Well, here it is August 13. The summer is flying by! We are FINALLY starting to do the orientations for the new Seminary and Institute teachers. Yesterday we went out to Romanum and Paata islands to train new teachers. We met with the Romanum teacher and had a good orientation with her. But the Paata teacher is having some difficulties now and did not think he would teach this coming year, so we did not do the orientation. We were soooo disappointed, as we were really hoping to get those two done in one trip.
We are still trying to figure out ways to help the non-English-speaking teachers teach the Book of Mormon this year. They have only selections from the Book of Mormon in Chuukese. Less than half of the Book of Mormon has been translated into Chuukese. So, it is our responsibility to help them do the best they can with the limited scriptures that they have.
We are doing well and enjoying our work here. We have learned about 700 words in Chuukese, so we can communicate a little bit. Sure wish we could speak Chuukese fluently now! We need to find a tutor to help us.
Sister Duncan has undertaken a project to create an English-to-Chuukese dictionary for couple missionaries. So far, she has over 2000 words in it….all words that will be useful for couple missionaries to know, and NO words about sea spirits, fishing, canoes, traditional gods, warfare, coconuts, or breadfruit!
We just completed teaching the Temple Preparation classes and Sister Duncan is working with one of the families to get their genealogy ready to go to the temple. We have had to use our computer as the only one in all the branches is down right now. The picture posted is Sister Duncan helping Marsine Joseph learn the computer and enter her family on new.familysearch.
Our daughter was married in the Bountiful Temple on August 4th. The kids have posted lots of pictures of the happy bride and groom, so we almost feel like we were there!
Seminary and Institute will begin on September 1st, so we are busy trying to get every teacher in every branch ready to start. With few phones, 4 branches on outer islands, and the language problem, it is a challenge! But we are up to it!