The Trapani's in Timor Leste

 Janu and Zelia are now married. It was difficult for them. Even though he is 30 and she is 23 they needed written permission from their parents and the endorsement of their home villages. Through skillful negotiation he was able to get Zelia's parents to wave the bride price which can be as large as one year's salary. The Catholic Church does almost all of the weddings here. There are not many organizations authorized to conduct weddings. Since they were both born Catholic, like 95% of all the citizens here, the Catholic wedding was easy to arrange. Cheryl and I are there godparents. We got to participate in the ceremony. Cheryl held the Rings for them.  This is the moment where the priest presented them as a married couple.  As part of the ceremony we signed the Catholic churches Parish record of the event  On her wedding day Zelia was scheduled to teach a village English class. Cheryl taught the class in her place. The Village knew we were coming and prepared

There is plenty of room to stay at the hotel California. A one-way flight from the nearest major airport, which is Bali, cost $300 for a flight that is only about 700 miles. For some reason the cost to fly to this impoverished nation is about double or triple what it is to other cities in the region. For that reason and the fact that there's no developed tourism infrastructure there are only a handful tourists at any time. Here is the Hotel California. It actually looks pretty nice and it is across the street from the beach. We run along this River a couple times a week. During the rainy season part of the retaining wall for the road collapsed. It's taken about five months to get this much work done. Fortunately at the top of the picture you can see a barrier. This is unusual. It's usually just driver beware. I post a lot of these videos of singing in our English classes because they are so interesting. We sing them so the students get practice saying English

This is a small spring 3 miles uphill from the village. It flows all year round. The flow is not great but it's constant. This water project plans to capture the water from the spring and collect it in a nearby cement tank. It would then flow downhill for 3 miles to a second cement distribution tank in the village. It would then be distributed from that tank to strategic locations throughout the houses. To make this project work the villagers would have to dig a trench about 9 in deep to bury the pipe for the 3 Mile length. They would also need to do all the labor to construct the cement water storage tanks. The village is also responsible to provide a couple of people to be trained to be the water system maintenance crew. They also need to develope a system of taxing or assessing each household a small amount each month, probably $0.50, to provide a pool of money to purchase maintenance parts when needed In spite of this project being mostly all materials and very little lab

It's hard to tell because this is a still photo but this is the headwater for a small stream. We will construct a small dam here and pipe the water down to the Village. It will constantly flow into a main storage tank, so even though the volume is small it will be enough for the entire Village. This is how they carry their water now. They hike up to the top of the mountain where the head water is so they're able to get the water while it's still clean. This gravity-fed water system will serve 400 people and 59 households. Her name is Anna. She's ready to deliver in a few weeks. Prior to the water system each day she had to make between one and three trips a day lasting two and a half hours each to get water. Now the tap stand is right outside her home. This is the first of six villages that we are supplying water to. This is Mount Ramelau. The highest mountain in Timor-leste.  It is 9800 feet in elevation and occasionally gets a dusting of snow. We wer

We were in Bali for 8 days. A lot of it was spent just like this. Sometimes missions can be pretty easy. On one of the days we visited the Bali Zoo. There were a lot of animals that weren't in cages. Things are different in countries that don't have very strict liability laws. We also visited the valley bird park. It was well done. They have lots of birds in this part of the world. We went for a walk along a ridge. Farmers were harvesting hay probably the same way all their ancestors did. Bali is an interesting place because labor is so inexpensive. It's remarkable the number of people they had working at the medium sized hotel we stayed at. The average worker in an unskilled position makes the country minimum wage, which is $220 a month for working full-time. At that price you could employ a lot of workers. On Sunday while at church the Branch President invited us over to his home for dinner during the week. He is the one with the baby on his