Year End Activities

The school year is now officially over and that means we have come to an end with our institute and seminary classes.  Studying the Old Testament has been a rewarding experience and both the students and teachers have learned a multitude of things about the house of Israel.  Hopefully this will always be beneficial in the lives of our students as we tried to apply the teachings to their lives now. 



President George was our biggest winner here



We thought it would be fun to have one extra week in institute and do some activities with them.  Before we got started on the activities we showed a DVD presentation to each of the classes.  One class was able to view the last CES Fireside broadcast and the other one watched "Only a Stone Cutter" as they had already seen the broadcast earlier.   Our Utwe Branch had not played the M&M game so we brought plenty of M&Ms and straws.  They quite enjoyed doing this game.

We tried some of the "Minute to Win It" games also.  We did not actually do the entire group of activities, but chose 4 diffferent ones to do.   We did the one where you had to build a pyramid with plastic cups and return them to a single stack, they they had to blow up a ballon and try and blow off the cups from a table. We tried the activity where you have to keep three blown up balloons in the air for at least 1 minute. 

We got such a good laugh from everyone playing these games.  Our only problem was that the balloons available here were not very good and kept popping on us.  Our teacher, Sister Jonathan,  really got into these games and had fun doing each activity. 

The last minute activity was to put the latter-day prophets in the correct order.  I was impressed on how well they knew all of these. 

Next we played a dice and number card game.  We brought 2 or 3 different kinds of cookies for treats afterwards.  But we also had suckers for those winning in the other games.  Everyone likes suckers here from the youngest to the oldest you can see them enjoying their suckers.

It was two great nights of fun in our institute classes.  How we will miss doing this next year.

We also had a scripture mastery challenge between our Lelu seminary class and the zone leaders, Elders Madsen and Agalzoff.
The Elders ended up winning by one point.  They were the fastest in giving scripture references to clue words, but the class was tops in finding it in the scriptures and quoting the verse from memory.  We forgot our to take our camera that day.  So sad.  What a great way to end our S & I year.

Happenings on Kosrae

The last couple of weeks have been rather eventful here on Kosrae.  We had the baptism on Jan Kilafwakun.  He had been taught by Elders Madsen and Agalzoff.  His brother Elmer and his wife joined the Church about 16 months ago and it is wonderful to have some of the other members of that family come unto Christ and make some great changes in their lives. He is a very enthusiastic young man and will be a welcome addition to our Branch in Lelu. 

We had our Zone Conference on April 30th.  These are always a much anticipated occurrence.  The  Zone leaders are in charge of the meeting and they put in a good amount of effort in the planning, conducting, giving a presentation of their accountability, and teaching.  These conferences are held once each quarter.  Elder Madsen and Agalzoff are the zone leaders here now.  I am so impressed by the quality and the  ability that these two Elders have in carrying forth with this responsibility.  The lesson that they taught was about having charity in our lives and why we need it.  When we have this pure love of Christ and let it guide our actions then many great things will happen.  Our relationships with others will be enhanced and we will only want what is right and best for them.  You can't preach the gospel and be effective without charity.  We are always uplifted and inspired by having President and Sister Mecham teach us in these conferences.  Being 1500 miles from the mission home we only get to see them on a quarterly basis at these zone conferences.   President Mecham pointed out from the Book of Mormon, some of the qualities that Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah possessed that enabled them to preach and convert many people to the gospel of Christ.  This was the last zone conference for us and Elder Madsen. We were given the opportunity to bear our testimonies.  It was a little emotional for all of us.  So many great experiences to reflect upon for all of us.

On Sunday we were able to hold our first group meeting.  A small group can be started for members who live far from the Church. This was held in Tafunsak at one of the members homes which is 9 miles from the Church house.   President Mecham has been encouraging the different islands to look for opportunities to have a smaller group who are part of the regular branch.  In order to have a group there has to be a priest to conduct the meeting and a member of the branch presidency attends regularly.  All of this was approved through the Area Presidency for the Asia North Area.  This is the first time small groups have been held here on Kosrae.  Other islands have tried small groups and one of them grew so much in numbers that it was turned into a regular branch.  We are hoping that the same thing may happen here.