The Trapani's in Timor Leste

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 ro...

 This Monday we cancelled our English class because of the Santa Cruz national holiday. This is a statue about 2 miles from our house that commemorates the event that occurred in 1991.  About 200 Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops in the cemetery. It was one of the pivotal events that caught the attention of the world. Prior to that much of the turmoil in Timor-Leste had gone unnoticed. It is remarkable living in the country where their revolutionary war occurred just a few years ago. Anyone 20 years of age or older remembers events of the occupation and the independence. The tragedy and suffering caused by the events were felt by almost every family here. Last Saturday night we were eating at this restaurant. It is a second-floor open restaurant. While we were sitting by the front railing we noticed that traffic had stopped in both directions on the main road just below us. Just a few hundred feet down the road a fight had broken out on the road. This is a...

 These are two of our missionaries in Indonesia. They are taking part in our sacrament meeting via Skype.  These are the same two missionaries teaching our investigator class via Skype. These are some of our investigators. They are all from the same family except for the man on the far end.  The challenge is they don't speak English well enough nor do I speak Tetun well enough to teach them. They do speak Bahasa as their second language. So the missionaries from Indonesia who speak Bahasa are teaching them. As an added challenge Indonesian Bahasa is a little bit different than the Bahasa Spoken Here. The Book of Mormons they have are in Indonesian Bahasa. They are a wonderful family and I want to do all that I can to bring them into the gospel. They are  a very capable family. They have regular family prayer and nightly scripture study. The mother is already spoken in our sacrament meeting. Almost all of the family members have prayed in our meetings. They...

A few months ago this was an empty field with just weeds and brush. We contracted with a local organization to find a village that wanted to start producing their own food. The organization brought all the village adults in for 5 days of training at their headquarters. They were trained on farming, seed production, harvesting, composting and excess production sales. They have already had a couple harvests. They have made over $1,000 in vegetable sales. The man standing next to Cheryl is the village leader. The farm is on his property. All of the surrounding households are invited to work on the farm and then they receive a portion of the crop as well as proceeds. Thus far this Farm has been a great example of how people when giving a little bit of knowledge and some money for basic tools can become self-sufficient. In addition to the training on this Farm we supplied hand tools, a water pump, a water tank, and drip irrigation. Their Farm is larger than we had planned and...

1883 there was a cataclysmic eruption of the Krakatoa volcano. It was the most violent volcanic eruption recorded in modern history. 36000 people died. The eruption Was heard over 2,000 miles away. The eruption destroyed the volcano. Since then it has been rebuilding itself.  Our group had plans to hike up to the volcano cone but as you can see it was busy. We were in the vicinity as part of a senior Mission conference. This was our sightseeing day. We took a boat from the mainland in Indonesia for what was supposed to be a one and a half hour ride. The boat was poorly maintained and kept stalling so it took about twice that. A lot of people including me got a little seasick.  Back on the mainland we had dinner at a place where you pick your fresh fish that's stored on ice and they barbecue it for you. It was a pretty humble restaurant. While we were eating a rat and a cat ran through the dining room.  This is the boat we travel to the volcano on Below...

This is our Hut on the beach At night the mosquito net surrounds the bed We traveled to Atauro Island for a groundbreaking of a dormitory that LDS Charities is building for a job mentoring program. This is an island about 25 miles off the coast of Timor-Leste. The island is probably the most primitive and poor area of the entire country. It has a population of about 8000 and is only subsistence farming. We took a chartered boat over to the island. It was the size of a large water ski boat. When we hit the open sea it was exciting. The boat bounced around quite a bit. We stayed in a hut on the beach. It had no air conditioning and the only electrical was solar and a battery. The island only has electricity about 5 hours a day.  The bed had a mosquito net over it. It was built to take advantage of the sea breeze. We did not feel much of the sea breeze and so it was a little uncomfortable sleeping. The hut did have a great hammock on the porch.  Th...

 LDS charities donated about $7,000 worth of tools to the Dom Bosco trade school. The tools were for their automotive department. The head of the school father Johansson gave us a tour of the school. Cheryl is standing in between the mission president and his wife. On the right of the mission president is Father Johansen, Father Joseph and mr. Lee The school has Departments of General construction, automotive and office administration. Their job placement rate is almost 100% which is amazing in Timor Leste where there are so few jobs available. This is our second project with the school. Last year we donated computers for the office administration building. The donated tools were all spread out on tables. They were about 10 tables. The tools had to be purchased in Jakarta, Indonesia and sent over on a boat. They were able to get twice as many tools that way compared to purchasing them in Timor Leste.  Picture of Cheryl and Mission president's wife, Sister MacKay, wit...