One Week on Kosrae

Kosrae is called "The Jewel of Micronesia."  The Island of the Sleeping Lady.  It is called this because of the shape of the mountains that look like a lady sleeping.  The center of this island is a mountainous jungle.  There is one main road going around this island with most of the people living on either side of the road. 

A typical roadway

   They say you can’t get lost because there is really only one main road and if you take a side road it circles around and comes right back to the original road.  The road is a two lane blacktop one that twists and bends as you travel to the different villages with lush greenery on either side or greenery on one side and ocean view on the other.

     We happen to live on the ocean side of the road.  Our property where the house is located has a wonderful view of the ocean.  We have been enjoying sitting under the tiki hut in our backyard and reading the scriptures and watching the waves break upon the shore.

This is a great view of the ocean from our backyard.  The sand is pure white coral.  The sandy beach is not completely around the entire island.  There are areas where there is no beach and just mangrove trees along the coast.   They are very interesting and grow quite well in this region of the world.  They help keep the land from washing into the ocean.










Elder Wright standing on the beach by our property

 Our house is small but not too small for us.  It is very comfortable.  It sort of reminded us of when we first started out in married life.  We had nothing and had to almost start from scratch.  The house came with bedding and dishes and a pretty well equipped kitchen with utensils, pans and some small appliances but absolutely no food.  Everything is just open shelving.  Some of the rooms only had a curtain rod with a loose hanging curtain for a door.  Our king sized bed pretty much fills the entire bedroom with a small closet just big enough to hang the clothes we brought.  It will be a simple life which is really all we need so far.  We live in the area called Lelu (pronounced lay-luh).

We enjoyed driving around on Saturday trying to find different stores to buy food at.  There are only a couple of big ones on the island and then there are all sorts of little shack looking structures on the sides of the road where you can also buy some items. It is like having a mini convenience store.   Not every little store sells the same things so you need to stop and check each one out.  Most of them do not have names on the buildings so I can’t even tell you where I bought anything.  Now I have to try and remember where else to go later on.  I am sure that I will eventually figure out everything.  

Our first Sunday in Kosrae was a Branch conference.  The President asked us to introduce ourselves and bear testimony.  Sacrament ran a little longer and so there was no Sunday school, but there was Relief Society and Priesthood.  I didn’t understand one word in Relief Society but there was a nice spirit there and the sisters were very friendly.  An interesting thing about the Sacrament was that they did not use regular bread; instead they used a cake-like donut.  It was a little sweeter than we are used to but very good. 




Lelu Branch Chapel


 The church is only 2 years old and it is very nice.  Because of the moisture here, there is no carpet put in any of the buildings.  Everything has nice tile flooring. They use folding chairs that need to be set up for all of the meetings, but the pulpit area looks just like all of ours at home with a choir loft and all.  There is a separate building for the classrooms, Primary and Relief Society.  There was no cooling in that building, only the chapel.  We are going to have to get used to a lot of warm meetings.  I think we will need to invest in some good fans.



 Most of the work we will be doing is with the Seminary and Institutes.  We have met with some of those in the Lelu branch  There is another branch on the island in Utwe.  We will be attending there for the next 2 weeks and hope to get acquainted with those in that area.  There are 6 different seminaries and 1 institute and we hope to make that into 2 institutes.  The classes are small, usually only 5 - 8 attend each class.  There are a couple that are less than 5.  Transportation is a big problem for the members here as many do not own vehicles, that is why there are some very small classes instead of one larger one per branch.





This is one of the many beautiful sunrises that we have witnessed since arriving.  Our backyard and ocean side of the house faces east and so we are able to see these wonderful sites each day.  The beginning of light happens around 6:00 a.m. and then we can see the sun peeking up around 6:20 or so.  We have taken many different pictures of these sunrises.  It is a great thing to sit and watch them each morning and see the beauties of this world that God has created for us.





On Our Way to Guam

The yellow hair must be a reflection from these lovely seats

Our flight left at 8:25 am on the first leg to Seattle, Washington.  The only problem was that a dense fog settled in and it delayed our flight.  We had to have the wings de-iced before taking off and then wait for clearance on the fog.  We were one hour and forty minutes late in taking off.  Because Seattle is an hour earlier than Salt Lake we made our next connection but we were a little concerned for awhile.  When we got off the plane our next gate to leave from was just one down from where we were.  That is good because we started to board for Osaka after about 15 or 20 minutes.  This flight was supposed to take 11 hours and it did.  We sat in the very back of the plane on row 42.  It actually turned out to be great because it was in the middle where we had three seats, but we did not have the third person.  We were able to spread out and actually put our feet up.  When we got to Osaka we had a 4 hour layover.  The airport was very sterile looking.  After getting off the plane we took an airport tram that traveled on the outside of the building and took us to the area where we were to board for Guam.  It was all glass and steel with no décor of any kind in the building.  It was good that we had another couple traveling with us, the Crittendens, so that we had someone to talk to during this 4 hour period.  At one point we were the only ones in the area waiting for our plane.  Just before take off it filled up pretty fast and lots of people showed up.  The trip to Guam took about 3 ½ hours.  We arrived at 1:30 am Saturday morning.  It was exactly 24 hours from the time that we got on the plane in Salt Lake to when we got off in Guam.  Plus we also lost one whole day when we crossed the International Date Line. We stayed at the Sheraton Laguna Resort Hotel while we were in Guam.

Outside hotel in Guam where it was always windy

On Sunday we attended the Barrigada Branch.  They are in the process of changing from a branch to a ward since the Guam Stake was organized about 3 weeks ago.  There were a fair amount of people attending.  It was just like being at home because everything seemed the same.  Sacrament meeting was good and so was Relief Society.  The people were very friendly to us. During the afternoon we did some sight seeing in Guam.  We went to a lookout point called Two Lovers Point.  In the evening we we went out to dinner with all of the other senior couples.  We found a Chinese restaurant to go to and it was great to get acquainted with all of the other couples that have now arrived for the conference that starts in the morning.

Beach and Bay area at the hotel

   The next morning was spent in getting some great counsel from our mission president, President Dowdle.  He talked about building a foundation on Jesus Christ and the atonement.  Then he went into the foundational principles in  missionary work.  For the next three days we had some great instruction on how we do things in the islands.  

Each day we had lunch at a different hotel buffet.  The food was always good and we enjoyed it all so much.  I think that we have gained a little weight with all of this eating out. After meetings one day we went to an Underwater World attraction.  The fish were unbelievable and we took some great pictures.  Watching the divers feed them was a real treat.



The entire area was a huge tunnel of heavy plastic so that it looked like we were right in the ocean with the fish.  We were told that it wouldn't look any better even if we had been scuba diving.  There were a number of sting rays, grooper, and sharks along with the turtles.  Many little colorful fish were swimming everywhere.

 Five different divers came down to feel the fish.  They started with the sting rays and then fed the sharks.  The fish certainly knew when it was feeding time because they all started to gather together in one area.  Not one of them even appeared to be aggressive.

Here we are with all of the senior couples that are serving at this time in the Micronesia Guam Mission.  We had a very enjoyable time getting to know them and learning all about the things that each of them were doing on their various islands.  There are 8 couples all together.   From left to right we start with our mission president, President Dowdle, E/S Crittenden from Chuuk, E/S Holloway from Pohnpei, E/S Hansen from Palau, E/S Wright (us)  serving from Kosrae,behind us are E/S Peterson from Chuuk, E/S Clarke from Guam, E/S Sheppard from Yap, E/S Hertzberg from Guam, and Sister Miyazaki the mission nurse.

Friday morning we left for our island of Kosrae.  Eleven of us were on the same flight.  The plane had to stop at two other islands before we could get to ours.   We were flying over the vast Pacific Ocean and all of a sudden an island would come into view. Chuuk was the first island stop and 6 missionaries and a family history coordinator from Japan got off. There were some fascinating cloud formations. As we arrived at each island half the plane had to get off so that they could do a security check.    Once they were done we were able to board and leave.  This took about 45 minutes each time. We were the last missionary couple left going to our island after leaving the island of Pohnpei.  It took about 6 hours to finally arrived in Kosrae.  Wow!  We are finally here.

This is Kosrae International Airport, not quite like those back home.

Missionary Training Center

In front of the Provo Temple with Max and Ethan

Melissa drove us down to Provo and we met Mark and his family at the Provo Temple.  We took some pictures and were able to visit for a few minutes.  Of course, we checked in at just at the 11:00 time, which was the cut off time.  Although we found there were a few others because of travel arrangements that checked in even after that.  Melissa drove us right to the building where we were to stay to drop off our luggage where some Elders met us and took all of our bags to our room, and then back to say goodbye at the front door. This process of checking in runs just like clockwork.   It is so efficient, I guess that since they do it every Monday morning it should be.

It is quite cold here and I was thankful that Melissa gave me a nice wool coat to use.  It has been wonderful.  The temperature has been in the teens  and colder ever since we arrived.  We are getting ready to leave the outside world and enter forth to learn all the things that we will be doing for the next 18 months.

The afternoon was spent in classes giving us additional materials and information on what we would be doing while at the MTC. We had a presentation on what our purpose is as a missionary. We were able to introduce ourselves and tell where we would serve and what our primary assignment would be.  There are 27 couples and 4 single sisters in our group.  We have people going all over the world such as Guam, Samoa, Tonga, Philippines, Hawaii, South Caroline, Salt Lake, Spain, Argentina, Cambodia, Korea, Texas, Germany, West Indies, Toronto, Norway, Georgia, Budapest, California, Switzerland,  Bolivia, India, and New Zealand.  And all of them doing a variety of things.  Quite a few will be doing CES like us, and others will do humanitarian, office, PEF, family history, medical, and military relations. We have been organized into 8 different districts with about 3 other couples who we will be with for all of our class time on instruction and teaching practice.

 Just thought that it would be cool to take a picture in front of the famous world map that all of our sons have done.  As you can see we are pointing to a little spot somewhere out in that vast Pacific Ocean.  There are about 2500 young Elders and Sisters here and it is really touching to see them.  It is like looking at the army of Helaman.  They are so impressive that we spend a lot of time just observing them wherever we go, especially in the cafeteria. You certainly feel a very strong wonderful spirit everywhere you go here.

We woke to snow on Wednesday morning and it was quite fun going from our apartment to the main building for breakfast.  None of the sidewalks were cleared off and we had very soft snow to walk through.  It snowed for the rest of the day.  As we walked to our different classes we got a taste of this weather.  It was actually kind of nice and it will be the last time we have this type of weather for a year and a half.  It did not snow anymore the rest of the week but it has remained cold and there is ice all around.  The temperature got as low as 2 degrees.  Brrrrr!!  Our picture captured the snow falling.

 

   We had 4 days of intensive training.  The young Elders have about 17 days to do the same thing.  Lots of information to digest and learn in such a short time.  We started the day off with a great lesson on the restoration.  We were then divided into our districts and were introduced to our trainer. A terrific young man with lots of enthusiasm. We taught 2 different 45 lessons to investigators while being videotaped.  We sort of forgot we were being videoed once we got into it. It was a great teaching experience.  Everyday we attend classes from 8:00 am until 4:30 pm and then after dinner there is about three hours where you needed to read and prepare for the next day.  We finished the week just fine and now next week we will be doing a 3 day  training for the CES program of how to teach in the Seminary and Institute program.  We are on a mental and spiritual overload, but it is so GREAT.