one of our Vice Principals and Kevin is our new computer science teacher.

Each day Sister Sumner provided a nice snack to break up the 5 hour long class.

On Wednesday, however, the class members turned the tables and brought me a birthday cake.

So once again everyone sang Happy Birthday and I had to blow out some more candles.  I know it's a tough job, but it's only once a year.

I requested spaghetti for my birthday dinner, and once again, Sister Sumner came through.  Yumm!

On Saturday we went with Sister Alldredge to visit some sister apartments.  Sister Tiatia, seated on the bed, has been fighting a cold.  Although the picture is small and hard to see, you get an idea of the living conditions the young elders and sisters endure.  You can see the mosquito netting above the bed.

The tap water in their apartment was not working, so they collect rain water off the roof and use it for drinking as well as washing.  It's amazing they're not sick more often than they are.

This is the view behind one of the sister apartments.  It's so idyllic and yet so poverty stricken.

Saturday afternoon we had a baptism on campus.  All four youngsters are from different families. Some were taught by the sisters and some by the elders.

I thought about cropping this picture to better show the baptism, but instead wanted you to get a feel for the vastness of the surrounding ocean.

The baptism was supposed to start at 5 p.m., but we had to wait for one of the baptism candidates to show up.  We actually started the baptismal service around 6:30.  That gave me about an hour and a half to play prelude music.  During that time, I worked up a musical number with Elder Ah-to, who has a beautiful singing voice.  He sang "I'm trying to be like Jesus".  As the evening wore on while we waited, we had a beautiful sunset, which accounts for the pink colored windows behind me.

Sister Sumner took this picture looking west out of the chapel windows, but it doesn't begin to show the wonderful colors.

The elders and sisters finally finished the New Year's puzzle this week.  We were able to help some, but they did most of the work.  Try as I might, I could not get the blogger program to load this picture correctly.  The original really is right side up.  I even tried making the original upside down, and it still wouldn't load it correctly.  Oh well.  It's getting late, so you'll just have to stand on your heads to see it right.





Janet and I were both asked to speak in sacrament meeting today, Sunday January 17th, in addition to her teaching the Relief Society Lesson and me teaching the Sunday School lesson.  She spoke about the Area Plan regarding honoring the Sabbath Day at home as well as at church.  I spoke about the Area Plan goal of seeking the blessings of the temple.  It was a spiritual feast for us both to prayerfully consider what we could say to touch their hearts and lift their spirits.  We felt the spirit as we delivered our messages and taught our lessons.  Doing what the Lord asks us to do is never a burden if we do it with the spirit of the Holy Ghost.  We've had a Sabbath Day that was truly a delight, as Elder Nelson said in a recent conference talk.