Physically and Spiritually Fed

 It's been a whirlwind week.  Elder Jaggy of the Seventy of the Pacific Area Presidency and his wife came to Tarawa.  They held a missionary conference for all young and senior missionaries.  It was a spiritual feast. They brought all missionaries, even those from the outer islands, including Kiritimati (Christmas Island) to Tarawa to be at the conference.  Kiritimati is a 5 hour flight one way.  It was fun talking with those young elders and hearing their stories of living conditions there and the people they are teaching and serving.  We have some of the most amazing young missionaries!

Dinner with President Kendall (Mission Leader), Elder Tune (Area Seventy), Elder Jaggy (2nd Coucilor Area Presidency) and senior couples

Next we had our boss, Uraia and his boss, Taulia come to Tarawa.  The four of us met with the hospital officials not only about the road project but any other needs they may have.  Keith and I met with them earlier in the week to "prime the pump" for this meeting.  Keith kept saying "Think big! What else do you need?"  I think they finally got it, because they prepared a beautiful PowerPoint presentation.  Since we are still waiting for necessary documentation from the government here for the road project, it probably won't fund until next year.  So we have a fairly big budget we need to use up.  So here are some of the projects we are thinking about doing. 

1.  Finishing the eye clinic at the hospital. It is 2/3 done and they ran out of funding from the government. 

2. Getting the Nursing school here a new server. Their old one is no longer working and they can't get any online training from other countries which they depend on.  

3. Re-stocking the Natural Emergency containers.  

Those who attended the meeting at the hospital. 

All of this will take time to get the necessary information and documentation to propose the project, which by the way could be rejected at any point of the process.  But these projects will never get done if we don't try.  

Keith and I also received some extensive training from Uraia and Taulia. Most of which was - "Everything you learned in the MTC, forget it, we do things differently in the Pacific."  With this training came a lot of food.  I haven't eaten this much since we left the US.  

We ended the week with a Friday night dinner at an outdoor "Restaurant" with the Senior couples serving in Kiribati from the US and this beautiful sunset. Hopefully no one gets tired of pictures of God's creations, we don't.

View from KoaKoa's Corner

Wish us luck as we start doing what we came here to do.