I met with the Ambassador

The US Embassy is only about a block from our house. It's a pretty big walled compound that has the ambassador's residence, the embassy and some utility buildings. There's a lot of embassies here in this city and this one is by far the largest in terms of total land area. It is just across from the beach so it has a great View.  The picture is of the ambassador's residence.  It is so large that it serves as ofices also.  The interesting thing about it is that there is only a total of 200 US citizens in the country.
I was asked to be on a committee of business and organization leaders that would have responsibility for strategic planning in the event of a natural disaster or civil violence. I was asked to be on the committee as the leader of our church on the island

The lady on the far right of the picture is the ambassador. She sat in during our meeting and participated. There was about 20 people in the meeting. I'm also on another committee that will meet with the Ambassador in a couple weeks. That is only a committee of four. We are in charge of communicating to US citizens in the event of a disaster or civil unrest. I am in charge of the religious community for the island.

I was asked by the mission president to involve myself in these areas so that the church will be aware of what's happening and so that we will have good communication with public officials.
This is a view of the sunrise that I took as we started off on our jog. Morning is a great time here.
I haven't seen a single Veterinary office on the island. I don't think they use them here. There are a lot of dogs that hobble around on bad legs. I don't think they put any animals down when they're injured they just let him fend for themselves.
We have a humanitarian project to provide 500 packages that consists of clothing and baby supplies for newborns. They will be distributed by the midwives in the country as an encouragement for using their services. In all but the city areas most newborns are delivered without a midwife or hospital or medical services.

It took about six months to receive all the supplies. They had to come by boat from Indonesia and there were many delays. The kits were assembled by volunteers from our English as a second language classes. We had 21 volunteers show up. They assembled all the bags in about 90 minutes.

Here is a picture of all of the volunteers and Cheryl. They are holding one of the newborn packages.


Comments

  1. MelissaApril 23, 2018 at 6:38 AM

    So nice of your students to volunteer. What a great cause.

    ReplyDelete

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