Arrival in the mission home


Soon we will be there.
Name badges for the church in general and ones for humanitarian service.
We arrived late for dinner and so had the whole cafeteria to ourselves.
We are not quite sure what language our ministerial certificates are in. We think it's Indonesian.

Today Cheryl and I gave our farewell talks in church. We spoke with Kristen Rafael who was leaving for the Cape Verde mission. Cheryl and I will be at the mission training center in Provo Utah for 3 weeks. We will then return home until December 4th and then leave directly tour mission assignment in timor-leste. We are called to a 23-month humanitarian Services mission. Timor-leste is an island country between Australia and Indonesia. One half of the island the nation occupied by Indonesia. The timor-leste part of the island is about 30 miles wide and 100 miles long.
There are only three other sisters and six other children who are members of the church on the island. The island is not open for prosel lighting yet but maybe next year.


We checked into the mission home in the early evening. We were late for dinner and had the whole cafeteria to ourselves.


Comments

  1. The Trapani's in LiberiaNovember 5, 2017 at 1:05 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The PiersNovember 29, 2017 at 6:12 PM

    It is great to see that your blog is up and running. We look forward to following your mission experience. Your badges are in Bahasa Indonesian and that you are a missionary of the Gereja Yesus Kristus dari Orang-orang Suci Zarma Akhir...the Church of Jesus Christ of Holy People of the last days...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The test

Image
Our students took a midterm exam. Attendance was much greater in each class for the exam then it was for the lessons. For some reason in this culture tests are held in very high esteem. One of our classes has 3 Catholic sisters. After the test they asked to have their picture taken with us. One of the reasons the class interests them is that they will be serving in America for a period of time. Today at church we had our biggest attendance ever. On the front row is Warlito who is a member of the church from the Philippines. On the row behind is Janu our English class assistant, his fiance Zelia and her sister Santi. He's difficult to see but sitting behind Warlito is one of Dominguez's children. On the next row is Dominguez and 3 of her children. On the last row is Eden, Genevieve and Billy, they are members of the church. In the very back by the keyboard is Tara who is a member of the church and planning to serve a mission soon. Those who are not members are show
Read more

Holidays

Image
This year we had a Christmas tree. It made our lives seem a little more normal. The two little gifts under the tree are empty. Cheryl just thought we needed some wrapped gifts to make it look better. There's also a small carved manger scene. That was made on a neighboring Island in timor-leste. Last year we didn't put up the tree and it felt terrible. We called our children and my parents on their Christmas Day which was the day after Christmas for us. This Christmas felt so much better. Last Christmas we were only out for 20 days and it felt so lonely and we felt like we would be away for ever. In our church group three of the four adult members are living alone here in Timor-Leste. We had them all over for Christmas dinner. Sitting next to Cheryl is Nikki. She works for the Philippine Embassy. Across from Nikki is Eden. She has three children that are currently living in the Philippines because one of them needs special therapy. She'll be alone until they return th
Read more

Sunday in the MTC with foreign missionaries

Image
Fast and testimony meeting Today we attended a remarkable fast and testimony meeting. It was with missionaries from foreign countries who will be assigned missions in the United States. They came to the mission home already knowing how to speak English . They are in the mission home for only 3 weeks. When they bore their testimonies they did it in English and they announced the countries they were from. The countries were Paraguay, Indonesia, Philippines, Venezuela, Fiji, Brazil, Montreal Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Japan and Haiti. They were remarkable. They all appeared to be very bright and very mature in there gospel understanding and application. A lot of them were assigned to serve throughout California. One of them will be speaking Creole in Florida. One of the missionaries from the Philippines will be serving in our home mission in Sacramento.
Read more