The Trapani's in Timor Leste

This is the main river that runs through Dili. During the dry season it is completely dry. The rainy season started out slow this year but now it's back to normal. This spillway is important because it keeps the riverbed at the right height to support the main Bridge which is at the top of the picture. Two days ago the spillway gave away. Now as you can see behind it the riverbed is quite a bit lower. Almost all of the infrastructure here is very old with no maintenance or improvements. When things break they usually stay broken and when things start to deteriorate they don't get repaired and they continue to fall apart. A portion of the sidewalk that goes along the beach has recently been reclaimed by the ocean. This is in front of the US Embassy. Even though we arrived here with most of the pages in our passport empty are passports are almost full. This is because we only get 30 day visas. Fortunately we can get new passports from the US Embassy, which is only a blo

The DeSilva family were baptized today. They are the first convert baptisms in Timor leste. This is a picture of the family, myself, our mission president, president McKay and the two missionaries who taught the family via Skype.  President McKay felt they were the most spiritually mature and converted family that he has seen so far in his mission. The baptismal font is outdoors in our patio area. I had the privilege of baptizing all five of them. Great experience. The day went perfect. The new family understood the significance of the ordinance and felt the spirit ratifying its validity. After the baptismal service we had Sacrament meeting. I got to confirm two of the members of the family. After the Sacrament service the husband, Januaro, received the Aaronic priesthood and now he will be able to administer the sacrament next week. This was the best day of our mission. We could feel the significance of the events here. This is the family that will have a significan

 Burger King is so comforting. It is the only thing that is like home here. The quality of the food is every bit as good as in America. When were eating in Burger King it feels like Gourmet dining.  This has been our first week of English classes. We overbook the classes to account for attrition that we will have. Until they shrink down it's quite a bit more effort to teach. We have about 40 in each class. This year we started an advanced class and in that class we have two writing sessions. We have given each student a small notebook. They turn in the book at the end of each class and we take them home and correct them. Luckily the level of language sophistication is within our abilities. Because both of the advanced classes have 40 people in it we have to correct 80 books two times a week.  We were contacted this week by an organization that wants to explore having a relationship with us. They heard about us from one of our English class students that is a member of th

This mission is high adventure not because of the jungles that we spend time in but because of the things we have to do all by ourselves without having any experience. Thursday was registration day for new English students. In the past we put up a sign in front of the church advertising the classes. This year, not wanting to turn anyone away, we only advertised on our Facebook page. We hoped to get a response close to the 80 classroom spaces we had. When we showed up about a half hour before registration time we found a group of about 200 people assembled outside of the church. We open the gates and let them all in. The numbers kept growing rapidly as the real registration time approached. We had a staff of about 8 volunteers to help us register the people. We had two desks set up by the front entrance each desk staffed with two volunteers. The volunteers would interview the applicants to place them in the correct level of class. It worked out fine for a whi