The rain has started again

There was a large gathering for a funeral Memorial. Some off-duty policeman were in attendance. A fight broke out. During the fight the lights in the area went out. One of the off-duty policeman, who was drunk, then fired randomly into the crowd. 5 people died and about that many more were wounded. This picture was the next day where students protested the police violence. This tragedy took place about 5 miles from our apartment.
After almost a year of no budget the parliament passed a budget for the end of 2018. There is still no budget for 2019. This has caused considerable hardship in the country. Many people have gone without wages and many benefits have not been paid. In the middle of this the parliament decided to trade in their used car Fleet and purchase a new Fleet of new vehicles. This announcement caused student protests. The protests are generally always peaceful. The embassy does warn us to stay out of the area. No one ever seems to get hurt or injured. Sometimes rocks are thrown. This protests was a couple days ago and nothing too serious happened.

These waterways run throughout the city. They are combination of grey water from sinks and drainage water. During the rainy season they don't smell or look too bad. During the dry season they are mostly grey water so they smell. We just finished the six-month dry season and so rain water is starting to rush through them again.
Unfortunately all of the trash that accumulates for 6 months comes out at one time. It flows into the ocean and then gets washed up on the beach.
This is a picture of one of the major soccer fields in town. A lot of the local teams practice here. Other than the soccer field in the main stadium we haven't seen a single one that is grass.

Thanksgiving holiday isn't too big here. In fact most of the people on the island have never heard of turkeys. We had Mexican food. Also in the picture is Nikki who was one of the members of our church group. This is a wonderful restaurant that is owned by Australians and serves pretty good Mexican food.

Holidays are difficult here. Because there are so few people that we regularly associate with most of the time we spend them alone. Thank goodness for FaceTime and Skype so we can talk to our family back home.



Because this is such a small country official things like embassies are very concentrated together. The US Embassy is 1/4 Mile from our house. Within the next mile there is the Korean, Japanese and Chinese Embassies.
This is a picture of our sacrament meeting that I discreetly took. The speaker is one of our investigators named Januaro. Because there are so few of us meeting here everyone gets a chance to talk. Standing next to him on the right Janu who is serving as the translator. Janu is also an investigator to the church and was the speaker last week.

Januaro  and his family of six others have all accepted the challenge to be baptized on January 27th. The challenge was issued by the full-time missionary Elders who live in Indonesia and teach them via Skype during the Sunday School time.





Comments

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