I have almost a months worth of pictures and thoughts to jot down. I thought I would just post them as they come - no real order to it.


I have previously posted a picture of the Brown Tree Snake. This snake hitched a ride on planes or ships coming onto the island back in WWII and proceeded to kill off all the birds on the island. The picture on the left is a snake trap that you see on the fences that surround the airport. The picture on the right is hard to decipher but if you look real close you can see a little white mouse in the upper corner. All the traps have live bait in them. I always strain my eyes as we drive by to see if I can spot a snake. So far I have not seen any.

We found out that our replacement will be coming May 24th. That is two months before we will be leaving and so it meant that we needed to find housing for them. We would like to have put them in our apartment complex but we got the next best thing. We found an apartment about 1/2 block down the street. It is a nice apartment but I am sure that the Andersons will want to move to our apartment when we leave. The advantage of moving? - Central Air Conditioning, two bathrooms and a washer and dryer in our apartment. The complex they will be in does not even have a laundry room.

To get the apartment, we had to start the lease on May 1st. As it turned out, that was a good thing. We have two senior couples who will use the apartment - one is just arriving and will be going on to Pohnpei at the end of the week and the other couple is who they are replacing. They will stay a few days before flying on home to Idaho.

Since we did not do the walk through on the apartment until April 29th we scrambled on Saturday to get it ready for the midnight arrival of the Kjars. Since the Andersons will only need the apartment for two months we did not want to move in a lot of furniture so we moved a surplus bed being stored at Sister Miyazaki's and a few things from our apartment that we figured we could do without.

We took the futon from our living room along with the end tables.

Before - This picture was probably
taken May 2011.




After - Picture shows today's look.



We held FHE at our house tonight and we had to use the chairs from the dining set. We are a bit limited on seating space now but it seems cozy and I like it.


Bad picture! Too dark but this is the Kjars.

Soooo - we got the apartment all ready and at midnight, Saturday, we met the Kjars at the airport. We took them to the apartment and as we were looking around pointing out the remote for the air con, etc. a lovely 2" cockroach went scurrying along the kitchen wall. I grabbed a kleenex box and squashed it fast. Sister Kjar didn't even seem bothered by it - thank goodness. The next morning at church, she informed us that its brother appeared in the same spot that morning. We have been really blessed in our present apartment. In one year I have only seen two cockroaches and they were tiny. Ants are a different story. We have very tiny ones that we cannot get rid of.



At Institute this past week we played The Simpsons Uno. Hannah, our student from Madera, has really taken on the island ways. She insisted that we play on the floor - who needs tables? We enjoyed a scrumptious banana cream pie that student Andrew made. We love it when he brings treats. He is a really good cook.

I tried to get a picture of all the missionaries at our District Meeting last week but as I posted this I realized that I cut off one elder. So sorry Elder Bano! Left to right, Sister Koivi, Sister Smibert, Elder Adams, Elder Tokoma'ata, Elder Barlow, Elder Matthews and Elder DeOcampo. Elder Adams is the District Leader and he has given some awesome lessons during our meetings. I am so impressed with his insights and have learned a lot from him.


Last week burglars hit our office and the Facilities Management office next door. We arrived in the morning to find that our lock had been pried away from the door. Totally destroyed it but they were not able to get in. FM was not so lucky. They had a different type of lock and the burglars were successful in getting in. They stole cameras, phones and tools and ransacked the office. We have a set of Elders living in church housing down south who have had there house broken into 3 times in less than two months. Two of those times were at night while the elders were sleeping. FM finally installed bars on the windows and we hope that that will keep them out.

I thought this was cute. Some of the elders like to play basketball in the parking lot on their Pday. They change their clothes in the store room and this was what I found after they had gone out. It just looked like Elder DeOcampo had been so careful in placing his clothes.

One night last week, Wayne decided that we needed to get out of the apartment and go walk on the beach. We got in the car and drove to the other side of the island - our side doesn't really have good beaches. We parked at one end of Tumon Bay and started walking. As you look at this picture you can see where we started out - it is that spot of land across the bay.

There are hotels all along the bay and many of them have little wedding chapels on the property. This is one of them that we passed.

We walked for about a half hour and then cut back up to the street and got some dinner at Dr. Kebab to take back down to the beach. As we sat down to eat it was getting a bit dark. By the time we headed back it was dark. We did have a good walk and we got to see a beautiful sunset.




Easter Sunday we were invited to dinner by a Ward member. Her husband is the bagpipe player whose picture was in our last post. They live in a high rise building on Hagatna Bay. They are on the fifth floor and have a gorgeous view of the bay. We had a wonderful dinner, lovely view and enjoyed getting to know them better. They are the Knowles from Arizona. They are staying with their son who is stationed at the Navy Base.

This is that lovely view.

Coming up - we will be sad to see the Holloways leave but look forward to meeting the Andersons. Transfers are next week and it is always interesting to see all the changes that come. One of those changes is major and effects the office. We will report on that when it happens. Stay tuned!