Anxiously Engaged in Kiribati

 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...

  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...