Transfer Time

It is transfer time again and so the week before transfers we did apartment inspections. We have been giving The Cleanest Apartment award for several months now and it has really helped to motivate the missionaries in their cleaning efforts.

Elder Valinotti and Elder Blaser were the winners this month. Elder Blaser is a previous winner. Most of the missionaries want the award and so it has been difficult to determine a winner. We are now asking when they washed their sheets last and using that as a tie breaker. Next transfer I am going to add shoe shining to the list. That seems to be a problem here. Shoes deteriorate very fast and the elders do not bother to shine them. Very tacky!



Friday Night Date Night! We invited Sister Miyazaki to go with us to Chamorro Village for dinner. We also took flat MaCayela with us. After eating at the Jamaica Grill - Ya Mon! Serious Food! - we watched the performance in the Village. It was a group of young kids and they were very good. After a great fire dance finale, MaCayela wanted to have her picture taken with some of the performers. She had her picture taken with the girls and then the boys had to have their picture taken too.

This next picture was taken of MaCayela and a monitor lizard. I tried and tried to get the picture turned but no matter what I did it posted this way every time. You will just have to turn you head to check it out.

There was also a coconut crab that liked to pose for pictures. The boy that had the crab said that it is 65 years old. There was a copy of a newspaper article about the crab so I guess he was right.

Sunday we had the Assistants over for dinner. This was the last time we would be able to feed Elder Colemere. He was getting ready to go home. Elder Wilson's companion, Elder Stanley, had gone home the week before and so he was staying with the Assistants and so we had he and Elder Matthews (Elder Colemeres replacement) along with Elder Tuaitanu. We will really miss Elder Colemere and Elder Wilson who is also going home.

Tuesday morning we saw six elders off in time for them to be home for Thanksgiving. From left to right, Pres. and Sister Dowdle, Elders Colemere, Ako, Ulmer, VanKomen, Wilson and Cook.


We are also losing Elder Garcia in the office. He is going up north and Elder Iglesia is taking his place. These are two of our Filipino elders. They come from the same village in the Phillipines.


Thursday was Thanksgiving. Here we have Master Carver, President Dowdle, and his lovely Master Chef, Sister Dowdle. They put on a wonderful dinner for 29 missionaries. We had had 9 new missionaries arrive the night before and it was a great way for them to start their 2 years.









The Sisters are quite outnumbered but what a great group they are! This picture kinda reminds me of the Sesame Street song "one of these things is not like the other". We need some sisters with some height. I feel like a giant next to them!

Friday night we went down to the Forbidden Zone. This is the touristy area in Tumon and it has a few businesses that are not the best so the missionaries are not to go down there. We are special though and so it does not apply to us. They had a Dance Fest that night and we wanted to check it out. The street was blocked off and they had lots of food booths, etc. but there was a stage area where several local groups and a few groups from Tokyo performed.

The first group to dance was the Gef Pago group we had seen perform at the Sheraton several months ago. They did several dances but I wish they had done the whole show. It is just a bunch of kids but they are really good and I enjoy watching them.


There were a couple of groups doing Hip Hop or Crumping or dances like that. This is the Step Entertainment group. They were good if you like that style but after 5 or 6 dances I was a little tired of it.

This is the Talent Box group who also did Hip Hop, etc. Interesting that they did a lot of oldies tunes and adapted it to their style.

There was also a local group who did dances from India. It was great. We got a taste of what we were supposed to have experienced on our mission. We are quite glad that we had the reassignment though because we love it here in Guam.

This was one of the groups from Japan. Their costuming was interesting. They started out with blue kimono's and for each dance they peeled off a layer to expose a different color. In the following video, if you look close, you can see that each layer was bunched in the back.



.

Saturday there was a Japanese Festival down at Ipao Beach. Our neighbor had been telling us for months about this festival and we were excited to check it out. I have to say we were a bit disappointed. We expected it to be like the Micronesia Island Fair but it was quite different. You had to buy coupons at a central booth and then use the coupons for food and games. That was all there was. No crafts like I had hoped.

These girls were trying to spin the plate on the stick. The girl on the left was really good.

Several of the booths had these little pools with balls and rubber duckies floating. They would give you a small paddle that was covered in paper. You dipped it and tried to lift out the balls to put in your bowl. The longer it took you the paper soaked up water and would tear when you tried to lift something. I think that meant your time was up. They also had pools that had goldfish in them. Some of the kids were doing quite well and had a bowl full of fish.

There was also a stage set up where there was entertainment going on. The dance group we saw the night before was performing when we arrived. There was a marshall arts demonstration going on when we left. We had planned on being there for several hours but I think we were in and out in 1/2 hour.

We ended our Saturday with another turkey dinner at a members house. They had wanted to feed all the missionaries but since the missionaries can only eat at houses that are in their proselyting area, only a few missionaries could go. We picked up Sister Miyazaki and joined 6 other missionaries. We had a wonderful feast that the Taiwerbwe children had even helped with. This family has gone through some great health trials in the past few months and we were really humbled that they would do this for us. Just another example of the generosity of the islanders. We have grown to love them so much.

We have had some wonderful feasts over the last few days but this coming week is Zone Conference and we look forward to a spiritual feast