Long over-due update

Since people have been asking us to post again, I will take a few minutes to update our blog.  We have been here for over eight months now.  We survived our first winter quite nicely.  It was not nearly as cold as it is back in Wyoming!  But a lot more snow.  The locals tell us this past winter was a mild one.
Now it is spring and so lovely.  There are so many different types of plants here.  On P-day this week we went exploring around Blair Lake.  So lush and green!
The work continues to move forward.  We still have not found all the Branch members.  The area this Branch covers is huge!  And many of the less-active members have been "lost" for many years.  President Duncan has lost one of his counselors (they moved away), and the Elder's Quorum President has been released, so his work load has increased considerably.  This week he is working closely with his one remaining counselor trying to get Home Teaching up and going again. 
The people here are so friendly.  There is a good feeling in the Branch now.  But another family is moving away in August,....there goes our Primary president! 
We are so grateful to be serving here in Amherst.  We love the people, the town, our apt, and the fact that we can do our work here IN ENGLISH!!  We can buy just about anything we want here, so we are not losing weight like we did on our first mission. 
BTW, a wonderful couple by the name of Tiffany is now serving in Chuuk and we get lots of pictures and updates from them.  It has been so much fun to reconnect with our Chuukese friends by way of the Tiffanys! 
So, long story short: we are happy and well and enjoying our mission in the Maritimes.  These are precious children of our Heavenly Father, and we know He wants them to hear the Gospel and return to Him.  The elect of God are being gathered in preparation for the glorious return of our Savior.  It's a wonderful work to be involved in.

We are in Amherst, Nova Scotia

We spent a week driving east in mid-September and now we are settled in our apartment in Amherst. Elder Duncan has been assigned to serve as the Branch President in the Amherst Branch. It is a small branch, but the members are very friendly and loving. The weather has been just gorgeous since we arrived, but we hear that they have pretty severe winters here. We brought lots of winter clothes, so we are ready! The leaves are turning colors and every day the scenery looks more and more stunning! The town is very quaint and lovely and the folks are soooo friendly!! Lots of large, old, gorgeous homes. There is plenty of shopping, with two large grocery stores, and a WalMart and two other department stores. And lots of restaurants and fast food places. We are thrilled to be here.

Another Mission Call!

We have received a call to serve for 23 months in the Canada Halifax Mission. Our assignment is Member and Leader Support. We will enter the MTC on Sept 5, 2011. We are very excited to be heading to eastern Canada. Again, we will be serving on islands, but this time, northern Atlantic islands! Sue's maternal grandfather was born in Nova Scotia and raised in Yarmouth, so she is super excited to be called to serve there.

NOW we can go on another mission!

We have been back in the States for 6 months now. We had hoped to be on another mission by now, but medical checkups revealed that Elder Duncan had prostate cancer, so he had surgery and has recovered. The doctor has given us the 'thumbs up', so we are now cleared to send in our mission papers.

SAPUK SOCIAL

On November 13, 2010 we did an S&I social in Sapuk. This was for about half our students, just the ones which live on Weno Island. About 75-80 young people attended. We began with a short meeting, then we had a carnival and the kids had fun with ringtoss, bean-bag toss, a scripture mastery activity, Limbo, and puzzles (Mormon-ad posters, cut into pieces). After a while we got volleyball started and then set up two tables of ping pong. The kids had a good time. The District Presidency provided meals for all of us, and then we handed out cookies.

Our S&I Supervisor came and brought a video. As you can see, the kids really enjoyed it.

Suetriann tossing a beanbag. The object was to land one beanbag on a Chuukese word, and the second beanbag on the matching word in English. If you were successful, you got a candy!

The scripture mastery game "Run to the Board" was a hit! Here two girls from the Mwan branch compete to see who can write the correct reference first and get a candy!

Brandy Henry from Mwan and Suetriann Ande from Sapuk ready to "run to the board"! Notice that each of them is trying to hold the other one back.

Osimichy Kata of Sapuk, trying his skill going under the Limbo bar.

The carnival. The kids had fun and enjoyed the candy "prizes" they won.

The ring toss game was very popular. There were 17 questions that the students could answer, depending on which number they got. Questions about church history, scripture mastery, and local church leaders.

Freddie Nicerio, our S&I supervisor from Guam, and President Matasio Wainis, the District President.

Ensenina Stanley and Niena Kin from the Mechitiw Branch.

Three young ladies from Sapuk. Suetrian Ande, Elaine Choffat, Soreana Onno.

Seminary and Institute on Chuuk

We have almost completed our first month of Seminary and Institute classes for the 2010-2011 year. We have visited all the different classes and we remembered to take pictures of most of them, but not all. I will post the ones that we have pictures of and when we go back again I will take pictures, if I remember. Then if I remember I will post them later.

We have over 100 kids registered in Seminary and Institute in Chuuk right now. They are attending in 9 different classes on 4 different islands. The District Presidency tries very hard to have local teachers do the teaching. So we help them learn what needs to be done and how to do it. We meet with all the teachers once a month and have them come in by boat to attend. We teach a 2 hour or 2.5 hour inservice meeting. But we involve the teachers heavily in that. They do part of the teaching, using their own experiences to help others learn.

These are our teachers, gathered in Mwan's new building for our Inservice Meeting.

These are the Students that attended Mechitiw's Seminary and Institute class. They are a great group of kids. The boy on the left does a lot of translating for us if we need him to. He is good with both Chuukese and English.

This is Mwan's Institute class. They are a wonderful group of kids and Sandra Matisima is a wonderful teacher. She has taught for many years, both Seminary and Institute.

Romanum's class is being taught by Missionaries because their teacher quit before the first class of the year. But they think they have another teacher now so the Missionaries will not be the teachers, if the individual accepts the calling.

The Missionaries (one on each side) teach in Sapuk. It is a combined Seminary and Institute class and they took most of the honors at last years Scripture Chase. But it was a different set of Missionaries teaching back then. They have great class participation and love their class.


Mwan's Seminary Class is our largest one. They only had 13 here this day, but most of the time they have about 23 attending. Oriko Ewar is a great teacher and she has a lot of enthusiasm which carries over to the kids.


This was our smallest class. There are 2 girs in the class and the teacher. I was explaining some things to them when Sister Duncan took the picture. The teacher just graduated from Seminary last year and she is only 17 years old.

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!