Week of Sept 25, 2011

25 September, 2011 - WARD CONFERENCE WEEK

Ward Service Project - Most of the Ward
are students from Moroni High School

Today was Ward Conference, the talks at Sacrament meeting were very good.  The Bishop spoke as well as the Ward Relief Society President, Elder John Tune - who just returned from a mission in Sacramental, California bore his testimony.  The final speaker was Pres. Tune, the stake president.  All the talks were excellent.  Saturday evening we attended a baptism for a young man and young lady.  The baptism was very spiritual once it finally started (it was an hour late, because the missionaries had problems getting there.  The young man was in his early twenties and as part of the service he and his sister sang a song.  They had very good voices, he also bore his testimony as did the other sister who was being baptized.  The services were in Kirbati, so we only understood some of it, but the Spirit was present in abundance.  There was a good turnout of family and young adults to support them.  I think they might both converts are from part member families.

p

Elder Thorne and the Ogborns leading songs at the
service project.

Yesterday we went with the youth on a service project to clean up the area by the causeway outside of Betro (the site of the Battle of Tarawa).  The youth left about 5:30 am in 4 flat bed pickups.  There were over 50 students in the second pickup (including those sitting on the cab of the roof.  They drove about 10 miles to the area where they were to clean up.  There were no trash bags, so the trash was stacked up in piles about every 100 feet for over a mile or more.  Eventually they ended up in a park that borders the ocean on both sides for breakfast and lunch.

They arrived at the park about 8:30 am expecting breakfast, which finally arrived at 10 am.

We tried to entertaining them for a while singing old camp and scout songs but eventually we ran our of ideas, so the students all did their own things.  Right after breakfast three students began cooking chicken over an open fire with a large grill.  The fuel used was copra which is compressed coconuts until it becomes like ground up charcoal, only it comes in a sack and looks like gooey mud but it burns very well.  There is a factory on the island owned by the Taiwanese that produces by products from coconuts. They cooked a very large cooler of chicken legs.  It took about 4 hours to cook it all, but they stayed with it and it tasted very good.  With a couple large dutch ovens I could have sped up the process, but it was interesting to see how it was cooked on the island

Cooking Chicken Legs on a large grill using copra from
coconuts as the fuel

While we were waiting for breakfast to arrive, one of the adult supervisors borrowed our van to go back to Moroni High to see why the food hadn’t arrived.  As soon as he got in the van, students started jumping in the van, in the back and every where.  The van which had 3 bench seats ended up with 27 students in the van as it drove away.

Another beautiful sunset from our yard

Sister Thorne's picture of a sea urchin and of her toes 

A pretty flower that grow on trees near the ocean

Interesting root structure on some pandanus trees near the ocean

       Going back to the missionary work: Sister Thorne taught her institute classes. She meets with the same group of students on Thursdays for two hours, during that time she teaches two different lessons. Then repeats the same lessons on Thursdays with a different group of students. She also taught the Gospel Doctrine class. She spends much time preparing and is an excellent teacher.

        I held my first college class on Wednesday - over all it went OK, but the projector and my computer were having issues with each other as I tried to show a powerpoint lesson. The class was able to see most of the slides, but it was a good example of how not to use technology. I hope we can work out the bugs before the class on Wednesday. When you are technology impaired it becomes a challenge.

        I also found out the class by Brother Yerman from New Zealand was teach over the internet and phone bridge encountered several technological and scheduling issues. The original plan was that we would facilitate the course but instead he asked if the ITEP couples would teach it. The class also lasts for two hours and will be on Thursdays, so I will teach twice a week now. Brother Yerman will meet with us each Friday to discuss what need to be taught the following week. He has provided a syllabus and some video clips for the class. They are breaking in a couple of "greenies" really fast to the work.

        The Michigan Test, which is used to test students knowledge of English will be the third week in November. We are responsible to administer the test to approximately 100 students. Sign up for the test will start this week and we will provide some study sessions where students can take practice tests. A score of 75 is required for students to go to BYU Hawaii so it is very important to them.

         It was like Christmas this week, five flat mail packages arrived. Three of which we sent and two which Carrie sent which included some letters, some dried cranberries, jerkey and almonds. It was a nice surprise. We were told to bring a lot of mosquito repellant, sunburn lotion and other things. So far we haven’t seen only a few mosquitos and we work indoors most of the time so we have only used the sunburn lotion once. We will probably give it to the Elders working in the outer islands.

Signing off until next update!!