It's Pday Again

This is actually a picture from last Sunday. The missionaries presented a musical fireside. This was taken during rehearsal so there were a few more missionaries in the actual performance. They did a wonderful job. I was really surprised at the talent. The Elder in the front row all the way to the right is from Hawaii. He played the ukelele and also sang in several of the songs and it was really good. Some of the missionaries had fantastic voices.

One picture I wanted to post but I can't seem to find it when I browse is a group shot of the sister missionaries with one of the ladies that was baptized two weeks ago. Since we have been here, there has been a baptism every week. Most of those being baptized are young adults and I am so impressed with what humble, sweet people they are.



Some of you may have read my comment on Facebook about the crazy roosters here. This is a picture of one of the neighborhood roosters - probably the one who has his days and nights mixed up. I am a light sleeper and so there are many times when I wake up at 2 or 3am and I hear those crazy birds crowing. They are still doing it at 6:30am and then I usually get up and don't hear them anymore.

This is a picture of some of the roosters and their female friends. There are chickens everywhere here. You will be driving down the main roads on the island and there are a bunch of chickens walking around on the side of the road.


This is along the side road Wayne walks along in the morning. There is a house with caged roosters. Our friends told us that cock fights are a big deal here and so these may be some of the fighting roosters. They are not allowed to run loose.


This is a street street Wayne walks in the morning. It is a short cut from our apartment to another larger road that leads out to the golf course. He has found it a nice quiet route to walk on at 6:30am.



Wayne had me take take this picture to share with our friends the Brobergs who are serving in Copenhagen. They emailed us recently about their experiences there and commented on how cold it is. We checked out their blog and saw them all wrapped up in heavy coats and scarves. I don't think I will ever have a use for the light weight jackets that I reluctantly packed in my suitcase. Our weather right now is beautiful. I know the temperature will not vary much but we expect more humidity as the summer approaches.


Our Young Adults had a beach party today. Several of them got up a game of volleyball. In the far back court is Elder Westergard. He amazes me as he gets in and does whatever the kids are involved in. I stayed in the shade, which when I saw Elder Westergards sunburn tonight I was quite glad I had.


Several of the young men took charge of the cooking. These four were at the barbeque almost the entire activity. The meat was wonderful. They cooked ribs, chicken and hot dogs.


One young man decided that he was going to cook the hot dogs Tongan style. He had this tiny little barbeque and he had brought wood to burn to coals. The knife in his hand is a machete. Everyone has them here - there is even one in the back of our car. The machete is used to clear the jungle while hiking and as seen here for splitting the wood.


When the coals were ready, Cheech went down to the beach to get a palm frond. He then peeled the leaves off and made skewers of the palm rib.


The skewers were used to put the hot dogs on. When one side was cooked, all they had to do was lift the two ends of the skewer and turn the hot dogs over. How nifty! The girl on the end is Sarah Warner. She is the Branch Presidents daughter and the Young Adult Rep. She has planned some really nice activities for the YSA but we will be loosing her next month. She is moving back to Utah and joining the Air Force. Next to Sarah is Enrique. He turned his missionary application in several weeks ago and is anxiously waiting for his call. I love to hear him talk. He is such a knowledgeable young man, is friendly and has no problem leading out. He will make a great missionary.


Ahhhh, the finished product. They cooked so much meat and I thought it would never get eaten. Never underestimate the appetites of young men.

OUR FAMILY

I do not really have anything to post this week so I thought I would put up some of the family pictures that Stephanie Ryan did just before we left on our mission. I find it so hard to place pictures on the Blog so they are a little helter skelter but you can see my beautiful kids and grandkids and that is all that counts.



We had had a group shot done when Ashley got married but we now have the addition of Caroline and Ashley is carrying Adoline (even though she does not really look too pregnant here).

Josh and Ashley


Jonathan and his family
















Jason and his family




















Preston Wayne













Ashlyn Nicole






















Thomas William















Lucas Pond









Caroline

Saturday was another day for wandering. We started the morning out with a trip to the flea market. The pictures show the best of market. We bought veggies at several stands and we admired the orchids. I was expecting to see a market like the bazarr on Oahu. This was a disappointment. It was more like yard sale items with a few really cheap products thrown in. Well we have been once and we will not be returning.


























From the flea market we headed up a hill in Agana Heights. We were looking for the Governors residence but never found it. We did find Fort Santa Agueda. This is a remnant of a Spanish era fort. During the 1930's the fort was used as a signal station. The only thing left is a raised platform which is a great vista point to look down on Hagatna, the capital city of Guam, and Agana Bay where American soldiers first landed in 1944. There are three replicated canons that look impressive.































As we headed up the hill we found another WWII museum. This one was called Pacific War Museum and it looked like it was a private enterprise



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There was one area devoted to the Japanese soldiers and the other half American soldiers. They had a lot of interesting pictures and quite a few artifacts. Outside of the building they had old army ambulances, tanks, jeeps, etc.

Our last stop was at another hill called Asan Overlook. This was one of the hills that the Japanese entrenched themselves in to fire on the American soldiers as they landed at Asan Beach. They had a good vantage point to see who was coming.

Chamorro Village Revisited

Since we could not see the entertainment at Chamorro Village when we went several weeks ago, we decided to go again this week and we went VERY early so that we would have good seats. The entertainment does not start until 6:30 but we were there in place by 5:45. While I kept our place, Wayne went to get some dinner for us. He came back with Bar-B-Que chicken and pork on skewers and corn on the cob that had been grilled. There is a large variety of foods from other ethnicities such as Chamorro, Chinese, Japanese, Jamaican, Greek, Mexican and Filipino.



It tasted wonderful. I have been a little leery of buying from food booths but I guess I had better get over it. I am sure there are a lot of interesting things out there that really taste good.

While Wayne held our seats I went shopping. I had decided that I would go back to the booth with the necklace made with the brown tree snake vertebrae and if I still liked it I would buy it. As you can see from the picture I still liked it. I figure it is something that is unique to here and it is a useful souvenier that will not be tucked in a drawer never to be seen again. I also bought an orchid and started my Christmas tree decoration collection.



























Along with the temporary booths set up on Wednesday night only, the village has permanent stores that sell island handicrafts (probably made in China).



With my purchases completed and dinner a memory, the show finally began. I cannot remember the Chamorro name for the performing group but it translates to Children of the Island. They did numerous dances in a 45 minute show. They were pretty good.





I just have to add a tidbit in with this posting. The missionaries have been telling us about an island custom that is somewhat of a nuisance. There is a tree called the Betelnut and people take the nuts from this tree, wrap it up in the betel leaf along with chewing tobacco and lime powder and then they chew it. When we went through the airport in Saipan I thought it was funny that they had signs posted about not spitting Betelnut. On some of the islands it is a real problem because people spit it everywhere and so there is a lot of red goop on the streets and sidewalks (where there are sidewalks). It is highly addictive and I know the Marshall Islands have recently passed a law making it illegal to chew Betelnut. You can tell who chews because their teeth are red. Well we were in the grocery store this week and saw bags of Betelnut for sale at the checkout counter. We were later told that the bags sell for about $1 which seems cheap but they chew so much that you have to buy lots of bags for one day.

Visit to Saipan

I thought I would post a few of the pictures we took when we went to Saipan this week. We were to inspect the missionary housing and vehicles but we also got a lot of free time to explore the island. We drove from one end to the other and pretty much saw it all. Saipan is a lot cleaner than Guam, less traffic but also less available in the way of shopping. We decided we liked Saipan.

I will just randomly post the pictures and give a short explanation. It will go much faster in posting that way. I take forever to organize them otherwise.


We took a fairly small plane out of Guam headed for Saipan. It was a bit of a drizzily day but we managed to avoid getting wet.



This one is for you Dad. It was our first sight of Saipan. We had flown over Tinian a few minutes earlier but it was not very picturesque.



This is just to show that looks can be so deceiving. From the outside this apartment complex really looked nice. We were very surprised when we entered inside. It left a lot to be desired. I won't post pictures in case the elders ever check out our blog.




This was taken along the pedestrian walkway by the beach. It goes for miles and miles and was really pleasant to just sit and look out at the ocean.


We went to the Northern Mariana Islands Museum. It is full of artifacts showing the cultural heritage of the islands. This model of a Chamorro dwelling answered our questions about the "lattes" that the structure sits on. These were made in two parts - the base and a bowl like structure.




You can find replicas of these all over Guam.

This was taken at the Last Command Post. It was a Japanese lookout built in the side of a hill. We had to climb steps to get up to it. There were remnants of the stands for large guns.


At the base of the hill they had the guns seen in the next picture and some old rusted out Japanese tanks.




This cliff area was called Bonzai Cliff. After the American troups defeated the Japanese and took over Saipan, there were thousands of men and women who leaped to their death from this cliff because of the things they had been told about the Americans. Mothers held onto their children and just ran off the edge. It is a beautiful area but so sad to think of what took place here.





This was an island that we could see off in the distance. There are a lot of tiny, uninhabited islands all over the Marianas. Just look at the color of that water. It was so pretty that you would catch yourself just staring at it at odd times. I never grow tired of the views here.






This was on March 9th. To those of you who are unfamiliar with the significance of that date it was my 60th birthday and this shows where I went for breakfast. There really were not that many choices.

To end I will relate an experience we had while visiting the elders. They had an appointment with two single sisters and so they needed to have a couple go with them. They invited us and I am so glad they did. We met in the most humble of circumstances. Sister Pat lives and works out of the same one room abode. When we arrived she and her investigator friend were preparing a meal in her outdoor kitchen. She showed us into her home and we sat and waited while they finished cooking. She soon brought in a feast. There was enough food for twice as many people as were there. She just kept dishing up spring rolls as the elders would finish. After consuming a lot of food the elders finally were able to show Vee the DVD they had obtained in the ladies native Thai language. We had a discussion after the film had finished. The Spirit in the room was just wonderful. We felt so good about having been there. It probably was the highlight of the whole trip. I hope that we will be able to have more experiences like that.

Mailing Address

For those that have asked here is our mailing address, and as you can see it is part of the US postal system and regular US postage is all that is required.

Micronesia Guam Mission
P.O Box 21749 GMF
Barrigada, GU 96921

I have no pictures - I really wish I did - but I thought I would do a quick post to give impressions of Guam.

We tried out a "new" grocery store last night. The name of it was American Grocery. The name really should be International Grocery. I think there was more Asian foods than there was American. I would love to have pictures of the aisles to post. It was really interesting. The one great buy that we made was $2.99 for a half gallon of ice cream. We could not believe that we found it so cheap - and it was real ice cream. We had paid $8.00 for a half gallon of Dreyers vanilla ice cream to have for FHE on Monday night. The other horrible price we have to pay is $5.99 for a gallon of milk. It is not even good milk. They reconstitute milk solids and bottle it up. It has a strange flavor (or it could just be my mind playing tricks on me) and so I only use it on cereal or mix up chocolate milk. The grocery prices are really high here. Our friends, the Westergards said they spend $600 a month on food for just the two of them. I saw a TV ad for Taco Bell last night advertising a $5.00 meal. A message came across the screen saying that the price in Guam was $7.49. Our motto is "Get used to it".

The other thing I wish I had pictures for is the morning we spent with a real estate agent today. We looked at an apartment just after we got here and the real estate agent was supposed to get back to us but didn't. I had been on line looking at some possibilities and decided to contact another agent. He had 4 complexes he took us to. The first was back at the place we looked at before but we saw an apartment in another section today. It wasn't much better than the first. There were broken drawers in the kitchen and the stove looked old and dirty. Then we went to another complex nearby. These were two story townhouses. The area was nice, landscaped (something most apartment complexes don't have here) and in a quiet area. There were three units, all the same floor plan, but some were a bit neglected. They had three bedrooms which we really do not need and they cost $300 a month more than where we are now. We next went to a small complex that had maybe 20 units. It too was 3 bedroom but it was in much better condition and the price was only $950. I liked it. Wayne did not. The real estate agent was nice enough to tell us that the neighborhood was not the best and there has been a problem with people hanging out in the parking lot late at night drinking beer and being very noisy. I think he noticed our name tags and realized that wasn't our thing. There are so many military people here with housing allowances that the cost of rentals has been constantly going up. The areas that we can afford have all had to start renting to GHUR which is equivalent to our Section 8. It is really hard to find good, affordable housing. Wayne does not really like the idea of having to move an apartment full of stuff and so I guess we have decided that we can tough it out where we are for 17 months. Our apartment really is better than anything we have looked at. It is just going to make our little house in Clovis look like a mansion when we return.