The Trapani's in Timor Leste

 We traveled to Surabaya for our mission Christmas Conference.  It always feels so great to get out of Timor Leste.  Restaurants are about 1/2 the American price.  Lots of American franchise restaurants.  It felt a little like home in places.  We went 2 days early to see the sights.  On the way from the airport to the Hotel we were in a crazy hard rainstorm.  The motorcycles did not seen to mind.  On our sight seeing day we visited one of their decommissioned submarines.  It was purchased from Russia in 1962.   President Sukarno, the 1st president of Indonesia serving from 1945 to 1967.  This was at their national monument commemorating their battle for independence after WW2.  They fought with the British and lost but then obtained independence through United Nations negotiations.  This is the city zoo.  Large hungry snake on the right, bunnies on the left.  They don't show this type of stuff in the US.  A lot of hair for living in a hot jungle. Lots of Komodo

 This is a new water tank that we provided funds for. Prior to the tank and the new water system.  The village had no running water. They would have to regularly walk to a distant stream and fill up their containers. We paid to refurbish their non-working well. At the bottom of this 35 foot deep hole is there water pump. I got to be the one who did the ceremonial first operation of the water faucet As usual, one of us had to speak at the village gathering. Of course it had to be translated. As part of the ceremony this Village girl showed us a magic trick she had learned. It was really nice to see how the whole village supported her, and she did a very nice presentation. The most challenging part of all of this is keeping the water system operational. For our part we installed top quality materials that should last longer than most. The problem is that when things break the village doesn't have enough cash to repair it. We hope that with the operation of their

Our second set of English classes just graduated. We had a 118 take the final exam and about a hundred and five attended the graduation. This semester we had five classes that each met twice a week. The large majority were University and high school students. The course lasted for 20 weeks. Notice how nice everyone dressed. Teaching English classes has been very challenging and rewarding. It is rewarding because the students are so appreciative and made significant advances in their abilities. It's been challenging because it's hard to deliver a lesson in a way that's understandable, challenging and interesting to the students. We have a lot of trial and errors. We spend a lot of time with preparation. Fortunately now we've had a semester of the intermediate class and two semesters of the basic class so we've gotten the lesson format and content down pretty good. This next set of classes should require much less prep time This is a sample graduation certi

Because we are the only missionaries and only church leadership here we get to do a lot of tasks that are usually assigned to people that have skills and experience in those areas. Sometimes we laugh to ourselves that there are people that think we are competent in these things. We are the public and governmental relations experts. This is a picture of the area president, Elder Evans. He is meeting with one of the leaders of a local trade school and Catholic Church here. A major task, that is going surprisingly well, is our efforts to meet with top government officials. We have been able to obtain an invitation to meet with the prime minister of the country. Because a meeting like this is so significant the area presidency wants to be involved. So, we are trying to coordinate all of this. We are also the countries Electronic media specialist. Mostly that means that we run and maintain the church's country Facebook page. I've never had a Facebook page before so this has