The Trapani's in Timor Leste

 We've had the busiest 4 Days of our mission. We were visited by our humanitarian leaders and then by our mission president. We had to schedule appointments and show them around. In the middle of all of that we began our English classes. We have four english classes that are each twice a week. On our first class we had 57 signed up. We had no idea how many would actually attend.  We had 42show  up.  An ideal class size is 20. We had never taught before. The curriculum is a little bit difficult. We were remarkably calm. We could only laugh at the prospects of no one showing up, too many showing up, us doing a horrible job and people walking out, or anything else unknown for the first time. It went remarkably well. We actually enjoyed it. We were exhausted at the end of the day but remarkably unstressed.  We had a team teaching approach. We would each go for about 10 minutes. The class lasts for 1 hour This was the larger class. It was very difficult because often we

Our charity had contracted with a rural Water company to provide water systems to 12 remote villages. We visited the last two of the 12 installations. In each of these Villages the water systems brought water faucets to within 100 yards of each of the homes in the village. Before the systems the villagers would have to walk sometimes up to an hour and collect water in containers. Often times the water was also polluted. In this instant a plastic water tank was installed because of the difficulty of getting a cement truck into the village. Cement tanks are preferred because of their durability. The fencing around the water tank is to keep animals from  damaging the system. Most particularly the pigs. This is one of the typical water stands in the village. Some Villages had up to 12 of these. The design is mandated by the local Water District. These are typical dwellings in the district. Almost all of the industry here is local farming. This is a view from one of the roa

Malnutrition is a major problem on the island. Over half of the population suffers from it. The problem is a lack of food volume but also a lack of variety. LDS charities helps fund programs to educate and enable rural food producers. Here is a sample of one of their Farms. The growing process includes compost pits. The farm produces its own seedlings. LDS charities has funded one Farm project in this area each year. We visited all three and found each one still operating effectively. At one of them the farming group had prepared a thank you dinner and traditional presentation of appreciation scarves for Cheryl and I. The meal was interesting. Bananas were prepared some way that made them taste bad. We had some sort of pickled papaya. Rice was prepared the traditional ways. Part of it was cooked in banana leaves. Another part of it was cooked inside of bamboo. There was of course the traditional greens and cut up chicken. It's always frightening to eat these meals. Fli

The scenery was beautiful. There were beaches and mountains. The sky was partly cloudy and the weather was a little bit more temperate. I have never been on this long of a dirt road in my life. It is a major highway between the two main cities on the island. The government is in a major project to improve the road. Almost the entire distance has been torn up and currently is only a dirt road. The road was rutted and bouncy. The truck we were in was old and probably had the original shocks. It's squeaked and bounced and rattled. We went 80 miles in 5 hours which is about 15 miles an hour. Unfortunately the road won't be completed until we're done with our mission. I hope I never have to go to Baucau again. We were a total of 10 hours with three of us packed inside of the back seat. The truck did not have air conditioning. It had roll-up windows but all but one of the window handles were missing so we had to pass it around when it was needed. During the rain

Our plan was to have two English classes of 20 students each. We hung the advertising banner outside of the church three days before registration. The banner instructed them to call my cell phone for instructions on registration. Two of the three registration days my cell phone was broken. In total we received only about five or six calls. We arrived at the church and found about 30 people waiting outside the gate. By the time registration was done we had a hundred and seventy people signed up. Word spread fast.  English is very important to help break out of poverty. We were trying to start slow on this English language training program but I guess we will jump in full force. We've had to double the number of classes from 2 to 4 and hope that we have a lot of no-shows. Having never taught English classes before I sure hope this goes well. People manually pick up and sort rocks each day. After they are collected the rocks they are sorted and put into bags and then

 I was dreading my first haircut. Even though I only have a modest amount of hair it needs to be cut correctly so it doesn't stick up and look even worse. I randomly picked a salon and got maybe the best haircut of my life. It certainly was the longest. They washed my hair, massaged my head, carefully cut and layered my hair, washed my hair again, massaged my scalp and then styled the finished product. The whole process took 1 hour. I was then charged $7 for the experience. I left a generous $1 tip.  We had an appointment to meet with the landlord of our building. In addition he is a general contractor and we needed to make a maintenance agreements. Like many others here he was horribly late. When he finally did show up we only got part of our business done and then he left to pick up his daughter without even telling us he was leaving. This is a photo we are patiently waiting for him to return. We gave up after half an hour Our landlord was going to meet with us s

 This probably was the first day that home teachers ever went out in this country. We walked down roads like this to visit a member of our group.  My companion is a member of our group whose name is Warlito.  He is from the Philippines and is working here to support his family back home This is the wall around the house that we visited. The member is a single mother named Edin. She has three young children. She is the owner of a small company that puts on parties and events. When she works her children stay with a nanny. The lesson we gave was about Prophets and how a new prophet and president of the church is selected.

 We are in the country on a visitor's visa that is good for 30 days. Just prior to the 30-day expiration we went to a visa attorney and prepared the application for a 60-day extension. This is the road leading to the office.   We then drove with the attorney down to the immigration office and waited for about 45 minutes. When our name was called we had our picture taken and then fingerprinted. We will return to the attorney in 2 weeks and pick up our passports and hopefully have everything in order. At the end of the 60-day extension we have to leave the country. We had to have proof of an exiting airline ticket prior to receiving the extension. We will fly to the closest country which is Indonesia to the city of Bali. We'll stay there for 2 days. We are told that they have a lot more stores and goods there so we may be able to stock up on a lot of the things we can't get here. We also look forward to going to the beach in Bali. It is about a hour and a half pl

This is our apartment. The car is not ours. It's in a complex of about 20 other units. This is the fence and the gate that surround the complex. There are 24 hour guards that's sleep next to the gate. They open it up manually for pedestrians and cars This is our living room with cable TV. We get about 30 channels. About half of them are in English. This is our kitchen and dining area. Granite countertops. No dishwasher or oven. This is the second bedroom or office. Both the office and the bedroom have full baths. This is our bedroom. Each of the major rooms have their own air conditioners. No heaters. We have a maid who comes in every day and cleans the apartment. 2 or 3 days a week they also take out the laundry. We also have a swimming pool. I have not tried it yet. The water is too warm to be refreshing. There is an exercise room with weight machines and a few free weights. Are we have Internet that is reasonably fast and pretty reliable. The complex