Hello April!

We finished our Pedagogy class with 10 students obtaining credit.  To obtain credit, a students must pass with at least a 70%.  We are making preparations for starting Classroom Management on April

The Girls!

Little Birdy in my tree

22nd after the break.  We are keeping busy during the break by doing some service (building a bathroom/shower facility for a family on the other side of the island), working on the Samoan Quality Assurance submission for ITEP, and getting our house ready for our neighbor's visit.  We are anxious to show them around the islands a little bit and to have fun with them. 
We had a delightful time with other senior couples this week.  Saturday, we went to the institute building and played ping pong, pool, games, sang and danced.  We have included a picture of the Sisters at that gathering.
A few weeks ago, we planted a small papaya tree in the backyard.  We came home today from Church and found a little cardinal on the tree.  It reminded us of the little song we taught our grandkids before we came out - Little Birdy on the tree, on the tree, on the tree.  Singing a song for you and me!

Eggplant Flower Arrangement

Beauty All Around US

We taught some of our final lessons for our Pedagogy course this week.  Next week we have one more lesson then class presentations and the final exam.  We will take a three-week break while our neighbors (Ron and Ann Wight) come to visit and school is out for the April break.  We will start up again in April with a Classroom Management course.  We have been visiting the classrooms of the teachers we have in our class and can see them adopt some of the techniques we are using.  It is fun to watch them grow.

We continue to be asked to help in other areas.  For example this coming Friday, we are going to present at the Pesega High School teacher training for the whole staff.  Similarly, we were just asked by the Stake President who lives in the ward we attend, if we would present to his stake Aaronic Priesthood young men about manners they should have when they serve as missionaries in Western Cultures such as America, Europe and Australia.  That should be fun.  We will have to emphasize how it is polite to take small portions at first.  Samoans love to feast and exhibit an enthusiasm for it that is both memorable and admirable.

Janice on the beach March 23, 2019

Beach at low tide - see the waves breaking on the reef in the distance

New planter at our front door

We went with some senior couples to the beach this weekend called Mata o Ma'a (eye is a stone).  It was pretty.  The water was warm but a little cloudy.  That was a shame because there were some pretty cool-looking fish there but they were a little hard to see.

Janice really likes the tree trunk planters that have a plant sticking out of them.  We found one for sale at the market so we now have one by our front door. 

From what we can tell, North America is thawing out from winter.  We feel blessed to have been shielded from the cold this winter and are enjoying this beautiful land and the beautiful people.  We know God must love us to send us here because it is evident that he loves and blesses these people.

St. Patrick's Day Already?

While winter keeps lingering back home, it is a balmy 86 degrees here and sunny.  We are getting excited to have our neighbors, the Wights, come and visit us in a couple of weeks and help them thaw out!  The climate here is perfect.  It does get a little warm but if there is a breeze you don't notice it so much.  Of course the ocean is always a good way to cool off.

Sunset view on the north side of our apartment.

Sunset view to the west in front of our
apartment

We are on the downhill side of our Pedagogy class and only have a couple more lessons to prepare to have it finished up.  We give the final exam in a couple of weeks.  Our week consisted of preparing and teaching our lessons, working on the Samoan Quality Assurance application, meeting with and training the teachers, and doing observations.  We were able to slip in a nice session in the Temple on Friday and attended the Relief Society Birthday brunch for our ward.  That was particularly fun because someone brought out an ukulele and everyone started singing Samoan songs spontaneously.

We included a picture of a rhinoceros beetle that got trapped in our laundry sink. I helped him out but he was so cool looking, we had to get a picture of him before we let him go.  We also have been having wonderful sunsets and sunrises.  Thursday morning, we were playing pickleball with our neighbors and the sky was brilliantly frosted with pink and purple clouds.  What added more to the spectacle was the lightening storm and associated rainbow on the western horizon at the same time.  It seems that the sunsets light up the sky in a 360 degree panorama of color.  We don't think that the pictures do it justice.

We love all of you and miss you bunches.  We pray for you every day and hope that God watches over you just a little extra while we are gone!  Tofa Soifua!

The Work "Marches" On!

We cannot believe how fast time is passing for us.  It seems like a new week is starting every time we turn around.  We are convinced that it is because we are keeping so busy.  We have been getting

things prepared for applying for accreditation of the ITEP certificate program by the government of Samoa.  That has required a little more of our time above preparing and teaching our university courses.  We also participated in a traditional Samoan meal and its preparation this week.  We got to prepare the Umu (oven) and peel the taro (talo) and breadfruit (ulu).  Most of the work was scraping out the coconut meat and preparing the milk for palusami. 

# 2 Size Pig (pua'a) on the umu

We put all of that on the hot rocks along with a #2 size pig (Pua'a) and covered it in leaves for an hour while it cooked.  Our reward was a delicious meal with wonderfully-flavored coconut cream (palusami) to dip our breadfruit and taro into. 

Palusami wrapped in breadfruit leaves cooking on an umu

So far our health is holding.  We have not been seriously sick other than eating a few things that did not agree with us.  We feel like we are being blessed as we work to serve the teachers and children of Samoa.  It is so rewarding for us to give a lesson to the teachers here and then visit their classrooms and see them using some of the things they have learned.  We truly feel like we are making a difference when we see things like that.

Another Week in Paradise!

This has been a very busy week but it keeps us happy!  We taught three sessions of our Pedagogy course then took a day to go to Sauniatu to help a few of the teachers with their English.  We are having a lot of rain.  It can rain one or two inches in just an hour here.  Our new neighbors arrived yesterday.  They are the Williams from Orem, Utah.  They are going to be auditors here.  They will go home about the same time that we will be in 18 months. 

Rambutan fruit given to us by the home economics teacher

We have our directors (the Holbrooks) coming this week so we will be busy with them.  It will be good to see them again.  We will try to have a few pictures from our adventures next week. 

I included a couple of pictures we took this week of our apartment.  One is of a sunset above our house.

Sunset over our house

Our apartment

New Kitchen!

We had a busy week that was punctuated by the installation of a new kitchen in our apartment.  We had a leaky kitchen faucet that ruined the counter top so Thursday we came home to new counter tops with a shiny double sink.  We just had a single sink before so doing the dishes just got a little easier.

New counter top and sink

Elder & Sister Wright from Grants Pass, Oregon just arrived to be the area dentists.  We got to know them when we took them to Vavau beach yesterday.  If we were to have a favorite beach, it would be Vavau (which means "forever").

We started teaching our third class, Effective Pedagogy.  We will be teaching three days a week for a couple of hours each day for the next couple of months.

The lagoon at Vavau beach (beautiful snorkeling).

A cute crab making off with a good shell

Vavau Beach looking east

We are excited to have our neighbors, the Wights, come and visit us in April.  It will be so good to see them.

Savai'i, Baha'i Temple, and the Storm

We took a quick trip this Monday & Tuesday to Savai'i to help out the ITEP couple there get a few things started.  We took the early ferry over and worked with them until the afternoon then went to the north of the island and stayed in a beach fale that was pretty cool.  The resort was right on the beach and the beautiful water.  We came home the following day and in the middle of the ferry trip home, it really started raining and blowing.  It was a pretty wild trip.  Come to find out, it was the last time the ferry ran for three days and there were people stranded on both sides of the ferry while it rained and stormed.  We felt fortunate that we made it home.  We spent the morning playing in the ocean and it was really nice.

View of ocean outside of fale

Pool at resort with beach fale

The Baha'i Temple

Pretty plant at the Baha'i Temple

Ferry to Savai'i

We spent the rest of the week in some of our teacher's classrooms observing them teach lessons in the format of the class we are teaching them.  It was fun.

We took a trip Saturday to the Baha'i temple here.  It is one of only 8 they have built in the world.  It is a beautiful campus.  Their religion was started in the early 1800's in Persia and is quite inclusive.

This coming week we will finish one class and start another.  We are going to be busy teaching three times a week.  It usually takes a full day to prepare for each lesson.

We are grateful to be on our mission.  We work hard and play hard and are glad to do this in our young phase of retirement!