District and Zone Conferences

President & Sister Dowdle, Elder & Sister Stevenson, and E/S Wright

On March 5 - 6, 2011 we held our District Conference.  Our Mission President, President Dowdle and his wife, along with the  Asia North Area President, Elder Gary Stevenson and his wife were the presiding authorities.  Elder Stevenson is a member of the 1st Quorum of Seventy.  Meetings were held throughout the day on Saturday and an adult session in the evening.  We had a good attendance at these meetings.  On Sunday we held two different sessions.  Many local members spoke on a variety of doctrinal subjects.  It was very uplifting.    Elder Stevenson talked about us being the lower lights and Christ is the lighthouse.  He gave a great presentation of what it means to be one of the lower lights and how Christ needs our help to guide people to him.  President Dowdle talked about the exceeding great and precious promises in 2 Peter 1:2 So that we can be partakers of the divine nature.  He told of three things that we need to do to partake of the divine nature.  First, we need to remain humble, next we need to be obedient and keep the commandments so that we can be more godlike, and 3^rd we need to give our heart to God, by doing so we need to change our heart.  Both of their wives also talked and we learned about service and feasting upon the words of Christ.  This was a great spiritual time for everyone present.

Some of the Young Women from our Chorus

 Our District President, President Jonathan asked me, Sister Wright, to help get a special musical number ready for this conference.  He wanted the young women to sing.  Then he proceeded to tell me that he wanted to bring tears to the eyes of those visiting authorities who would be there.  That was a little bit of pressure as I am not proficient in that area, but I said that sure I can help do that.  We chose the song "If the Savior Stood Beside Me."  There were a total of about 15 who sang including the girls and their leaders.  What beautiful voices they had so it was not hard to do this song.  I think we accomplished our purpose as it was very touching and added much to the meeting.

Our Young Elders Andrew, Lapeyrouse, Sturm and Madsen

On Monday we had our Zone Conference with both Elder Stevenson and President Dowdle.  I had never attended a zone conference and it has been many years (abt. 45) since Elder Wright had been to one when he was a young missionary.  What a great meeting we had with one session held in the morning and another one held in the afternoon.  If was very obvious why these two men had been called to the positions that they held.  We learned so much.  A lot of time was given to help us thoroughly understand Jacob 5 on the scattering and gathering of Israel.  President Dowdle taught about the principle of obedience and diligence.  The Elders in this zone are the best.  Each of them presented a lesson and thoughts from Preach My Gospel.   They are all pretty young and you would have thought that they'd had more experience in this area from the things that they taught.  As the senior sister in this zone I had the privilege of serving lunch to this group.  Everything turned out good and we all had an enjoyable time visiting together during our lunch break. 

Tsunami Warning

View of ocean from our mountain high place

We had just finished our seminary scripture mastery class and arrived home when we got a call from one of the Elders telling us that a Tsunami warning for all of the Pacific Islands was issued because of the earthquake that had just shaken Japan with an 8.9 earthquake.  He told us that we needed to get some water, food, weather protection items and some clothes and meet them at their apartment.  He actually found out about the tsunami because his own father heard about it (in Arizona of all places) and was able to call and tell him to get a hold of the mission office and find out what there plans were for us.  It was such a surprise as we had not heard about it or even felt any tremors.  We are thankful that he called because we were then able to call the mission home and we found out that they hadn't been able to get in touch with us.  They said to go to higher ground right away.  There was an evacuation plan that we were to follow, but we sure did not know of any such plan.  What a blessing it was to have the Elders who knew what we were to do. We followed the Elders on this dirt road that led up the mountain to where there was a water packing plant. As all dirt roads are here in Kosrae, it was very narrow and filled with chuck holes. It was a very high area, almost to the top of the mountain, and we felt so safe up there.  All four of us stayed there for the entire night because our radio kept saying that the warning was still in effect.  When the first light of morning appeared we decided to go back down as the radio said it was safe again.  In the end, the tsunami never did hit our island and were we glad about that.

Here is the mountain that we were on and it is easy to see that we were very near the top.  I think that this was one of the highest places that we could have gone for safety and not too many other people even came up there.  Maybe it had to do with the fact that the road was not so good to travel on or that it took us a while to reach it.  Later the next day we drove around and looked at some of the other sites that people used for safety.  There were certain areas suggested by the government for people to use  None were as high as where we went, but they probably would have worked.  They were much more crowded.

This view was taken from the top of a hill by the courthouse in Tofol.  It was another good spot that people could go to escape tsunamis.  It was not nearly as high as the one the mission told us to use, but it worked for many people. Transportation is always a problem here and many people had to depend on friends, family or neighbors to help take them to safety.