We are still working to get the wheelchairs out of port.  Seriously! Their system leaves much to be desired. We are lucky that we have a very influential person as a member of parliament.  She has actually hired someone just to help people get their stuff out of port.  Yes, it's that bad.  But good news: the wheelchairs will be delivered to the hospital on Monday.  

Moroni High School had a visiting teacher/senior missionary come with a new curriculum for their carpentry part in their vocational/trade section.  He brought with him new equipment like table saw, drill press, etc.  He has already implemented this program into two of the church schools here in the pacific and will do a third school in a couple of months. He suggested we look into getting the equipment for a government school here. So we met with King George the Fifth High School's principal.  He had already got the curriculum passed through the education ministry and can provide the lumber.  All they need now is the equipment.  I have them getting me invoices so we can put in the project. 

The power outages are becoming routine. It goes out between 6-9 am and doesn't come back on until 6-6:30 pm on the weekdays.  Being without air conditioning is very doable.  However, we need access to the internet to do our job here.  We were going to Moroni High School to the service center there to use their internet, but we are inconveniencing people there.  And there is no privacy for meetings or phone calls home.  Elder and Sister Duke who are senior missionaries serving as the dentist at the dental clinic which just opened here, said we could use their apartment which is located on Moroni campus and always has power.  Such gracious people. We love them. 

Speaking of becoming friends with other senior missionaries, we spent a Saturday hiking/walking across a couple of our northern islets here with Elder Stoddard.  It was so calm and peaceful...and hot.  But we loved it.  We are also learning to play pickleball. Every Tue/Thurs 6-8pm.  And then there is the occasional meet together at a restaurant or game/movie night.  What fun!


Now this is my kind of Relief Society - Shoe's off, feet up 

One of the villages we saw on our walk in North Tarawa

Keith, Elder Stoddard, and myself

Keith playing pickleball 

Teresa is an employee of  Shipping Agency of  Kiribati (SAOK). 
 She helped us get the wheelchairs out.  
She is also the sister of out landlords wife - small world or should I say - small island 









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bureaucracy at it's Best

Image
 Most of our week was spent trying to get a convection oven that is used to make prosthetics out of customs and on it's way to the hospital on Kiritimati Island. It was donated by LDS charities and has been sitting at the dock here on Tarawa for almost a year.  So we got all the paperwork we needed (or so we thought), and went to Betio to where the port authorities were located. Met with a man there who spoke every little English and he told us we needed another document and that we could get it from Tamwango. He gave us directions and drew us a map to his house.  So we followed his directions and ended up at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Energy (MISE). Someone there told us we were close and gave us better directions along with his email address.  Hurray!  It is now after 5:00 and all government offices are closed. So we went home and email the man.  He was very prompt in returning our email which is not normal here in Kiribati. But what h...
Read more

Outer Island Experience

Image
  Traditional coconut water - straight from the coconut We had the best week!  We went to the southern islands of Beru and Onotoa  with several people including Uraia, our supervisor; E/S Brock, Service missionaries and Project Managers over the Desalination project; Epeli, Suez engineer; Willie, Suez consultant; Eretai, Construction Manager; Gideon, from OB office in charge of emergency preparedness, and Regina, woman extraordinaire who took care of every single detail of our trip! I count it as a great blessing to have been in the company of such good people.  We were there to evaluate the first phase of getting clean water to 20 outer islands. Beru and Onotoa were 2 of 5 islands to receive a desalination plant.   What?!  I didn't get a group picture at the beginning?  Ugh Our trip started at the airport at 5:00 am.  Nothing ever goes perfectly and this was no exception. There was a little mix-up with the flight reservations which was event...
Read more
Image
 We have another boat project from a different North Tarawa islet, Anatoa.  Yes, it is a copy cat project. However, it can still do the same amount of good as the first one. And we knew this would happen.  This one was harder to put together just because of the personality and skill set of the senior missionary who was requesting the boat.  I sent him home to revise his plan for "sustainability" several times.  But once he got the entire community involved, it came together beautifully.  We submitted it and the committee wanted an evaluation of the first boat project before they recommended approval for the second project.  That's very fair.  We, as project managers, cannot do the evaluation, so Uraia came from Fiji to Nabeina to do the evaluation.  He found that their original plan for maintaining the boat didn't work out so well, so they changed it and now it is working quite well.  It has really improved the living conditions of the v...
Read more