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 s...

 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 ...

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 ...

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...