The Trapani's in Timor Leste

Tara will be the first missionary to leave from Timor leste. She received her call to serve in the Philippines Bacolod mission. She reports to the mission Training Center in Manila on May 31st. Her Mission call letter was of course signed by President Nelson. It Was Written in the dialect of the area that she will be serving. Even though she speaks Tagalog her and her mother had to look up several of the words in the letter. Tara and one of the new members Azeni rotate practicing and then playing the keyboard every two weeks for sacrament meeting. When they show up they let us know what songs they are capable of playing and then we write it down so the members that don't speak English can find it in the song book. This is our new member Januaro preparing the sacrament. We each rotate blessing and passing the sacrament each week. When I Blessed Sacrament it is in English and when he does it it is in Bahasa. We pass out written copies of the sacrament prayer to the memb

This is how we were greeted as we drove up to the Village. The little girl in the center is holding a basket that contains a gift tie that was presented to me After I was presented with the tie these young dancers performed a traditional dance. The dancers lead to this meeting area where school children and parents from the community had gathered. This was all for celebration and thanks for the project that we had funded. Here are some of the children that were let out of school to attend the ceremony. The project involved installing water tanks in two neighboring villages. This water tank had a ceremonial ribbon wrapped around it that I got to cut. This is a picture of one of the finished water tanks. The water tanks Supply water for domestic use and also for their Farm. Both Villages had previously drilled Wells that were ineffective during the dry season. The project involved deepening the wells, installing the tanks and installing piping. The other portion

This week was our trip to Bali to get our visas renewed. We love shopping there. Not only do they have most of the things we can find in America but prices are generally cheaper. This is the stuff we bought at the grocery store. Big items for us were oatmeal and the 12 bottles of insect repellent. This time the beach and Bali was dirty. Somehow the tide and brought in a bunch of plastic trash. This was our first Big Mac in 18 months. It actually tasted delicious. The price for the Big Mac and the Icee Coke was $2.77. This was in Bali. No McDonald's in timor-leste  Back in dili this week a Holland America cruise ship came in. As we were leaving church today some of tourist passed by us on the sidewalk. I can remember when I was one of those tourists and wondering what it was like to live in a third world country Some of the members of the new family that was baptized always join us in our taxi to come home. The taxi charges by the trip and not the amount of passenge

Our trip started out great. About a 3-hour car ride to our lunch stop, which was in a old Portuguese fort in the middle of the country. It was a first world restaurant with Western food. After about another hour's drive we went to the home of a family that have become fish farmers. They grow tilapia fish and sell it to the local schools for the lunch nutrition program.  This is all part of a major project that LDS Charities is involved with to increase the protein levels of children in three districts by adding protein and nutritious vegetables to their lunch meals. When the program is complete it will affect about 10,000 children. With help through an organization we are contracting with this farmer hand-dug a fish pond and now raises fingerling fish into eating size. He received education on how to do this and is assisted by a community consulted who watches over several of the fish farms and has a financial interest in them. In this picture Cheryl is hand-feed

We haven't lost as many students as we usually do by this time in the semester. It may be because Cheryl makes the class so much fun. To my right is Januaro Barbosa he is the director of national finances. In preparation for a meeting with the prime minister I needed to introduce myself and our organization to him. He felt because of all the work we have done that LDS charities did deserve a meeting with top government officials and hopefully the prime minister. This was all done in preparation for the head of LDS charities out of Taiwan coming to make a visit here in a couple weeks. To my left is his assistant. Januaro was one of the war heroes of the revolution. The meeting was challenging. I had to work through a translator. Hopefully our communication was accurate. This is Januaro, who was just baptized 2 weeks ago preparing the sacrament for the first time. He also passed the sacrament for the second time this week. Next week he is prepared to bless the sacrament.