miscellaneous

This is the Christmas Island Power plant. You now can see that converting to solar power may not be a bad idea afterall.
Mike adorned our fridge door for a week or so. We took him down when he went home.
Missionary work is so strenuous. The senior missionaries just need to unwind a little every now and then. You really can lay your line out on the reef and a fish will strike every time. My only problem is that I bought a little light pole in Hawaii that won't handle much more line that 8 lbs. test and most of them play with me and then either spit my hook out or drag it over some coral and are gone. The $100 rod and reel that will handle most fish is about $400 dollars here and I'm really not that much of a fisherman. If I knew someone coming from Hawaii I would probably have them bring me a pole.

miscellaneous

This is the baby of the couple in the previous picture whos marriage we attended. We think that there is something wrong with him. He's not really able to even hold his head up. We're not sure that the couple knows anything is amis.
Typical baptism. Elder Lortz is going back to Tarawa on next months transfers. He's been out here eleven months. We were gathering some information recently and he has been involved in nearly 60 convert baptisms since he's been here.
This is Toka. She helps us with our computer questions. How about that hair? She's 20 years old and would love to meet a good mormon boy from Juuuutah.

wedding and copra

We went to a wedding the other night in Bamboo. The man on the left is President Henry who married the happy couple. The roof is thatched and then it's open all around and sits on stilts about three feet off of the ground.
This couple have a five month old baby. President Henry married them on Wednesday so they could get baptized on Saturday. They have been to church every Sunday since their baptism.
I know it looks like there is light in these pictures but there isn't much. All of the light was a very small automobile bulb that must have been hooked up to a battery.
This is copra. The white part of the coconut. They dry it in the sun and put it in gunny sacks and sell it to the copra agent. A ship comes in two times a year and picks it up. Cutting copra is about the only income for most of these people.

more house

This is looking from the kitchen out the front door

This is our water purifier. We catch the rain water in storage tanks that fill from the roof of the church. Fill the five gallon bucket. Put clorox in the bucket. We then pump through the three filters that you see on the table with the pvc hand pump. It's really quite efficient and we feel pretty comfortable with the water.

our house

Hope you'll excuse these next pictures of our house. I guess we just want to remember how it looked when we get home and are in our rocking chairs in the nursing home. The shower is great although there is no hot water.
This is looking from the front door towards the kitchen.
This is from the front door towards the north wall.
This view is from the computer towards the bathroom. Our electricity is 110v. For whatever reason the builder of the church and our cottage set us up as the only building on Christmas Island that uses 110. Actually it's more like about 80v. We have to use inverters and are quite underpowered. I am discussing with the church now about the possibility of switching to solar power. They had installed solar panels on our roof at one time. It seems a little odd to me that we are paying for electricity when we could be using "old man sun" for our power needs. He shines 365 days a year here and you don't have to worry about the generator being turned off from two to six hours everyday.

service project

I know this will be hard to believe but the only real activities these wonderful people like to do is service projects. If you ask the young adults what they want to do they'll ask if they can paint the health clinic or something. This cleaning project along side of the road is to beautify the road. I asked the branch president why they wanted to do this because as soon as it rains again it will just have to be repeated. "Oh that's o.k. President, we'll just do it again. I can't begin to tell you how wonderful these people are. The more we are here the more we love them.

misc

This is Elder Ryan Lortz from Pennsylvania. The parents named their new baby Ryan. For any of you keen observers. Yes, I'm sure little Ryan is steaming in his outfit. The people think they have to keep the new babies wrapped up and the air away from them. It's probably over 100 degrees inside of that outfit.

Just some kids at the botaki for the new baby and the musical entertainment. Elder Lortz plays the guitar really well and when the entertainment stopped he picked up a guitar and asked if he could play it. He played "Welcome to the Hotel California" and the people loved it.
This is our pet gecko "Croakie" He's getting fat from the easy life he lives in our house. Sister P. wants to shoo him away but I tell her he eats the bugs.