Trip to Pohnpei

We had the privilege of spending one week on the island of Pohnpei which is 344 miles and just one hour flying time from our island of Kosrae.  All of the missionaries along with us were attending a joint zone conference with the missionaries on Pohnpei.  We never thought we would have the opportunity to visit any of the other islands in our mission.  So this was a real treat.

A picture of an atoll taken from the airplane

 Pohnpei island is the largest island in the Federated States of Micronesia with a land area of 344 km. It is a deeply indented and jagged circle that has on outer barrier reef, an intertidal lagoon, mangrove forests, and a central mountain rain forest.  It is known as the "Garden Island" and is very lush and green.  They have a population of around 34,000, just about 6  times as many as we have on Kosrae.  There are 25 smaller widely scattered coral atolls which lie outside the barrier reef, but most of the people live on the main island.  They do not have any sandy beaches on the main island only Mangrove forests.

Because this island is so much larger it has 12
missionaries serving there along with one senior
couple.  There are about 1600 members of the Church and 7 branches.  The weekend that we were there they dedicated a new chapel in Palikir.  It is very beautiful and we had Elder Gary Stevenson of the 70 there for the dedication.  Termites are a major problem here on these islands and so they used a special wood brought in from New Zealand that is supposed to be termite proof.  It was used inside the chapel and other parts of the church as part of the decor.


On Saturday they had a celebration where each of the branches performed a local native dance and some did special singing groups.  It was delightful and many people attended.  After the program there was a large dinner served.  All of this was done outside and they brought in huge tent type awnings for us to sit under. 

Hundreds of people were in attendance and now waiting to eat.  

We stayed with the senior couple serving on Pohnpei.  It was great to get to know them better and spend some time going around with them to their seminary and institute classes. 
The Kjars have been here since the beginning of May and they are from Aurora, Utah.  They hold a daily early morning seminary class at the high school.  Most of the students ride a bus to high school and one of the teachers lets them use her classroom before school to have seminary. Most of the time they have around 18 attending class.  They hold a home-study type of program at 6 of the other branches where they meet just one day a week for two hours and then the students have some assignments that they are supposed to do for the other four days.  They turn them in each week so that they can get credit.  I am thinking that something like home-study would work well here in one of our branches where it is hard to get students out because of transportation.

Each of the branches that we attended were different in the amount of people attending and size.  At one of the branches they had an outdoor baptismal  font. We have never seen anything like that.  After traveling to all of these different chapels we got a little bit of a feel of their island.  It is a lot bigger and requires more traveling to get around than we are used to.




The main purpose for us going to Pohnpei was to participate in the zone conference.  With only two flights leaving our island each week, it made it necessary to leave a few days before the conference and that is why we were there for 6 days.  The conference was under the direction of Elder Stevenson with  President Mecham assisting him.  We had great instruction and were spiritually uplifted after two days of meetings.  We spent one day going over 2 Nephi 31.  We heard about ways to use the scriptures more as we teach and have a vision of what we want to achieve and then set our goals to help us achieve that vision.  Great advice for no matter what you are doing and would work well with families in having a vision and setting goals.  Especially eternal goals that matter the most.  I helped Sister Kjar with preparing and serving lunch to all 26 missionaries and leaders. 

Before we left to go back to Kosrae we were able to visit some handicraft shops down in the village.  We went to one place that had a number of men carving a variety of different types of fish, turtles, sharks, and other sea life.  All of these carvings were done out of mangrove wood.  It is a very hard wood that they use and has lots of color variations in it.  We took some great pictures of the men working at their craft.  We also went to some of the markets where they were selling other handcrafts.  I was able to pick up a few lovely items.

As with any trip that we have been on, it is so wonderful, but then it is always good to get back home again.  We were happy to return to our home on Kosrae, we really missed it.