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.