Hospital Road Ground Breaking

 

traditional dancers

During our first week on Tarawa we were introduced to Secretary Benny of the Ministry of Health.  One of the projects we talked about was replacing the dirt road on the hospital campus with a cement road.  Plans had already been drawn up and approved. It has been a year since then and we finally had the ground breaking ceremony to start this construction.  It will be such a blessing to everyone.  Not only will it improve the cleanliness of the hospital by keeping down the dust clouds and mud, but driving on it was like driving on moguls on a black diamond hill.  It was a real life 4-wheeling experience in a Toyota Rush.  So glad this project is finally off the ground.  I hope they finish the road before we go home.  

Set up for ground breaking

The President of Kiribati arriving - what an honor!

More traditional dancers

Elder Tune (Area Seventy) speaking

ground breaking by the eldest member of the community

Keith and Deputy Secretary Agnes dancing

Honored Guests: 
L-R   Security,  Minister of Health, President of Kiribati, Elder and Sister Tune, 
Minister of Women, children and churches (Ruth)


It would be so wrong to live in Kiribati and never go fishing. It is such a large part of their culture.  
We were invited to go fishing by our WSR-Timau, along with E/S Frehner (Kiribati Pathway missionaries) and E/S Keith (Marshal Island Pathway missionaries) .  It rained the whole time, but it was so much fun.  We caught a 40 pound wahoo fish.  Timau fileted it for us.  It was so good! We shared it with all the senior missionaries.  Thanks you for that experience.  



The "Gratitude" - Church owned boat 

Baiting the hook 

Elder Frehner reeling in the fish

40 pound Wahoo

Keith and I on the boat

Cutting up the fish

E/S Frehner, E/S Keith, E/S Redmond


We attended "Cultural Day" at the special school along with Sister Marten (Mission Nurse).  The children sang and danced for us.
What a cutie

I have fallen in love with these children

Dancing is always a part of a celebration


There is a large Catholic population here on Tarawa.  There was a national day of mourning the day of Pope Francis's funeral. 

The Young Women of our ward came to RS and  
each expressed their love and gratitude to their mothers.
Then they sang for us. 

Time doth softly, sweetly glide when there's love at home.  -  Happy Mother's Day!

Love to all










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