The End of February

Saturday, the 19th, we had a baptism in our Branch. We have not had any since November and so it was really good to watch two young ladies be baptized. The missionaries have been meeting with these two for quite a while and it has been a long road to reach this point. It was a wonderful baptismal service and the girls looked beautiful in our new white dresses. Of course I did not have my camera with me.

Sunday we had a wonderful Sacrament Meeting. It was High Council Sunday and the talks were really good but the highlight of the meeting was when they announced that we are now the Barrigada Ward. Our former Branch President is the new Bishop Kim. Since the Stake was formed the first part of December, we kept wondering why it was taking so long to form the Ward. They still have not sustained any Ward leaders. It is going to be interesting to watch the changes.

Monday we had the Guam Zone Conference. President Dowdle spoke on The Fall in preparation for the next Conference when he will talk about the Atonement. The meeting was very good and really gave the missionaries a boost to get out there and work.

Just a few of the 26 missionaries. We have opened two new apartments and so we have a few more missionaries than the last Zone Conference. It is great to have so many serving.

We always gather everyone together to get a Zone picture. Several of the elders were really slow in coming out for the picture and I snapped one of the rest of us waiting. Unfortunately, we did not get a picture of the whole group.

Font Row: Elders Rufus, Early, Cutler, Cook, Iglesia, Pres. Dowdle, Nelson, DeOcampo.
Back Row: Elders Meldrum, Valinotti, Bano, Coffey, Barlow, Clarke, Matthews, Adams, Hertzberg.

I did get a good picture of all the Elders though. The Sisters also posed but Elder Clarke was so busy taking pictures with the girls cameras that by the time I tried to give him our camera everyone had walked away. Just know that it was a really good looking group. We have such an awesome group of Sisters. There are 6 on Guam now.

That night we had Family Home Evening with the Hertzbergs. It is so nice that we have someone to meet with again. We were sorry that Sister Miyazaki has been sick and was unable to meet with us.

Thursday we had a good group at Institute. We set up the Badminton net and Ping Pong table and the kids were having a great time - as always. They played a little later than usual and when we were ready to leave one of the girls discovered that someone had broken into her car. The drivers side window was totally shattered. She had left her wallet in a bag with her school books, etc. All was missing. Elder Clarke called the police, gave the address of the church and then they hung up on him. We waited around but no one ever showed up and so we cleaned up the glass the best that we could and the kids all left. After they left, I discovered that a there was shattered glass a few parking places away from where Cathy was parked and there was a large piece of a broken window laying on the grass. We never heard anyone else say they had been broken into. We later found out that a couple of years ago there was a rash of break ins at the church. I think we are going to have to start patrolling the parking lot.


Friday night the Hertzbergs, Sister Miyazaki and us went to see Beauty and the Beast put on by the Father Duenas Memorial High School. We were so impressed with the sets and costumes and are still trying to figure out if they made them here or had them shipped in. Absolutely gorgeous. A few of the songs were not loud enough or clear enough to understand but the main songs were done really well.

Saturday we did a very un-missionary activity.

Since we sold our car before leaving on our mission, we are going to need to buy a car when we get home. Elder Clarke decided we needed to check out possibilities so we know what we want before we return home so we looked at a Hyundai Tuscon.

In the afternoon we went to a performance at one of the Malls. We are in the beginnings of Chamorro Month. The Natibu Dance Group was performing. It was all dances from Guam. Usually the dance performances we have seen have had all of the Pacific Islands dances in them. This performance gave us more of the local flavor. The following pictures are to show the variety of costumes worn. The video shows some pretty skimpy costumes but the dancing was all very good and interesting. Several of them showed the Spanish influence that is so prominent in the Chamorro culture.








They looked like sunflowers to me.

These were older women dancing. Very graceful.





We ended the week with a great Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. The Bishop had asked the missionaries who are new to our Ward to speak. Sister Tuileto'a (from American Samoa) spoke first followed by Sister Smibert (from Melburne, Australia). Their talks were so good and certainly brought the Spirit to our meeting. The third missionary was Elder Barlow (from Southern Calif.). Such a good meeting. Later we had Sister Smibert and her companion Sister Koivi over for dinner. We are only allowed to invite the missionaries who are proselyting in our area and it is nice to have the sisters here now.

It has been such a good week and we look forward to a great month ahead.