Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Well, it has been WAY too long since we last updated this Blog! Shame on us. But we really have been quite busy. Here is what we have done this summer:




We have taught Temple Preparation classes on Romanum island. There were 5 people in the class: two young couples and one older man. Romanum has only ONE endowed member and she spends much of her time here on Weno island. Anyway, we went by boat out to Romanum every Wednesday morning for 7 weeks. Romanum is a BEAUTIFUL island, and we enjoy going there.




We also had the opportunity to hike up to the top of Romanum with the Elders when they went up there for baptismal interviews. Great family up there. They will be a wonderful addition to the Branch there.








Also, we have taught English classes in both the Mwan Branch and the Mechitiw Branch. We have a lot of fun with those classes. Most of the students are the young people. But some adults usually attend. English is taught in the schools, but some kids do not go to school. We have one girl in Mechitiw who is 14 years old and has never gone to school. She will begin attending school this fall. She can’t read at all…..not even Chuukese.




We also attended a Couple’s Conference in Guam in July. That was fun and very informative as well. We played putt-putt golf and shopped at a Mall. Those things are unheard of here in Chuuk.


Now we are busy preparing for this coming school year. We had Inservice Meeting on Aug. 7, and 8 teachers attended. But we were very surprised to find that some of them do not read and understand English. Since ALL of the teaching materials are in English this year, we assumed that all the teachers would be able to read English. But, not so. It’s going to be a challenge to help those teachers this year, but we are up for the challenge!
Right now we are busy doing personal one-on one orientations with the teachers. We are half done. This Saturday we will go to Uman island and do orientations for the two teachers there. They are very young (not yet 20). But the District President has called them to teach, so they will do the best they can.
This summer has been cooler than last summer and we are SO grateful!! We have had very few miserably hot days. Plus island power has been on again-off again most of the summer. So we have been on back-up generator quite a lot, and we can run all three A/C units for FREE when we are on generator! We take very opportunity to cool the apartment down.
The HORRIBLE roads here in Chuuk are being re-done, but it is very slow progress. I do not think we will see any completed roads before we leave here the end of November.
We love our mission here. We have learned SO MUCH about how the church grows in these far-away corners of the world. We love the people here. And we can speak the language well enough to communicate with the people. And so the adventure continues!

3 comments:

Jenn Duncan said...

It has been a busy summer! Loved the pictures. Even though I read updates on the family site from you, it's great to read them on here too. Love you both very much!

Libby Clarke said...

We love to hear what you are doing. It amazes me how much work you do and makes me glad that we are in the office. We enjoyed seeing you at the couples conference. It is too bad there are not more opportunities like that. Keep up the good work.

nita said...

I haven't checked your blog for a long time. It is so good to see things are still moving forward in the islands. It seems forever ago that we were on Pohnpei, but we still have contact with those there. In fact in Aug. we saw 3 people in Provo, Utah from Pohnpei and had a wonderful visit with them. They tried to feed us more than we could ever eat. Sound familiar?
Love to get in touch with you when you return in November.