25 September, 2011 TARAWA

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 sister who was being baptized.  The services were in Kirbati, so we only understood some of it, but the Spirit was present.  There was a good turnout of family and young adults to support them.  I think they might both be from part member families.

Yesterday we went with the youth on a service project to clean up the road side on the causeway just before you get to 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 about every 100 feet into large piles for over a mile.  They ended up in a park that borders the ocean on both sides where they had breakfast and lunch.

They arrived at the park about 8 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 ran our of ideas, so they 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.  The cooked a very large container of chicken legs.  It took them about 4 hours to cook it all, but they stayed with it and it tasted very good. 

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.

There were activities every night leading up the Ward Conference.  On Monday we had 8 students at our house for family home evening.  They will be our family home evening student group with whom we will meet at least once a month.  Tuesday was mutual night and Elder and Sister Ogborn kept them busy with some outdoor games.  On Wednesday evening was movie night, which we were in charge of because we have a projection unit.  We started to show Secretariat, but there was too much dialog and the students were restless, so we changed it to a Disney movie “Bolt” which was really lame but the kids enjoyed the action mixed with some humor.  On Thursday they held a scripture chase, and on Friday it was game night.  The Bishop was in charge and each family home evening group formed the teams for competition.  He did ladders on the basketball court, it is a conditioner basketball coaches use.  From the end line they run to the free throw line and back, then to mid court and back, then to the other free throw line and back and then the full length of the court and back.  Small orange cones were placed at each line and they had to pick them up and return them to place in a stack where they started.  Most of the young men and women running were bare footed, they are good athletes and ran very fast.  Of the six teams our FHE group took second place.

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.

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.  Hope we can work out the bugs before the class on Wednesday.

I also found out the class by Brother Yerman that was to be delivered electronically had several technology and scheduling issues, so they 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.

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.

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.