Kosrae

Elder and Sister Foote are technically Seminary and Institute missionaries but they are actually wearing many hats. Elder Foote has registered the Boy Scout troop with the BSA and they are a very active group. Sister Foote organized a girls camp and works with all the youth. They got a "Soles for Souls" project going where a boy in Arizona got about 5,000 pairs of Crocs donated and sent to Kosrae as his Eagle Scout project. Some of the colors were quite bright and you can see the results of this project walking around all over the island. Crocs are the shoe of choice since it is usually so wet here. Sister Foote got 15 keyboards donated by the church and she is teaching about 20 members how to play the piano. The list of what they do just goes on.




For all their hard work, they are blessed to be able to live right on the beach. When the tsunami hit several weeks ago the waves came all the way to the dirt driveway that you can see just barely by the house. They used to have a pristine white beach but it is now covered with dead coral. Isn't the little gazebo cute?



This looks like a Pepto Bismol house but it is where the elders live in Lelu. We have to give them kudos because they really had a pretty clean place. I wish I could say that about all of the apartments.



The Lelu chapel is very much like the new chapel in Chuuk. This is the inside of the chapel. The members were there cleaning and it was obvious that they loved their chapel and took great pride in maintaining it. It is a beautiful chapel and I loved all the framed artwork that lined the hallways. Just beautiful.




Here we can see the view from the breezeway of the chapel. There is no cultural hall and so when they have activities they set up tables in the breezeway and they can serve food from a window that opens out from the kitchen into that area. It seems to be a really well planned building.







While waiting for the Utwe missionaries to arrive for their apartment inspection, a group of mostly non-member children sang "Nearer My God To Thee" for us. Two of the boys are members. Sister Foote said that when they started having Choir practice on Wed. nights they had a few children who came and stood outside of the window and just listened. The next week there were a few more and then they invited them in to sing with them after that. They sounded beautiful.


This is the back of the Elders apartment. The tank is the rainwater storage tank. The children were waiting for the washing machine to drain again. They had been playing in the sudsy runoff.


This is the chapel in Utwe. It is the smaller of the two chapels on Kosrae.


We added this to show the native way of burying their dead. There is no cemetery. You just bury your loved ones on your property or in the case of an accident they are buried right then and there. The Footes have a grave very close to their home because when a man was killed in a drunk driving accident they just buried him where he was killed.

Very few homes have indoor bathrooms or kitchens. The thatched roof area is an outdoor cooking place. Sister Foote said that they do not have ovens and so they do not bake. They do like baked items though. She held classes to teach them how to make pizza. They love it. The Footes also held classes on gardening for a few people.



A lot of the food consumed on Kosrae is readily available by just walking out your door. They grow mangoes, papaya, breadfruit, green tangerines and oranges, sweet bananas and cooking bananas, pandanas and taro just to mention a few.


There is one paved road in Kosrae. It goes around the island but it only goes about 2/3 of the way around the island. You can see the driving is somewhat slow but it makes for less damages from accidents.

Although Kosrae has very little in the way of stores or modern conveniences, it is a clean and green island. Every where we went it was just beautiful.